Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/Tar and feathers
TAR AND FEATHERS.
Tar and Feathers! The two substances have nothing in common; they are, in fact, not friends, but enemies, for on being brought into contact they mutually destroy each other’s usefulness, yet do they cling together with a tenacity of affection which renders them thenceforth inseparable. It is impossible to say whose was the master-mind which first conceived the brilliant idea of their combined, or rather successive, application to the human form as a mode of punishment, that, to a large amount of bodily suffering, adds the extremes of ridicule and disgrace. The first trace of what has latterly been somewhat grandiloquently named the Plumeopicean code of laws, is to be found nearly seven hundred years ago. When Richard Cœur de Lion, in the year 1190, went to the Crusades with Philip Augustus of France, his army joined that of his royal ally at Vezelai according to agreement. The two armies did not remain long together, in consequence of the numerous quarrels that arose, and the French King went away with his men to the Holy Land, leaving Richard to follow. While at Chinon, a small town in the province of Touraine, Richard issued divers orders for the better regulation of his soldiers during their coming voyage on the Mediterranean. Among these orders was the following remarkable one:—
“Latro autem de furto convictus tondeatur ad modum campionis, et pix bulliens super caput ejus effundatur, et pluma pulvinaris super caput ejus executiatur ad cognoscendum eum, et in primâ terrâ quâ naves applicuerint projiciatur.”
This singular piece of Latin may be freely translated as follows:—The convicted thief, after having his hair clipped close after the fashion of a prize-fighter, shall first have boiling pitch poured upon his head, and then have bed-feathers shaken out over it, as a mark to know him by; and that, in this condition, he shall be set ashore on the first land where the ships shall touch.
Whether this punishment was ever inflicted, or whether the dread of it kept all our English Crusaders honest, is more than we can say. Who knows but the curious traveller in search of old legends may yet find, among the inhabitants of some coast town or island in the Mediterranean, a tradition, distorted and garbled by centuries of repetition, of the sudden appearance among their forefathers of a strange bird, which discoursed in an unknown tongue, and whose body was that of a man, albeit its head was covered with downy feathers.
King Richard’s Plumeopicean enactment does not seem to have met with much favour in England, as it found no place in our statute-book. It was apparently purely nautical, and did not apply to his army while on dry land. If any trace of it still exists, we should naturally expect to find it among sailors. It is not impossible that the mystic and unpleasant ceremony which accompanies the visit of Great Neptune to ships crossing the Equator, is, in fact, a faint shadow of the “pix bulliens,” if not of the “pluma pulvinaris,” of Cœur de Lion. My supposition as to the nautical origin and character of tarring and feathering is singularly confirmed by the circumstance that the first recorded outrage of this kind was perpetrated by a body of sailors. It is a long stride from the Crusades of the twelfth century to our North American colonies in the eighteenth; but nevertheless we must make it. On the 1st of November, 1773, the inhabitants of Pownalborough, a small New England town, were aroused by a loud cheering in the streets, and on going to investigate the cause, they saw “about thirty sailors surrounding an object which had more the appearance of the devil than any human being.” The diabolical figure was a Mr. John Malcolm, a revenue officer, who had incurred the hatred of the sailors, as well as everybody else with whom he was brought officially into contact, by an undue severity in the exercise of the power with which he was invested. He had been taken from a Mr. Bradbury’s house, where he was staying, after a stout resistance, and “being disarmed of sword, cane, hat, and wig, he was genteelly tarred and feathered;” his tormentors then marched him through the streets, and let him go.
An odd feature in Mr. Malcolm’s case is this,—in less than three months he was tarred and feathered again! On the 25th of January, 1774, he was bullying a small boy in Fore Street, Boston, when a gentleman named Hughes remonstrated with him; high words arose, they called each other rascals:—“Any how,” says Hughes, “I was never tarred and feathered.” Whereupon Malcolm struck him a blow on the forehead, which stretched him on the ground in an insensible condition. A mob assembled round Malcolm’s house; he was foolish enough to defy them. “You say,” he shouted, “I was tarred and feathered, and that it was not done in a proper manner; damn you, let me see the man that can do it better; I want to see it done in the new-fashioned manner.” (This would seem to indicate that some change had been introduced into the practice). The mob seized him, put him in a cart, and, “stripping him to buff and breeches, gave him a modern jacket;” they then proposed an oath to him, whereby he was to swear to renounce his commission, and never to hold another inconsistent with the liberties of his country; and, on his obstinately refusing, they carted him to the gallows, passed a rope round his neck, and threw the other end over the beam, as if they intended to hang him. He still defied his persecutors, until a sound basting with a rope’s end, [they use cowhide now-a-days] followed by a threat to cut off his ears, forced him to comply with their demand. The mob destroyed his house and furniture, but he escaped on board the Active, a British man-of-war, which brought him to England. It is said that the well-disposed part of the people of Boston offered him 300l. as compensation for his sufferings and loss, but I am inclined to doubt this.
In 1773 our North American colonies were in a ferment, and determined to resist by force the importation of the East India Company’s tea from England. The ladies entered warmly into the scheme, and in one place no less than fifty-seven of them had a meeting, and agreed not to use any more India tea. They requested a gentleman who had lately bought some to return it; and, on his ready compliance, they “treated him to a glass of their country wine, and dismissed him highly pleased.” Happy man! such politeness deserved its reward. All the men were not so polite, and some even went so far as to ridicule the proceedings of these ladies, styling them the Matrons of Liberty, and representing them as being secretly most anxious to have their accustomed tea, and complaining bitterly that their husbands had deprived them of it, while still retaining their own flip and punch. Probably the men required the Hip and punch to rouse them to the requisite pitch for carrying out the rough measures which they now began to adopt. An inflammatory handbill was distributed in Philadelphia, calling upon the Delaware pilots to prevent the arrival of a ship laden with tea, which was expected at that port, and reminding them that she could not come to an anchor without their assistance. This was only the forerunner of more decisive measures; the fitful gust of wind that preceded the coming gale. Bodies of men were leagued together, and, adopting the disguise of Indians, called themselves “Mohawks.” They circulated notices, promising any one who should presume to let his store for the reception of the tea,—which they described allegorically as infernal chains and fetters forged by Great Britain to enslave them,—that they should not fail to pay him an unwelcome visit, in which he should be treated as he deserved by “the Mohawks.” At Boston, in December 1773, these Mohawks took 342 chests of tea, valued at 18,000l., and threw them into the sea. The act of the thirty sailors at Pownalborough fell into the soil thus prepared for its reception like seed, which quickly germinated and bore abundant fruit. The Mohawks now appear to have added to their destruction of property, personal violence to individuals; for, threatening notices began to be posted up in conspicuous places, signed “Joyce, jun., Chairman of the Committee for Tarring and Feathering.”
Why the name of Joyce was selected as the nom de guerre of the leader of these rioters, I have been unable to discover. Perhaps there was, or had been, a “Joyce, sen.,” celebrated for a rigid administration of the laws; or perhaps “Joyce’s Grand American Balsam,” much celebrated at that time as a panacea, may have determined the choice of the name. Fictitious signatures of the whole committee were now and then appended, such as Thomas Tarbucket, Peter Pitch, Abraham Wildfowl, David Plaister, Benjamin Brush, Oliver Scarecrow, and Henry Handcart; these, however, speak for themselves.
On the 10th of December, 1773, the committee addressed a letter to Captain Ayres of the ship Polly, which had a cargo of tea, advising him to preserve his person from the pitch and feathers that were prepared for him if he brought his ship to an anchor.
“What think you, Captain,” he is asked with grim facetiousness, “of a halter round your neck, ten gallons of liquid tar decanted on your pate, and the feathers of a dozen wild geese laid over that to enliven your appearance? Dear Captain Ayres, let us advise you to fly without the wild-geese feathers.”
These warnings of King Mob had their due influence on the captain. He attended “a most respectable and numerous meeting” to receive its wishes, and was so much impressed thereby that he bowed to its decision, and the ship Polly, with the tea undisturbed on board, turned her bows towards England. It was not unnatural that, since tea was entirely removed from the market, the shopkeepers should raise the price of coffee. The committee, however, was on the alert; it was not to be tolerated that coffee should be increased in price two or three pence per pound; and public notice was given that the question had been mooted, whether tar and feathers would not be a constitutional encouragement for such eminent patriotism.
About this time a brig laden with tea, commanded by a Captain Loring, was wrecked off Cape Cod; some of the cargo was saved, and was conveyed by a schooner to Castle William. Mr. George Bickford, the skipper of the latter vessel, seems to have taken a fancy to be inoculated, and went on his arrival to the hospital at Marblehead, where he was duly operated upon, and laid up to await the result. Dread of infection, however, did not deter a party of Mohawks from paying him a visit, although they deferred proceeding to extremities in the then condition of his health. It is not unlikely that this visit drew the attention of the populace to this hospital for inoculation, and actuated, as is supposed, by a dread of the smallpox from patients not conforming to the rules, they commenced a series of outrages. Probably the real reason of these outrages was this, that the minds of the American mob had now become thoroughly imbued with a love of tarring and feathering their fellow-men on the smallest provocation, and here was an opportunity not to be resisted. The patients going from the ships to the hospital were obliged to find a different landing-place; the hospital boat was burnt, and several persons tarred and feathered for no particular reason. Four men were suspected of a design, under cover of the darkness, to steal some clothing belonging to the hospital, which was usually spread out to air at a particular spot. If they succeeded in their attempt, the infection would probably be communicated to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. They were watched, pursued, and taken; but, finding that they were followed, they managed to throw the clothes overboard. The four prisoners were secured until the next day, when a considerable body of the Mobility assembled, and determined by a large majority that their punishment should be—tar and feathers. The scene which followed is described by an eyewitness as “the most extraordinary exhibition of the kind ever seen in North America.” The four objects of resentment were placed in a cart facing each other, having been previously tarred and feathered “in the modern way.” It was estimated that at least a thousand people, chiefly dressed in uniform, among whom were four drummers, formed themselves into a procession at the townhouse in Marblehead. At the heels of this multitude came the cart with its miserable occupants—a fifer and drummer walking in front of it. In this manner they marched from Marblehead to Salem, a distance of four miles and a half, entering the latter town about noon. Here a numerous body of the Salemites joined them and paraded with them through the principal streets, with drumming and fifing, and a large white flag flying from the cart, “which, with the exquisitely droll and grotesque appearance of the four tarred and feathered objects of derision, exhibited a very laughable and truly comic scene.” The procession left Salem at one o’clock, and returned to Marblehead, where it dispersed. After tarring and feathering several other unfortunates, for reasons best known to themselves, the rioters, or some persons instigated by them, set fire to the hospital and burnt it, with its seventy beds, bedding, &c., to the ground.
A feeble and futile effort was now made to enforce the law, and bring the culprits to punishment. With this object two or three persons were taken up on suspicion, and committed to Salem gaol. A mob of some five hundred people assembled, broke into the prison, obliged the keeper to deliver up the keys, and released the prisoners. The high-sheriff afterwards took the matter up, and summoned the inhabitants according to law, to assist him with arms and ammunition in re-taking the prisoners; but some gentle persuasion being brought to bear upon the owners of the hospital (which was private property), they were induced to withdraw all further claim for damages; and so the matter ended.
From such expressions as “modern jacket,” “new-fashioned dress of tar and feathers,” and many others which frequently occur in the newspaper reports of that period, it is evident that it was regarded as a novelty. It has now become a settled institution, and its occurrence is no longer so unusual as to call for any remark. At that time, however, the new-fashion became a complete mania, and it seems exactly to have supplied a want among the rough colonists of North America. From the numerous cases which occurred I will select a few of the most interesting. It is but seldom that any pity is expressed for the unhappy victims; and when it is, we have some difficulty in deciding whether the writer is in earnest. For instance, the Georgia papers, in giving an account of the tarring and feathering of Mr. Brown, a merchant, at Augusta, add—“the poor gentleman was a long time under their discipline, and suffered greatly.”
In 1775, a shopkeeper named Laughton Martin and his servant were subjected to “the discipline.” Their offence was a serious one, and is a proof—if one were wanting—that freedom of opinion and speech was not less difficult of enjoyment in the Home of Liberty ninety years ago, than it is now. Master and man, in a reckless moment, had drunk “Dn to the American cause!” Having been indued with the Plumeopicean robe, they were conducted in a cart to the water-side, and put on board a ship bound to Bristol, without being suffered to see either wife or family; but not without being first taken to a tavern, where the committee was sitting, and obliged to drink a counter-toast. In August of the same year, Mr. Antony Warrsick, a most respectable merchant of Virginia, was unguarded enough to say to some idle people, who were abusing king and parliament, “You are lawless fellows.” He was instantly seized, carried about fifteen miles, when he was stripped entirely naked, tied to a public whipping-post, and then and there tarred and feathered. After loading him with every species of scurrilous abuse their minds could invent, his tormentors released him. That the law was utterly powerless is evident, for, the persons of those empowered to administer it were not safe from attack. In September 1775, James Smith, Esq., a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Duchess county, New York, and Cohen Smith (his brother or near relative, as I suppose), were carted five or six miles into the country, and “very handomely tarred and feathered,” for acting in open contempt of the resolves of the County Committee.
I have hitherto dealt only with that branch of my subject which shows how tarring and feathering was developed in opposition to British rule in North America. Some twenty years later, it was employed with even greater vigour against the newly-founded government of the United States by its own citizens. If the populace objected to our attempted imposition of tea-duties, it objected more strongly to the excise on home-distilled spirits imposed by its own government. In 1791, Congress passed a law laying duties on spirits distilled in the United States, and immediately an insurrection in opposition to this law commenced in the four most western counties of Pennsylvania, viz., Alleghany, Washington, Fayette, and Westmoreland. Of these counties, Washington, in spite of the name it bore, uniformly distinguished its resistance by greater excesses than the other counties, and seems to have been chiefly instrumental in kindling and keeping alive the flame. In his speech to Congress, November 19, 1794, General Washington had to allude to this insurrection, which had only been suppressed that year, and when he had to name the particular counties which had revolted, it was remarked that he faltered, and his voice trembled as he uttered the names of Washington and Fayette. The amount of tar and feathers employed for the purposes of this insurrection must have been startling; and, when we consider how thinly peopled the district must have been at that time, a man who had not undergone “the discipline” was doubtless quite a rarity.
Of course the vengeance of the mob fell first on those who had been bold enough to take the posts of collectors of revenue. Washington county led the way. On the 6th of September, 1791, Mr. Robert Johnson, who had accepted the office of Collector of Revenue for Washington and Alleghany counties, was waylaid at a place on Pigeon Creek by a party of men, armed and disguised; they tied him naked to a tree, cut off his hair, tarred and feathered him, and deprived him of his horse, thus obliging him to travel a considerable distance on foot in that mortifying and ridiculous plight. The authorities gave orders for the arrest of three of the men concerned in this outrage, and directed Mr. Clement Biddle, the United States Marshal, to serve the necessary processes. Mr. Biddle entrusted this dangerous duty to his deputy, one Joseph Fox, who in his turn, thinking discretion the better part of valour, sent them by private messenger, under cover. The Marshal did not hesitate to express his conviction that if he had attempted to serve these notices himself, he should not have been allowed to return alive. As it was, the unfortunate messenger was caught, whipped, tarred, and feathered, and, after having had his money and horse taken from him, was blindfolded, and tied to a tree in the woods, in which condition he remained for five hours. Another official, named Wells, who had accepted the post of collector for the counties of Westmoreland and Fayette, was similarly ill-treated.
Some time in October in the same year, an unhappy man of weak intellect, Wilson by name, a stranger in the country, became possessed with an idea that he was a collector, or in some way invested with official functions in relation to the excise. He went about inquiring of the distillers if they had registered their stills according to law. His imaginary official dignity was but short-lived; he was pursued by a party of insurgents, as usual in disguise, and taken out of his bed. They carried him about three miles, to a blacksmith’s shop, stripped him naked, and burnt his clothes. After applying a red-hot iron to various parts of his body, they tarred and feathered him, and dismissed him at daybreak, naked, wounded, and otherwise in a very suffering condition. The wretched lunatic bore the torture inflicted upon him, with the heroic fortitude of a man who believed himself to be a martyr to the discharge of some important duty. A similar fate befell a man name Roseberry, and several others.
In August, 1792, the Inspector of Revenue procured the house of Captain W. Faulkner for an office in Washington county; but the all-powerful mob threatened the captain that, if he did not prevent the further use of his house as an office, they would scalp, tar, and feather him, and burn his house and property. It is needless to inquire whether he acquiesced in their demands. In 1793, the condition of affairs remained the same. Some distillers were disposed to comply with the orders of the government, but they were subjected to “the discipline,” and—in one case at least—compelled to advertise their sufferings in the “Pittsburg Gazette,” as a warning to others. One of the many sufferers in this riotous opposition to the law, was a private person, who had innocently remarked, that, when people did not obey government, they could not look for its protection! As late as the 6th of June, 1794, John Lynn, whose house was occupied as an excise office, underwent the usual formula, viz., he was tarred, feathered, tied to a tree, &c., added to which his house was partly destroyed. About this time the United States Marshal seems to have ventured within the riotous districts; but his mission was productive of no results, save danger and disgrace to himself. He was fired upon, and eventually seized. His life was frequently threatened; in fact, he was probably only saved by the intervention of some of the leading insurgents, who possessed either more humanity or prudence than their fellows. His safety and liberty were alone secured to him, by his entering into a solemn engagement to serve no more processes on the western side of the Alleghany Mountains.
One of the last acts of the insurgents was the stoppage of the mail from Pittsburg to Philadelphia by armed men, who cut open the bag, and, from the letters that it contained, found out which of the inhabitants were enemies to the popular cause. Delegates were despatched from the town of Washington to Pittsburg, to demand the expulsion of these secret foes. A prompt obedience was unavoidable. The government could temporise no longer. Affidavits and reports of the facts were presented to President Washington, who, by the unanimous advice of his cabinet, decided to call out the militia,—a measure which was not accomplished without difficulty. The rebellion instantly collapsed; and it is not clear that the force called out to suppress the insurrection did not do more mischief than the insurgents themselves. Marshall, in his life of Washington, says—“The greatness of the force prevented the effusion of blood; the disaffected did not venture to assemble in arms.”
These riotous proceedings of the mob, this defiance of the constituted authorities, must in no way be confounded with what is called Lynch-law. That is a much more solemn and important affair, which, though open to great abuse, has nevertheless done good service in newly occupied territories, where the arm of the law, properly so called, is powerless to punish or protect; or where, as in some cases, the populace take upon themselves to supplement that leniency towards crime, which is so characteristic of American legislation. Judge Lynch and his subordinates employ tar and feathers very freely as a punishment, but they are usually only mild adjuncts to far more terrible measures.