The Americans saw ruin ahead. They called it atrocious discrimination. John Adams gave an idea of what the law meant to New England industry: On the seven million gallons of molasses imported annually, Britain would collect about $875,000 a year, a sum worth about ten times that now, he said.
The Rhode Island Assembly sent a strong “Remonstrance” to George II. The colony, it said, had one hundred and fifty vessels engaged in the West India trade and imported “14,000 hogsheads of molasses whereof a quantity not exceeding 2,500 hogsheads” came from the British islands.
Governor Hopkins protested, “Upwards of thirty distil-houses, erected at vast expense for want of molasses must be shut up to the ruin of many families and of our trade in general. Two-thirds of our vessels will become useless and perish upon our hands. Our mechanics and those dependent upon the merchant for employment must seek subsistence elsewhere.” It would affect the mother country, too. He added, “An end will be put to our commerce; the merchants cannot import any more British manufactures, nor will the people be able to pay for those they have already received.”,23
Massachusetts was equally indignant. Most of her distilleries would have to be closed; seven hundred ships, including fishing ones, would be tied up and some five thousand sailors thrown out of work. Most of New England industry, including fishing, was tied to the slave trade. “The Act,” says Woodrow Wilson, “cut at the very heart of New England trade. … For the vast majority of the merchants, the Act meant financial ruin.”24 Governors of other states, including Colden of New York and Franklin of New Jersey joined in the protest. Talk of severance from Britain began. The American Revolution really started at this time. As Pitman rightly says, “The West India planting interest had laid substantial foundations in the realm of economic life for that great discontent which culminated in the American Revolution.”
Samuel G. Arnold makes it even more emphatic. Of the protest of Partridge, Rhode Island representative in England, he says, “The war-cry of Revolution, which was ere long to rally the American colonies in the struggle for independence was here first sounded by the Quaker agent of Rhode Island to cease only with the dismemberment of the British Empire.”25
In the face of American defiance, England did little to enforce the act. Smuggling continued almost openly for the next thirty-one years. “If,” says Schlesinger “any serious attempt had been made to enforce the statute, the prosperity of the commercial provinces would have been laid prostrate. It was the West India Trade, more than anything else which had enabled them to utilize their fisheries, forests and fertile soil to build up their towns, cities, and to supply cargoes for their merchant marine and to liquidate their indebtedness to British merchants and manufacturers. The entire molasses output of the British islands did not equal two-thirds of the quantity imported into Rhode Island alone. Moreover the prices of the British planters were 25 to 40 per cent higher than the foreign islands.”26 This in addition to the heavy export duty, as was said.
“The terms of the Molasses Act were so drastic,” says Albert Bushnell Hart, “that evasion seemed justifiable.”
Another objection of the Americans was that the Europeans tried to cut in on their trade. Dr. Belknap, writing then, said, “I do not find that European adventurers had any other business here than to procure cargoes of our rum to assist them in carrying on the slave trade.”
The smugglers operated in areas less frequented by the English patrols. And, of course, there was much collusion with the English revenue agents. But the Act, says James Truslow Adams “constituted a perpetual grievance against England. Moreover, as it lowered the moral tone of the community, it decreased the respect for law.”27
So it went on until 1764. The Peace of Paris had just ended Britain’s long war with France and Spain and she was badly in need of revenue to pay her huge national debt. America, at peace, had been growing more and more prosperous. Visitors to America took back to Europe glowing tales of the wealth of its upper-class, “the rich plate, fine mansions, furniture, carriages-and-four, costly wines, silks and satin of the ladies” and generally sumptuous living with troops of slaves to wait on their slightest whim. The English press and Parliament demanded that America be made to help bear the burden. The Molasses Act, now called the Sugar Act, was revived. Britain sent out twenty-seven warships to patrol the New England coasts and soldiers and revenue agents to enforce the act.
American shipping and general commerce at once felt the effect. Providence and Medford, chief slave-ports, suffered heavily. So did other cities as far south as Charleston. One merchant wrote, “What are the people of England going to do with us? Nothing but Ruine seems to hang over our Heads.”
American defiance grew. The Boston Evening Post, July 8, 1765, declared the Act was being enforced so that West Indian Creoles “could roll in gilded equipages through the streets of London at the expense of two million Americans.” James Otis, openly defied Britain. John Adams quoted him with approval. “If the King of Great Britain in person were encamped on Boston Common at the head of 20,000 men, with all his navy on our coasts, he would not be able to enforce it.”28 “The Act of April 5, 1764 can be set down as a landmark in the development of the forces that led to the Revolution,” says Hart.29 And Weeden, “The new enforcement of the Sugar Act was the most powerful cause in exciting the discontent of the colonies.”
Thus the wealth gained from the sale of Africans and their labor not only laid the foundations of America’s commerce, but the attempt to deprive her of the benefits of the slave trade was the most direct cause of the Revolution. The Encyclopedia Britannica says that the Molasses Act “contributed to the beginnings of revolutionary activities in the colonies,” but whoever reads the heated discussion over it will realize that this appraisal is much too low. Note how close all of this happened towards the Revolution.
Rum and slave-trading are not glamorous and patriotic items therefore most popular historians and text-books omit them. Instead, stress is laid on the Stamp Act, which came into being to make up for the loss of revenue on the reduction of the taxes on sugar and molasses. The Stamp Act, long used in England, forced Americans to use stamped paper on all legal documents. It also taxed newspapers, pamphlets, magazines, advertisements, almanacs, playing cards and dice. The Molasses and the Sugar Acts had struck directly at the slave merchants and at the general population only indirectly. But the Stamp Act and the tax on tea affected all, especially the masses, and were thus much more effective issues for capturing general discontent. The real, the underlying irritant, however, was still the rivalry between the slave moguls of New England and those of Bristol and Liverpool. Proof is that the cry for independence continued even after the repeal of the Stamp Act. That and the tax on tea didn’t bring in enough to pay the cost of collection and were abandoned in consequence. Note, also, that John Adams’ statement that “molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence.” was written thirty-five years after that event. In his letter to John Tudor, August 11, 1818, he shows how far more the economic, than the purely patriotic, stirred Americans of his day. Later, we shall see how the importations of Africans and the products they grew were to cause bitterest rivalry and armed conflict among Americans themselves. It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the African and the Afro-American on the United States from 1512 to 1865.
Certain present-day writers of whom one hears little, as Taussig, Weeden, Schlesinger, and Wiener, do tell of the part that slave-trading played in the demand for independence. “Commerce and politics,” says Wiener,30 “were so mixed that rum and liberty were but liquors from the same still.” That “rum was the spirit of ’76” is more than a pun.
The falsifying of this period for patriotism’s sake was amply illustrated in 1925 at the ceremonies commemorating the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Lexington and the ride