“The blood of Dixon,” Henry recorded in his journal, “was the first oblation made upon the altar of Liberty at Quebec.” It was certainly not the last!
But for what? It’s a question we must ask! For what did Dixon give his life? For what did these Americans endure such painful hardship and sacrifice? For what were they taking such a significant stand? Surely, it wasn’t just about tea! Surely it wasn’t merely about taxes!
As we look back two and a half centuries to the conflict that created an independent United States of America, how are we to begin to understand what this trouble was all about? John Joseph Henry told this story for a reason, as a way of illustrating the conviction common to Americans at the time, and accenting the laws that Parliament had been imposing upon them, laws which “annihilated our rights as Englishmen!” This cogent phrase shed considerable light on what tea had come to represent to America, and the deep conviction beneath their firm defense of their ancient liberties. For this reason, Henry recalled, “no one, male or female, would deign to taste that delightful beverage.”
This posture toward tea did not emerge overnight, nor did the Americans quickly resort to violence. In fact, by the time Americans were called to arms, they had already been engaged in a decade-long campaign of non-violent principled resistance, having done everything in their power to avoid the shedding of blood.
The trouble actually had begun in 1763 as Parliament began to address some of Britain’s own national concerns. As the Seven Years’ War between England and France had concluded, Parliament was confronted with a national debt that was out of control, having nearly doubled in less than a decade to over one hundred and twenty million pounds. Interest payments were over four million pounds per year. This rapidly growing debt was largely due to military spending across the war’s many theaters, not just in North America. Hostilities had ceased in North America in 1759 with the British victory on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec. By 1760, the French administration and troops had been expelled from Canada. Nonetheless, the British maintained their forces in the region for the next several years.
It did not help that the king had died in 1760, bringing his twenty-two-year-old grandson to the throne as George III. It was under his new Prime Minister, Lord Grenville, that a new approach to the American colonies emerged, seeing in them a key to helping to mitigate the problem of Britain’s mounting debts. By the time Grenville unveiled his plan the following spring, that debt had risen another twenty million pounds.