Jack Tar vs. John Bull: The Role of New York's Seamen in Precipitating the Revolution

201 Pages·1997·18.156 MB·English

by  Jesse Lemisch

Studies in
AFRICAN
AM ERICAN
H ISTO R Y AND
CU LTU RE
edited by
GRAHAM RUSSELL HODGES
C olgate U niversity
This page intentionally left blank
JACK TAR
VS*
JOHN BULL
T he R ole of N ew Y o r k ’ s Se a m en
in P recipita tin g the R e v o l u t io n
jesse lem isch
D epartment of H istory
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
of the City University of New York
First published 1997 by Garland Publishing, Inc.
This edition Published 2014 by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 1997 Jesse Lemisch
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lemisch, Jesse, 1936-
Jack Tar vs. John Bull : the role of New York’s seamen in
precipitating the Revolution / Jesse Lemisch.
p. cm. — (Studies in African American history and
culture)
Originally presented as the author’s thesis (Ph. D.)—Yale
University, 1962.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-2788-9 (alk. paper)
1. New York (N.Y.)—History—Revolution, 1775-1783.
2. Merchant mariners—New York (State)—New York—History—
18th century. 3. Impressment—New York (State)—New York—
History—18th century. I. Title. II. Title: Jack Tar versus John
Bull. III. Series.
E263.N6L46 1997
973.3’4471—dc21 97-10449
For my mother,
Beatrice C. Lemisch
1908-1985
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Foreword by Marcus Rediker....................................................................ix
Preface......................................................................................................xvii
I. Who Was Jack Tar?.........................................................................3
II. Impressment of Seamen in Colonial New York.........................13
“A Parsill of Raskills”: August 1760...........................................13
Impressment...................................................................................16
Impressment in New York: The Early Period............................18
Impressment During the French and Indian War.......................20
The Peace-Time War: New York vs. the Royal Navy..............26
Jack Tar’s Life, Liberty, and Property.........................................31
III. Jack Tar on the Beach: The Birth of the Mob............................51
IV. Jack Tar in the Streets: The Stamp Act Crisis............................73
Strange Ballast................................................................................73
Riots: Left vs. Right......................................................................78
We Will Have the Stamps!...........................................................82
Who and Why.................................................................................88
Factions: Left vs. Left...................................................................92
Nullification....................................................................................98
V. Jack Tar in the Streets: Before the Mast of Liberty,
1766-1770................................................................................. 121
The British Army in New York..................................................122
Supplying the Army....................................................................126
The Battle of Golden Hill...........................................................131
Epilogue. Jack Tar and the American Revolution..............................149
Bibliographical Note..............................................................................159
Selected Other Work by the Author......................................................171
Index.........................................................................................................177
vii
This page intentionally left blank
Foreword
Moscow’s Hotel Rossiya, off Red Square, March, 1991: Again and
again Jesse Lemisch and I explained our mission to the sometimes
suspicious, sometimes uncomprehending clerks: we were searching for
a group of Siberian miners who had come to Russia’s capital city to
wage a hunger strike. Each one shook his or her head and answered,
“they are not in this section of the hotel.” We realized, of course, that
we might have been getting the run-around. Not one of these clerks
would have wanted these hunger strikers in his or her section. But in a
hotel of 5,000 rooms, and in a country with a history of bureaucratic
incompetence, we could not be certain. There we were, searching for
“history from the bottom up” in the making, in a country where early in
the century those on the bottom had made some earth-shaking history.
We would not find the miners that day, but we had managed to
make other connections and to learn a great deal about the popular
ferment that gripped Russia after the fall of Communism and the
dismantling of the Soviet Union. We had already visited Boris
Kagarlitsky, the dissident left-wing intellectual and organizer who had
been imprisoned during the Brezhnev years for publishing a
Eurocommunist journal called Left Turn, so that we might strengthen
ties within the international peace movement. And we had attended a
small demonstration—a “speak out”—at Manezh Square, where we had
originally heard about the Siberian miners and their initiative. When I
returned to the hotel the following day and continued to ask about the
miners (Jesse had to depart for New York), I was at last saved by a
hotel maid, who overheard me, pulled me aside, and furtively led me
through a maze of corridors to a room in which sat six somewhat
haggard but determined men. In the afternoon-long conversations that
followed, I understood that a powerful history was at work; Russian
miners had been among the first to form independent trade unions
during the late 1980s, and were now taking the lead in defining the
politics of a new era in Russian history. Their final words to me—“we
ix