Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [164]
On the evening of October 23, just as the Congress finished its work, the booming of cannon from a man-of-war in the harbor signaled the arrival of the stamps. The following day, as an angry crowd of two thousand gathered on the Battery, the Edward, escorted by two warships, dropped anchor under Fort George’s ninety-two guns and awaited orders concerning the disposition of more than two tons of stamped paper, parchment, and vellum in its hold. Handbills circulated in the streets threatening violence against anyone assisting in their distribution (“the first Man that either distributes or makes use of Stampt Paper let him take Care of his House, Person, and Effects”). Ships in the harbor flew their flags at half-staff “to signify Mourning, Lamentation, and Woe.” Golden had marines bring the stamps into the fort under cover of darkness, temporarily averting a confrontation.
One week later, two hundred of New York’s “principal merchants” gathered at the City Arms Tavern on Broadway to sign a nonimportation agreement. It was the first pact of its kind anywhere in the colonies.
No British goods would be bought or sold in the city, vowed the merchants, until Parliament repealed the Stamp Act and removed the objectionable parts of the Revenue and Currency acts. They assumed that British exporters would pressure Parliament to act quickly, and in the meantime nonimportation would give local importers a chance to dispose of swollen inventories. It would stimulate the local production needed to pay for imports in the future. It would also toughen a people overly fond of foreign luxuries. Although this all went well beyond what the Assembly had been prepared to do, a crowd of artisans, mariners, and laborers had gathered outside the Coffee House in the expectation of still stronger measures. Disappointed, they staged a mock funeral for “liberty,” then roamed the streets “in a mobbish manner,” breaking lamps and windows and threatening to pull down houses.
On November 1, 1765, the day the Stamp Act took effect, business in the city came to a halt. An eerie calm descended over the usually busy waterfront. Little or no traffic moved in the streets. Toward sundown, a crowd began to assemble in the Common, eventually some two thousand strong. Witnesses reported that it consisted of numerous sailors, youths, artisans, laborers, and blacks, along with many “country people” who had flocked to town from nearby farms and villages. With the upcoming Pope Day celebrations clearly in mind as a model, the crowd hoisted a scaffold from which hung an elaborate effigy of Governor Golden. One hand held stamped paper and a boot (symbol for the unpopular earl of Bute, the king’s current minister). The effigy’s other hand held a drum (recalling Colden’s service as a drummer boy in the Jacobite rising of 1715). Beside him sat the devil, whispering instructions in his ear.
A second column of demonstrators appeared, dragging Colden’s private coach and another effigy of the unpopular governor. “With the grossest ribaldry,” according to one witness, the two groups marched with gallows, coach, and effigy down Broadway to the fort, their way lit by candles and torches. They hurled bricks and stones at the walls and challenged the garrison to open fire; according to the chief engineer of His Majesty’s forces, “300 Carpenters belonging to the mob were collected & prepared to cut down the Fort Gate on the first Shot fired from thence.” Although Golden wouldn’t give the order to fire, a letter was nailed on the gate warning him that if he used force to uphold the Stamp Act, “you’ll die a Martyr to your own Villainy, and be Hang’d like Porteis, upon a Signpost, as a Momento to all wicked Governors, and that every Man, that assists you, Shall be, surely, put to Death.” The crowd then dragged his private coach over to Bowling Green and burned it along with