Chapter XIII: The Deep Laid Plot
XIII
The Deep Laid Plot
George Whitefield was troubled. He knew what the thinking was behind the Grenville program and must have paced the deck of the ship deciding how to approach the matter when he arrived back in America. The historical record has some missing puzzle pieces in this period, but we can presume that Whitefield did what he usually did. He brought the message that was in his heart everywhere he preached or conversed with friends throughout America. What we know for sure is this: Whitefield met in the spring of 1764 with Dr. Samuel Langdon and with Samuel Haven, Puritan ministers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Both men actively opposed the bishop and later would be Whig revolutionary leaders. Whitefield directly informed them of the Tory intentions:
I can’t in good conscience leave the town without acquainting you with a secret. My heart bleeds for America. O poor New England! There is a deep laid plot against both your civil and religious liberties, and they will be lost. Your golden days are at an end. You have nothing but trouble before you. My information comes from the best authority in Great Britain. I was allowed to speak of the affair in general, but enjoined not to mention particulars.
Whitefield had spent his life delivering the same messages wherever he traveled. He likely met with political leaders throughout America where the plot would exert an impact and told them at least as much as he told Langdon and Haven. Here we see strong evidence of a growing division between America and Great Britain entering Whitefield’s own thought. Undoubtedly, he still conceived of the empire as a whole, but his repeated use of the pronouns “your” and “you” betray the budding division. His struggles at Long Acre and with the bishops convinced him much earlier that “civil and religious liberties” were under siege back in England. But now he sees the same struggle in America and shows his increasing loyalty to his American friends.
Dr. Langdon publicized to the New Hampshire General Assembly what Whitefield had told him. Without doubt, news like this would travel fast in New England—probably faster than Whitefield could. As Langdon considered Whitefield’s warning, he believed the “deep laid plot” included such provisions as:
general taxation of the colonies
alteration of the chartered governments
the introduction of Church of England bishops
tithes for the support of the Church of England clergy
public offices only for Church of England members
The last item here was particularly revolting. The church-state society of New England would be reorganized with the Church of England at the head instead of the Puritan Congregationalists. Each of these provisions constituted an act of arbitrary power, from either a republican or a civil millennial perspective, and thus could be resoundingly condemned by ministers and political leaders.
Parliamentary passage of the Sugar Act in 1764 and the Stamp Act in 1765 provided sufficient evidence of the plot needed to push the colonies into an uproar. The Sugar Act taxed various goods imported into the colonies via England. Parliament’s goals were threefold: (1) to recover the costs of supporting an army defending colonial frontiers, (2) to have noncompetitive trade with the colonies, and (3) to help control smuggling.
The Stamp Act was a thirteen-thousand-word document requiring a tax (with an accompanying stamp to prove the tax had been paid) on almost any imaginable legal, religious, or business document that authorized or recorded public and private transactions. At one level or another, nearly all goods and services were affected, including donations to charity and college diplomas. Even the sale of cards and dice now required a stamp. The item which may have been most damaging was a tax (and stamp) on every copy of a pamphlet or newspaper. In essence, all public communication was being taxed. In response, American writers filled the newspapers with letters and articles denouncing the Acts and calling for their repeal. In the colonial mind, liberty faced an unprecedented assault through the internal taxation levied without the consent of colonial legislatures.
Two particular writers summed up the Americans’ official responses to the acts. First, Oxenbridge Thacher, in The Sentiments of a British American (1764), investigated the oppression of rights and privileges through the passage of the Sugar Act. Even though Thacher used a family metaphor to characterize British and American relations, the pamphlet expressed an anxiety over civil identity because of being ostracized from the British family. For Thacher, inherited British citizenship was no longer guaranteeing liberty, bringing the issue of civic identity to the front of the conflict. Political activists could no longer presume genuine English identity as did earlier authors. This assumption raised some interesting questions. Who changed? Who switched sides? Who was on God’s side in the matter?
The second important response to the Stamp Act was Stephen Hopkins’ essay “The Rights of Colonies Examined” (1765), which supported and extended Thacher’s claim. Hopkins asserted that if British Americans are not granted their inherited “family” privileges, they must be deemed slaves. Hopkins knew that Americans would not accept slavery. In this way he placed the issue of British American identity squarely in the public sphere for consideration and redefinition. James Darsey explains the crux of the matter underlying Hopkins’ pamphlet. According to Whig activists:
There is no incremental freedom; one is either free or one is not … “Freedom” and “Slavery” … functioned … as “God terms” and “devil terms,” radically dividing the world into good and evil, between them a great yawning void.1
From this all-or-nothing perspective, which was sharpened by Parliament’s deaf ear, Americans viewed themselves as out of the British family, even while Hopkins futilely asserted that they should still be part of it. By this time, British identity in England had been increasingly associated with George III as the icon of national identity. But a free people with a love of liberty cannot accept the condition of slavery, and it was at that point that their experience during the Great Awakening led them to reconsider their situation and suggest an appropriate response—a declaration of independence. Just as New Lights left the Old Light churches and established their own denominations, colonists could do the same. But in 1765 very few people were willing to go that far.
It was not that Hopkins and other political writers promoted the new birth in national terms, but they pointed out a need for something. Because of an assaulted British identity in America, and the need to figure out who they were, a vacuum was created, and the most widely spread idea available to fill that void was the new birth. The widespread New Light teaching about identity in Christ furnished a convenient solution. All that was needed was to secularize the spiritual concept into republican terms, as colonists had already been doing regarding war and political leadership.
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Shortly after his arrival in Boston, with contributions of money and books, Whitefield assisted Harvard in rebuilding its library, which had burned down. New England publicly thanked Whitefield—a far cry from the Awakening-era squabbling. On one occasion, the students of Yale begged their president to let him preach for another fifteen minutes, a request approved by none other than Thomas Clap, Whitefield’s nemesis of 1745, who accused him of the plot to replace the governors of the colonies.
As the Stamp Act commenced and while the colonial activists flexed their muscles in the press, Whitefield felt it was time to return to England. He had discharged his task of warning the colonists about the impending plot and completed another preaching tour. He commented on the state of American affairs as he left:
I fear I must embark for England. Well may I say I fear; for indeed words cannot well express what a scene of action I leave behind. Alas! my American work seems as yet scarce begun.
Other than a few glimpses into conversations with people like Dr. Langdon, history has buried any news of what Whitefield was up to during his sixth American tour. This is not surprising. Whitefield knew how to keep a confidence and would not betray any secrets that his upper-class friends in London may have entrusted to him. Since he had been so successful at converting colonists, and since he specifically mentions the colonial turmoil, we can conclude that his “American work” referred to opposing arbitrary power in whatever form it took. Probably owing to his interdenominational spirit and his strong connections to England, Whitefield never completely distinguished between Americans and British in the same way that American activists did after 1770. Yet a few references to Americans that differentiated them from the British began to pop up in his writings as early as 1749, as he referred to his “English or American work.” By 1766 Whitefield referred to “Americans” and the “American church” as opposed to the British. These distinctions indicate that Whitefield sensed a widening gulf after his visit to America in 1765. His death would prevent the complete division between Britons and Americans in his mind.
Whitefield left America in June of 1765 to be present in Bath for the opening of a chapel financed by Lady Huntingdon, but he left with more on his mind than religious duties in England. In November of 1765, Samuel Adams, the prolific New England activist, along with Thomas Cushing, wrote two letters to Whitefield pleading with him to take advantage of his connections with British nobility on behalf of the colonies. Here was an opportunity to continue his American work while in England where it could make the most difference. Adams opened a rather formal letter to Whitefield stating:
Our good friend Mr. Jonathan Mason has communicated to us in a Letter which he receiv’d from you, wherein you very kindly express your Regard for the People of New England, & your Desires to serve our civil as well as religious Interests—We need not inform you that we are the Descendents of Ancestors remarkeable for their Zeal for true Religion & Liberty.
In these lines, Samuel Adams reveals part of the letter-writing network of people working on behalf of the colonies. It also shows Adams’ clear awareness of Whitefield’s mission to further religious and civil interests. Adams shows his common ground with that mission. Whitefield’s duty to oppose arbitrary power was common knowledge. The lion’s share of the letter is spent convincing Whitefield that New England and the colonies are indeed loyal, affectionate subjects of the king, but that the Stamp and Sugar Acts will harm the trade of the colonies, ruining them financially and ultimately harming the entire empire. Adams concluded:
Money is the very support of Trade; & if the Trade of the Colonys is beneficial to Great Britain, she must herself very soon feel the ill Effects of a measure, which will consume the very Vitals of that Trade.
Adams closes with a request: “It would add very great Weight to the Cause of the distressed American Subjects if their Circumstances could be fully known to a nobleman of his Lordships’ great Integrity & Understanding.”
Adams decided to spell out his request more directly in a second letter written a few days later. Adams and Cushing wrote, “The free access which I am informed you have with some eminent Personages, may put it in your Power to do us Offices of singular kindness.” The second letter was more direct. Referring to the Earl of Dartmouth, Adams writes, “We stand in great Need of some such Advocate in England,” politely asking that Whitefield persuade him to join America’s side. Within the two letters, Adams summarizes the American perspective of the crisis. He also provides important information and lists the most effective arguments one would need for speaking against the Stamp Act, were they inclined to do so. Moreover, Adams hints that the colonies might be forced to pursue independence if England “shall exert her power to destroy their Libertys.” History does not record whether or not Whitefield quoted or used Adams’ views to win a nobleman to their cause or whether he might have testified before Parliament, but he did, by numerous accounts, lend his hand to the cause.
The issue was not simply a matter of “taxation without representation” as one might conclude by only reading the letters and accounts of Ben Franklin or Sam Adams. While the taxation issue was certainly a part, colonists viewed the acts in the larger context of a religious war. Groups of New Lights in America decided that they would take action regarding the Stamp Act. Using the terms “marked or stamped” repeatedly, the Act generously lent itself to a literal interpretation as the “mark of the beast.” It fulfilled a biblical prophecy that predicted that nobody in the “end times” could buy or sell without having the mark. The Stamp Act really did fill the bill. Consequently, associating the Stamp Act with the antichrist and perceiving the stamps literally as the mark of the beast, inspired protests against it throughout the colonies. For the religious community, the stakes were as high as they could get. Leading the popular opposition to the Stamp Act, according to Joseph Galloway, was a united group of Puritans and Presbyterians. He described the appointment of a “standing committee of correspondence” that transformed the separate congregations “of little significance” into a body with some real influence. Recalling the events fifteen years later after he fled to England, Galloway labeled the body a “dangerous combination of men whose principles of religion and polity were equally adverse to those of the established Church and Government.” Armed with the organization and means of communication to wage their war, this body began systematic opposition to the Stamp Act.
A Connecticut New Light crowd burned a model of the Stamp Act (portrayed as the antichrist), demonstrating the depth to which they believed that satanic forces were behind the Grenville program. Also, in August of 1765, a Massachusetts mob (known as the Sons of Liberty) hung a dummy from a tree that was intended to represent Andrew Oliver, the man appointed distributor of stamps for Massachusetts. The name they chose for their activist group implies a new birth—the “Sons” of Liberty. Alongside the dummy hung a boot from which protruded a devil’s head. These symbols linked the Stamp Act, the British government, Oliver, and the devil together to inflame the Sons of Liberty to violence. The boot/devil symbol specifically referenced, through a play on words, the previous prime minister, John Stuart, the Earl of Bute (pronounced “boot”). The icon’s continued use beyond 1763, after Bute resigned, indicates that it had become a widely recognized symbol of the prime minister’s office. The devil inside the boot suggested that the prime minister was inspired by demonic voices. By the end of the evening, the aggressive mob (led by Ebenezer Mackintosh) destroyed a business property owned by Oliver and then went over to his home and completely demolished it. These destructive acts were not stopped by the local authorities.
A few months later, in the tradition of field preaching, an orator at the Liberty Tree in Boston encouraged a boycott of stamped goods and directly accused Grenville of manifesting the antichrist:
He has ordained that none amongst us shall buy or sell a piece of land, except his mark be put upon the deed and when it is delivered, the hands of both buyer and seller must infallibly become branded with the odious impression: I beseech you then to beware as good Christians and lovers of your country, lest by touching any paper with this impression, you receive the mark of the beast.
We notice here that the mark of the beast could be acquired by merely “touching” a document with a stamp affixed. If resistance to the Stamp Act was solely due to objection to taxation without representation, then arguments about “the beast” to persuade the public would be ludicrous and ineffective. In reality, the Sons of Liberty, and New Lights in general, viewed the prime minister’s office as one through which the antichrist was operating, so much so that a boot/devil icon could conveniently symbolize it, and so much so that they believed they could earn “damnation by touching” one of the stamped documents. As Gordon Wood confirms:
There is simply too much fanatical and millennial thinking even by the best minds that must be explained before we can characterize the American’s ideas as peculiarly rational and legalistic and thus view the Revolution as merely a conservative defense of constitutional liberties.2
Clearly, the writings of educated thinkers like Galloway, Thacher, and Hopkins served a different purpose and did not accurately represent the heart of most colonists.
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These New Light “mobs” that roamed New England burning effigies and harassing stamp duty officials were not the kind of society that Whitefield promoted or with which he participated. But he undeniably had a hand shaping their members. With his move to the mainstream, Whitefield participated in the American cause in more respectable ways. Benjamin Franklin along with Whitefield, who had received Adams’ letters by this time, led the American diplomatic effort for repeal. Taxes were nothing new to British Americans. They had been paying tax on all sorts of items imported from Great Britain for decades. However, in testimony before the House of Commons in 1766, Franklin explained American opposition to the new taxes on legal and rational grounds:
An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost and other charges on the commodity, and when it is offered for sale, makes it part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent if not laid by their own representatives. The Stamp Act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover our debts; we shall neither marry nor make our wills, unless we pay such and such sums; and thus it is intended to extort our money from us or ruin us by the consequence of refusing to pay it.
Obviously any argument that the Stamp Act constituted the mark of the beast would not be taken seriously by Parliament, and Franklin probably did not believe this anyway. So he founded his case on republican notions of freedom and slavery. Whitefield accompanied Franklin to London on this diplomatic effort, though no record has been published of precisely what Whitefield said or to whom. Perhaps Samuel Adams’ letters and Franklin’s friendship inspired whatever assistance he lent. Whitefield was a persuasive man, and with a list of arguments at his fingertips (as provided by Adams), undoubtedly he could encourage open minds to pause and reconsider. Since Whitefield was not a member of Parliament and did not officially represent the American colonies, he likely limited his oratorical skills to private discussions with British nobility. However, his presence with Franklin before Parliament made an unmistakable statement: Whitefield, a symbol of the public mind in America, had embraced the cause of the colonists. The Stamp Act was overturned in 1766, causing Whitefield to write, “March 16, 1766, Stamp Act repealed, Gloria Deo.” Nathaniel Whitaker, a colonial leader who visited Whitefield in London shortly thereafter, recalled that Whitefield “was greatly concerned for the liberties of America and … it was in no small measure owing to him, that the Stamp Act [was] repealed.”
The Stamp Act issue revealed the blending of religious and civil beliefs that united American civic leaders, ministers, and mobs of citizens under a common cause. One historian points out that “the experience of working together, the ideas that were inculcated during the movement and the sense of accomplishment resulting from united efforts were indispensable. The agitation of each period, in fact, made easier the work of the next.”3 Lawyers, politicians, and uneducated church members all joined together to oppose the acts. Respected citizens worked through the press, while the mobs operated in the streets. Colonial political leaders opposed the acts through the legal and diplomatic channels. During the Stamp Act conflict, organizational cooperation was established that continued to operate to oppose the Townshend Acts, the Quebec Act, and a string of arbitrary assaults on American liberties.
Whitefield also helped Franklin address public criticism after his testimony before Parliament. Many colonists felt that Franklin did not faithfully represent their interests. He compromised in his testimony by distinguishing between internal and external taxes, when most people thought that both were illegal. Franklin’s critics complained loudly in America over Franklin’s testimony quoted above. But at Joseph Galloway’s request, Whitefield helped to rehabilitate Franklin’s image by employing his letter-writing and publicity network on his behalf, praising Franklin’s efforts in England. Whitefield’s popularity provided a strong influence as criticism of Franklin soon faded out.
In the American colonies, just when one crisis seemed to be over, another would quickly replace it. Although repeal of the Stamp Act calmed the colonists somewhat, the SPG started pushing the bishop issue again and roused Americans once more. It did not help the SPG that eleven of the thirteen bishops in the House of Lords opposed the repeal of the Stamp Act. By 1766 many Americans made no distinction between religious and civil liberties; “LIBERTY itself faced extinction” according to Charles Chauncy, and colonial ministers marshaled a defense through renewed opposition to the bishop and every Church of England plan in America.
Jonathan Mayhew’s untimely death in 1766 left a void in leadership in the bishop struggle that Charles Chauncy stepped in to fill. Now, Chauncy and Whitefield, old theological enemies, were working on the same side. Chauncy published no fewer than 710 pages, in three documents, arguing against establishment of the bishop. Chauncy and others characterized Church of England supporters as “High-Church men and Jacobites, not always averse to alliances with the greatly feared Church of Rome.”4 As the debate continued, the American activists connected the SPG missionaries to the “Tories,” and the name stuck. Chauncy and others persuaded many American colonists that increased tyranny would accompany a bishop, and they began successfully to tie Roman Catholic plots to the Grenville program and the American bishop issue.
Aggravating the situation, Parliamentary acts extending freedom and favor to Canada infuriated American colonial leaders. The Canadian provinces had been settled by the French with a strong Roman Catholic presence. Contrasting with the strong hand Britain was using to manage the seaboard colonies, Quebec, won from the French in 1763, found the British government indulging their wishes. Before Americans had time to adjust to the repeal of the Stamp Act, they heard that Britain was allowing a Roman Catholic bishop to be installed in Canada. No news could have enraged the Sons of Liberty or the Christian community more. Coupled with amplified labors to establish the American bishop, colonists interpreted the Quebec Act as direct evidence of a “popish plot.” They believed that after the establishment of an American bishop, Britain would allow Roman Catholicism to infiltrate America. An editorial from 1768 in the Boston press, signed by “The Puritan,” exclaimed, “To say the truth, I have from long observation been apprehensive, that what we have above all else to fear is POPERY.” A verse printed in the Boston Gazette a month later summed up the sentiments of many people:
But if he from Rome greater Profit had hop’d
He who now is be-bishop’d, would have been be-pop’d
And equally run, to avoid being Poor,
To the arms of the church, or of Babylon’s Whore.
Since many southerners, where the Church of England was strong, supported the idea of an American bishop, the threat of a Roman Catholic presence brought them to the “cause.” The anxiety over Roman Catholic plots served to provide Americans in all the colonies—New England, middle, and southern—a common complaint against Great Britain. Colonial writers increasingly warned colonists of “POPERY” as the crisis deepened.