The Liberty Affair was an incident that culminated to a riot in 1768, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. It involved the illegal British seizure of the ''

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

,'' a ship owned by smuggler and merchant

John Hancock John Hancock ( – October 8, 1793) was an American Founding Father, merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of the ...

. This incident, which showed the difficulties in enforcing the British revenue laws and the growing American resentment against British rule, formed part of the series of events that led to the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

Liberty Affair

While the Liberty Affair took place on 10 June 1768, it was triggered by an earlier episode involving the smuggling of sixty casks of wine by Captain Daniel Malcolm in the spring of the same year. The new incident, which transpired on the evening of May 9, 1768, involved customs collectors boarding one of Hancock's ships, the ''Liberty''. They found 25 pipes of Madeira wine, a figure far less than the ship was capable of carrying. Customs officials thought that the shipment was similar to the previous case of Malcolm's wine smuggling. Initially, the two tidesmen who inspected the ''Liberty'' booty found no wrongdoing. However, a month later, when the British warship ''Romney'' was docked in Boston, one of these customs officials recanted his account. Thomas Kirk, the customs collector, claimed that there were around 100 casks and that the crew offloaded them so that a quarter was left for customs tax payment. He stated that he was imprisoned aboard the vessel for refusing to accept Hancock's bribe. On June 10, a riot erupted after British sailors began the process of towing the ''Liberty'' to the ''Romney''. Malcolm, who was present when the British boarded ''Liberty'', published an account in the Boston Chronicle detailing the illegal seizure of the vessel as well as his confrontation with the authorities. The customs house was attacked and the sailors were forced to retreat to the British warship and then to

Castle William Fort Independence is a granite bastion fort that provided harbor defenses for Boston, Massachusetts. Located on Castle Island (Massachusetts), Castle Island, Fort Independence is one of the oldest continuously fortified sites of England, English ...

. The chief collector of customs, Joseph Harrison, his son, and Benjamin Hallowell, another customs official, were attacked by the mob when the crowd failed to block the British sailors who were towing the Liberty. Around 3,000 colonists participated in the riot. An attempt at a compromise was led by

Joseph Warren Joseph Warren (June 11, 1741 – June 17, 1775), a Founding Father of the United States, was an American physician who was one of the most important figures in the Patriot movement in Boston during the early days of the American Revolution, ...

, who negotiated between Hancock and commissioners Hallowell and Harrison. The parties agreed to a settlement provided the government did not insist on taking strong actions against the Liberty and Hancock. The Whigs, however, were not satisfied by the agreement, which was supposed to mollify the mob and provide an opportunity for the government to save face. Boston demonstrators paraded and burned HMS Romney. Castle Williams

The British filed a lawsuit against the ''Liberty'' and Hancock.

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...

was contracted to serve as Hancock's lawyer. The trial was considered a form of political persecution against Hancock, who was part of the opposition to the Stamp Act and was a prominent member and financier of Boston's Whig politics. While Hancock was guilty, the evidence presented was flimsy so that after five months of trial the charges were dropped. Hancock would later serve as the president of the colonists' revolutionary government and was the first to sign the American Declaration of Independence. The ''Liberty'' remained in the possession of the British Navy. John Sewall, the British advocate general for Massachusetts, secured the ship's forfeiture for violating Britain's Acts of Trade. Liberty became a

sloop A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

used to patrol the

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...

coast. In July 1769, it was burned by angry colonists after its crew seized two Connecticut ships.

Aftermath

The Liberty Affair led the British Parliament to pass more restrictive laws to curb smuggling and increase troops to deal with the rebels in Massachusetts. Immediately after the Liberty Affair riot, Governor Francis Bernard was ordered to produce evidence against the leaders of the Boston insurrectionists so that they can be put to trial in England.

Lord Hillsborough Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire, (30 May 1718 – 7 October 1793), known as The 2nd Viscount Hillsborough from 1742 to 1751 and as The 1st Earl of Hillsborough from 1751 to 1789, was a British politician of the Georgian era. Best known ...

, the

Secretary of State for the Colonies The secretary of state for the colonies or colonial secretary was the Cabinet of the United Kingdom, British Cabinet government minister, minister in charge of managing the United Kingdom's various British Empire, colonial dependencies. Histor ...

, also stationed two regiments from

Halifax, Nova Scotia Halifax is the capital and largest municipality of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the largest municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of the 2021 Census, the municipal population was 439,819, with 348,634 people in its urban area. The ...

to garrison Boston. He also demanded the Massachusetts House of Representatives to rescind the circular requesting unity against the

Townshend Acts The Townshend Acts () or Townshend Duties, were a series of British acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 introducing a series of taxes and regulations to fund administration of the British colonies in America. They are named after the ...

or face dissolution. The House defied the order. The names of the 92 delegates who refused were commemorated in a "Liberty Bowl" created by the silversmith Paul Revere. These measures and incidents further contributed to the escalation of tensions. After the riot, there emerged a "snowballing" of events that would lead to the Boston Massacre. These events unified the colonies to support the non-importation policy of British goods, a development that Boston and Charleston was not able to accomplish previously.

References

{{reflist 1768 in the Thirteen Colonies American Revolution Conflicts in 1768 Disasters in Boston Massachusetts in the American Revolution 18th century in Boston