Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/145

. 24, 1863.] 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 handomelyhandsomely [sic] 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