The Weathersfield Affair

Abstract

Jared Ingersoll had a plan as he mounted his horse in New Haven, Connecticut, on Wednesday, September 18, 1765, and headed north along the Boston Post Road toward Hartford, where the colonial legislature was about to meet.1 Months earlier the British government had named him as one of two dozen officials responsible for implementing the Stamp Act of 1765 in the colonies of North America and the Caribbean. Ingersoll was the most prominent, influential, and well-informed of the Americans who accepted commissions as stamp officers.2Born in 1722 into one of the founding families of Puritan New England, Jared Ingersoll had studied at Yale College when the religious revivals of the Great Awakening aroused rancorous disagreements there and throughout the colonies. He had rejected the evangelical revivals, joined a traditional Congregational church, and married a local girl, Hannah Whiting. After taking up the practice of law in 1743, Ingersoll built a commodious house overlooking the town green, acquired several slaves, and clinched his identification with the town's conservative elite when he was appointed king's prosecutor for New Haven in 1751. He confirmed both his indifference to popularity and his zeal for royal prerogative and public morality by indicting dozens of newly married couples in the name of “The King, Our sovereign Lord” for pre-marital sexual relations when their first-born children arrived too early. Exempt from militia service by virtue of his post as king's attorney, Ingersoll spent the early years of the French and Indian War enforcing a rigorous compliance with law and order in New Haven County until he was dispatched to London in 1758.3As an agent for the governor and council in London, Ingersoll's chief responsibility was pressing for reimbursements from William Pitt's government for the cost of sending Connecticut militiamen into battle. Owing to Ingersoll's prowess as a lobbyist and the good reputation of Connecticut's militia in the field, Parliament reimbursed 90 percent of the colony's wartime investment.4 Pitt's administration had generated extraordinary popular American support for the war by treating the colonial governments as military allies rather than subservient auxiliaries. Their support proved essential for victory, and Americans were proud of their contributions to the triumph of Britain's protestant constitutional monarchy against what they perceived as the papist and absolutist forces of France, Spain, and their native allies.5 They were proud of the American troops who contributed to Britannia's victory, and Connecticut was especially proud of its 16,000 militiamen, about 12 percent of the colony's population, who fought in the war at a cost of £259,000.6Colonial Americans never cherished their attachment to Britain more fervently than in 1763.7 Preachers and politicians celebrated the French defeat and “the Exaltation of Great-Britain to the Summit of earthly Grandeur and Glory” in sermons and speeches throughout the land.8 Although some controversy arose when treaty negotiators restored Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint Lucia to France and Manila and Havana to Spain, Great Britain ended the Seven Years’ War with a vastly expanded empire that now included Canada, Florida, and uncontested control of the Ohio Valley; the Caribbean islands of Grenada, Saint Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago; the slave-trading outposts of Senegal and Goree in Africa; and command of Bengal and most of India. Without doubt, as a New England minister announced from his pulpit in May, these glorious conquests had been “reserved in the Counsels of God for the age and Reign of George the Third.”9As often happens, however, the transition from war to peace brought new and unforeseen challenges. Before the war, the British empire had been small, protestant, and English-speaking. Now it sprawled from India to the Mississippi, from the tropics to the arctic. Its inhabitants now included 70,000 French-speaking Catholics in Quebec and countless others in the Eastern hemisphere who “were manifestly neither Christian nor white.”10 For many decades England had managed its transatlantic commerce with policies that Edmund Burke, one of the colonies’ friends in Parliament, would characterize as “wise and salutary neglect.”11 The enlarged empire seemed to require greater administrative control and military defense. But how would the nation reconcile traditional British liberties with the exercise of imperial authority over the inhabitants of the American colonies as well as subjugated peoples in Quebec and Asia? And who would bear the cost?12Ingersoll's mission to London in 1758 afforded him a transatlantic perspective about Parliament as well as a personal friendship with Thomas Whatley, the minister who would draft the Stamp Act. Throughout their correspondence, Ingersoll accurately warned George Grenville's administration that any tax “other than such as shall be laid by the Legislative bodies here . . . would go down with the people like Chopt hay.”13 Thomas Hutchinson advanced similar arguments privately from Boston.14 Ingersoll even carried with him about a hundred copies of Connecticut's Reasons Why the British Colonies in America should not be charged with Internal Taxes when he sailed again for England on business late in October 1764.Arriving in London early in December, Ingersoll distributed copies of the pamphlet to members of Parliament, including Grenville and Whatley, who were still working on the text of the Stamp Act in advance of Parliament's upcoming session. Despite the pamphlet's strong objections to his plans, Grenville acknowledged that “the Piece was wrote with good Temper” and “contained as good Arguments as any on the Subject.” Nevertheless, Grenville told Ingersoll that in his opinion Connecticut's arguments “failed on the grand Point of the Colonies being supposed not to be represented in Parliament.”15Nevertheless, despite his reservations, while in London in October 1764 Ingersoll accepted an appointment as stamp distributor for Connecticut and posted the required bond of £3,000.16 Like Benjamin Franklin and other Americans in London at the time, Ingersoll misjudged the intensity of opposition to stamp duties that developed in the colonies during his absence.Late in August 1765 Ingersoll announced his return to New Haven by publishing a letter “To the good People of Connecticut” tinged with disdain for public sentiment about the Stamp Act.17 He had accepted the appointment as “a service” to his countrymen, Ingersoll explained, because when the law took effect they would be “in much need of the stampt paper and very anxious to obtain it.” Chiding his critics for not having “learnt more of the nature of my office before you had undertaken to be so very angry at it,” his letter closed with a smug complaint that his countrymen had not done “more to get rid of the Stamp-Act than of the officers who are to supply you.”While Ingersoll was sailing home that summer, the good people of America had been vehemently expressing their opinion of stamp distributors by demanding their immediate resignations. Early in September a crowd surrounded Ingersoll's house seeking both his resignation and a promise that he would relinquish “the Stamp Materials as soon as they arrived . . . in order to make a Bonfire—or to have his House pulled down”18 Again and again Ingersoll sought to evade protesters’ demands by promising that when the legislators met on September 20 he would ask them whether he should resign—as though Connecticut's angry voters were inclined to defer to their legislature's estimation of “the general Inclinations of the People.”19Perhaps in more complacent times this promise from a Yale-educated crown appointee might have worked. Just days before the colonial assembly was slated to meet, however, Jared Ingersoll began hearing reports that crowds of angry people were mobilizing with plans of their own. They were gathering at Windham, Norwich, and New London. They planned to rendezvous on Thursday at Branford, less than twenty miles east of New Haven. On Friday, while the legislature convened in Hartford, they intended to confront Ingersoll at his house on Chapel Street near the campus of Yale College and demand his resignation.So it was that on Wednesday, September 18, Ingersoll rode north with Governor Thomas Fitch and a few friends to deflect the predatory crowds away from his nest. That evening he sent a message advising his wife and friends to put the house “in a proper state of Defence and Security in case the People should persist in their first Design of coming that way.”20Ingersoll had good reason to worry about his wife, children, and estate. A month earlier crowds at Norwich and New London had subjected effigies of Ingersoll to mock trials and symbolic hangings. Protesters in Windham and Lebanon had done much the same on August 26, and at Lyme three days later organizers had staged an elaborate “Tryal of J[are]d Stampman, Esq.”21 Throughout September the hostility toward Ingersoll increased. Initially, his promise to step down if advised by the colonial legislature had mollified some of his neighbors. With the Stamp Act scheduled to take effect on November 1, however, every new report of violent confrontations and resignations in other colonies provoked greater anger in Connecticut.Boston had witnessed America's first “riot” against stamp officers and compliant merchants on August 14 when a crowd destroyed the house of Andrew Oliver and forced his resignation as stamp distributor for Massachusetts. A week later, on the same day that the first effigies of Ingersoll were hanged and burned, New Yorkers had coerced the resignation of their stamp officer, James McEvers. Five days later another crowd in Boston had destroyed the house of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. On August 27 stamp officer Augustus Johnson had been forced to resign in Newport, Rhode Island—and early September brought news of stamp officers succumbing to threats and resigning in New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Maryland.22About eighteen miles from New Haven, Ingersoll and his companions met two men on horseback armed with “pretty long and large new-made white [oak] Staves.” Fearing for his house and family if the horsemen ventured toward New Haven, Ingersoll suggested they accompany him northward to Bishop's Tavern in Meriden. There, before retiring for the night, he supplied the riders with letters for their compatriots repeating his promise to resign if the assembly declared the Stamp Act “disagreeable to the People”—and offering to meet with them in Hartford.23Ingersoll rose early on Thursday morning. By seven o'clock he was riding toward the capital accompanied by a legislator and the innkeeper when they met four or five riders a few miles south of Wethersfield (as the village now spells its name). Ingersoll identified himself and invited them to ride together toward Hartford and talk about “the general Subject of my Office, &c.” Half a mile later they encountered thirty more riders, followed immediately by the main body of “about Five Hundred Men, all on Horseback,” armed with oak staves and riding together in military formation. Three trumpeters led their procession, then two officers in red uniforms with lace decorations on their hats, and the rest riding in two long columns, some wearing militia uniforms. Unlike Boston, where observers blamed unruly “mobs” for destroying the residences of the stamp officer and lieutenant governor, Ingersoll was facing well-organized men prosperous enough to own and ride horses—members of their local communities devoted to “the Cause of the People.”24Once the procession reached the center of town, the riders encircled Ingersoll to hear his expected resignation. But they grew restive when he repeated his promise to honor “the general Inclinations of the People.” Or assured them that he had directed British officials in New York to hold Connecticut's allotment of stamped papers there until the legislature met. And the riders had no patience whatsoever for Ingersoll's apparently genuine misgivings both about honoring his commitment to the crown and protecting his £3,000 obligation “under Bonds to the Stamp Office in England.”25Tensions peaked when Ingersoll asked, “What if I won't resign? What will be the Consequence?”“Your Fate,” replied one horseman. “The fate of your Office,” said another.26At that moment, Major John Durkee intervened. A prominent citizen of Norwich widely admired as a hero of the French and Indian War, Durkee appeared to be “the principal Leader or Commandant” of the horsemen.27 Cautioning Ingersoll “not to irritate the People,” Durkee suggested that they dismount and confer in a nearby tavern. When Ingersoll reacted by tightening his reigns as if contemplating an escape, Durkee seized his horse's bridle. “No,” he warned, “You shan't go two Rods”—about ten yards—“from this Spot before you have resigned.”28Captive inside the tavern at Wethersfield, surrounded by an angry crowd, Ingersoll saw that he had no hope of rescue. Throughout recent weeks, while the horsemen and their neighbors were hanging and burning him in effigy, Ingersoll had clung to his genteel hope that the populace would defer to the assembly's endorsement or rejection of the Stamp Act. Now, as he met with Durkee and “the Persons who were called the Committee,” a few members of the legislature slipped into the tavern and helped Ingersoll realize that the populace had no interest in the assembly's opinion. And the legislators were counting on their constituents to clinch his resignation “before the Assembly had Time to . . . get ensnared in the Matter.”29 Caught between fears of an electoral revolt against their authority if they affirmed the Stamp Act and retribution from British authorities if they formally opposed it, Connecticut officials were happy to duck the issue and let the populace intimidate the stamp officer into resigning. John Durkee and his committee spoke directly for the people.After three hours of deliberation, Ingersoll finally admitted that he “did not think the Cause worth dying for.” He signed a promise to resign and then stepped outside to announce his decision to the assembled crowd. “When I had done,” Ingersoll recalled, “a Person who stood near me told me to give Liberty and Property, with three Cheers, which I did, throwing up my Hat into the Air.” The crowd answered with “loud Huzzas” and offered rounds of handshakes to welcome him back into their friendship. As the horsemen dispersed, he then “went with two or three more to a neighbouring House, where we dined.”30After their meal Major Durkee and a procession that had grown to about a thousand riders paraded Ingersoll into Hartford. Twenty yards from the legislative chambers, the horsemen organized themselves into a semicircle as trumpeters announced their arrival. Standing alone “within the Hearing and Presence of the Assembly,” Jared Ingersoll repeated his resignation. The crowd roared its approval with three cheers for “Liberty and Property.” As their shouts echoed through Hartford, an acquaintance whispered to Ingersoll that the legislators had devoted three hours to formulating some plan for his rescue and relief, but before they could agree on anything “the Matter was finished.”31“Had they come,” Ingersoll concluded, “it would have had no Effect.” The riders who had gathered from all corners of Connecticut and accosted him on the Boston Post Road, he discovered, had been carrying provisions sufficient for eight days of pursuit and were “determined to find me.”32 Abandoned by provincial officials and completely isolated from royal authority, Ingersoll had succeeded only in leading his adversaries away from his house and family in New Haven. When Major John Durkee closed his glove around Jared Ingersoll's bridle at Wethersfield in September of 1765, the gesture was fraught with consequence. Its implicit threat of force after months of debate and protest signaled the transformation in Connecticut of disagreement about imperial authority into rebellion against parliament and the Stamp Act. Both Jared Ingersoll and John Durkee had proudly defended king and country during the French and Indian War. After they parted company in Hartford, however, Ingersoll and Durkee rode distinct paths into the future. Ingersoll looked east and embraced the distant sovereignty of king and parliament. Durkee gazed west toward a more democratic future endorsed and empowered by his neighbors and community.John Durkee at the age of twenty-eight had signed up as a second lieutenant when Connecticut in 1756 answered the call for volunteers for an expedition against Canada. Promoted to major in 1758 (while Jared Ingersoll was sailing for London) Durkee fought at Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga to gain control of Lake Champlain. After the victory at Quebec in 1759, Durkee and his regiment witnessed the French capitulation at Montreal in 1760. Two years later Durkee also commanded Connecticut troops in a disease-ridden Caribbean expedition. Half the colony's 1,050 soldiers survived that adventure and collected a few dollars in booty from the conquest of Havana in 1762.33Although British forces seized a treasure valued more than 1.8 million Spanish dollars (more than twice as much as Grenville hoped to raise with stamp duties), none of the prize money from Havana went to pay for the war. In accord with long-established custom, the commanding general and admiral each claimed one sixth of the prize money (about 300,000 dollars) and their lieutenant commanders split 7 percent (about 126,000 dollars).34 The remaining 60 percent was divided by rank among the surviving officers, sailors, soldiers, and volunteers. Major Durkee probably collected about 250 dollars in prize money. The booty for privates—at least a few of whom were now armed with white-oak staves against the man sent to impose new taxes to reduce Britain's wartime debt—had been eleven dollars each.After his confrontation with the Commandant and his horsemen, Jared Ingersoll tried to explain why he had ever accepted the post of stamp officer. He told an old classmate from Yale that he had gone to England “with the strongest prejudices against the Parliamentary Authority in this Case,” but had come home “confoundedly begad and beswompt, as we say in Connecticut.”35 He had vigorously argued against the Stamp Act along with other American spokesmen in London, but they had been unable to find any members of Parliament willing to hear American denials of its constitutional authority. No “Man of Consequence” in London would ever agree “that Acts of Parliament . . . were not obligatory upon all his Majesty's Subjects in all parts of his Dominion,” the colonial agent for Massachusetts had informed his clients.36 “I found it almost as dangerous in England to Deny the right of Parliament to tax America,” Ingersoll told the legislature, “as I do here to admit it.”37Ingersoll recognized that Parliament's claim of authority to tax America was “the principal matter in all the dispute,” but America's violent reaction to the Stamp Act surprised and appalled many British and American statesmen.38 Moreover, once Parliament had enacted the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765, its opponents had faced a new and puzzling situation. Opposition to a bill under consideration seemed justifiable in a way that resistance to an act of Parliament did not. How could a patriotic British subject challenge the legal authority of the very institution that, for centuries, had championed English liberties against threats from tyrants? and that claimed ultimate sovereignty over the king and all his subjects? Esteem for the celebrated wisdom of Parliament and virtues of English common law (along with fear, arrogance, and privilege) prevented many British decision-makers from recognizing that they were making a colossal blunder.39Once Parliament had adopted the Stamp Act, Ingersoll and several others (such as Ben Franklin's friend John Hughes) had set aside their misgivings and accepted appointments as stamp officers “upon the fairest of motives.”40 Somehow, because they were Americans rather than “Strangers,” Grenville's appointees convinced themselves that they could administer the Stamp Act “as favourably as possible and make the best of it.”41 Only in retrospect did Ingersoll admit that “we did not Imagine that the Colonies would think of disputing the matter . . . at the point of the Sword.”42A decade after his troubles as stamp officer, Jared Ingersoll left Connecticut to accept a royal appointment in Philadelphia as a vice-admiralty judge until he was forced out of the city at the beginning of the revolutionary war. Ingersoll then returned quietly to New Haven and remained loyal to king and parliament until his death in August 1781, two weeks before the British surrender at Yorktown. His remains rest in the crypt beneath Center Church on the Green in New Haven.43 Denied any role in the Loyalist diaspora that reshaped the postwar British empire according to recent scholarship,44 Jared Ingersoll's career tends to confirm the classic assessment that “the basic weakness of the Tories . . . lay in the fact that they held social or political opinions which could prevail in America only with British assistance.”45John Durkee had shared the sacrifices and earned the trust of hundreds of Connecticut militiamen during seven campaigns in the French and Indian War. They rode with him to demand Ingersoll's resignation, and a year later they would follow him as the leader of Connecticut's Sons of Liberty.46 Later in the decade some would follow Durkee in an attempt to settle in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, where he named the town of Wilkes-Barre after two English defenders of the American colonies.47 During the revolutionary war, many of them fought in Durkee's Regiment at the battles of Bunker Hill, Germantown, Monmouth, and Stony Point. Finally, they lamented the crippling wound that would send John Durkee home to Norwich—and mourned his death on May 29, 1782, “from exhaustion induced by the service.” His remains rest adjacent to this wife, Martha, in the Old Burying Ground at Norwich.48The Stamp Act aroused intense fears of “dangerous precedent”—of “perpetual slavery” and “irrecoverable ruin . . . to the latest generations,” according to the New London Gazette—that spurred American opposition to subsequent threats of parliamentary taxation as well.49 So long as stamp duties were ostensibly still open to discussion, Americans struggled against claims about parliamentary supremacy with persuasive arguments for pragmatic, historical, legal, constitutional, or moral constraints on the imposition of imperial authority. When that failed, resistance became rebellion. Angry Americans, such as those who rode with Major John Durkee, set out to thwart the Stamp Act at the water's edge, overthrow it with a well-organized program of intimidation against stamp officers throughout the colonies, and force its repeal with an economic boycott that crippled British trade.The fiasco of the Stamp Act did more than compel its own repeal in 1766. As Americans united in rebellion against stamp duties as a “a Precedent for future more extensive Evil” they articulated lasting constitutional principles that defined the contest between the colonies and Great Britain.50 They also learned tactical lessons about organizing their communities for effective resistance and, after recurring provocation, successful revolution—political mobilization, intercolonial cooperation, economic sanctions, and coercion to enforce consensus.51 Parliament's blunder with stamp duties began a decade of increasingly effective intercolonial resistance and ever more provocative imperial response that led ultimately to revolution and the creation of an independent republic.