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CHAPTER SEVEN Machenry’s Tavern Loyalist As 1765 opened, James Habersham had many reasons to bask in his success. No longer scrambling to make money, he began to think about reducing his public and private obligations. He had “long quitted an advantageous commercial business,” and his rice plantations were operating profitably with little need for his direct involvement. Habersham thought that he was now in a position to slow down and enjoy life a bit more. He told several friends, “retirement and quietness must be desirable to any one of my years, especially after a hurried residence in a hot and inervating Climate.”1 His fifty years had been given to constant work, more than half of them in a semitropical environment, far different from the more temperate land of his birth. Now, financially secure, he could devote himself to his three sons: oversee their education and help them establish their own careers as merchants and planters. However, political developments intruded into Habersham’s semiretirement and embroiled him in what would become a painful controversy involving family and friends. At the time, Habersham was Governor James Wright’s loyal ally, close friend, and confidant, and as he informed one correspondent , “the Governor and I are upon the most friendly and intimate Terms, and most of my vacant Hours are spent with him.”2 The friends soon found themselves governing a divided Georgia. The Stamp Act crisis of 1765– 66 touched off a debate among Georgians over the new imperial measures Britain imposed on the colonies following the French and Indian War. When Parliament enacted a series of new taxes with stringent enforcement measures to ensure compliance, colonial reaction ranged from moderate to radical. Moderates viewed themselves as loyal British subjects, friends of the government, who, although opposing some aspects of the new imperial acts, believed the best recourse was to seek redress through existing channels. Radicals also saw themselves as loyal British subjects, but they regarded laws such as the Stamp Act as infringements on their rights as British citizens and thought that the best course of action was direct resistance . All over the colonies, radicals defied the British by confiscating the stamps, seizing those rumored to be stamp collectors, boycotting British imports, and demanding immediate repeal. Moderates wrote letters to English officials urging them to reconsider the Stamp Act, while simultaneously counseling radicals to tone down their rhetoric and cease unlawful actions. Habersham was a moderate, a loyal “Friend of the Government.” By remaining steadfast in service to the Crown, he found himself opposed by a swelling tide of popular opinion that placed him at odds with some of his closest friends and with his own three sons. Criticizing Imperial Measures After the French and Indian War, Parliament enacted measures to tighten control over colonial affairs and extract great revenue to pay for imperial administration of the North American mainland colonies. First, the Proclamation of 1763 was aimed at eliminating the main provocation of the Indians that ignited the war by temporarily prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. A year later, the Revenue Act for America, often referred to as the Sugar Act, sought to generate an additional forty thousand pounds sterling by placing duties on a number of foreign goods much demanded by the colonists, including coffee, sugar, and wine. It also contained new regulations concerning the loading and unloading of ships in American ports and was designed to assist customs collectors in detecting smuggling. Its most controversial feature was the lowering of the duty on foreign molasses from six to three pence per gallon. By reducing the rate and strengthening the hands of collectors, George Grenville, the king’s chief minister and architect of the new tax, hoped that colonists would pay the duty. At the same time, Parliament passed the Currency Act, which curbed the colonial money supply by disallowing paper notes as legal tender for paying private debts and forbidding the colonies to issue new bills. Coming in the midst of a postwar recession, the timing could not have been worse for the already cash-strapped colonists. Habersham was part of a majority in both houses of Georgia’s General Assembly that protested the Revenue Act of 1764. In a letter to William Knox, Habersham instructed him to act “in concert with any Agent or Agents of the northern provinces” to protest the act, particularly as it affected 156 machenry’s tavern [3.149.233.72] Project MUSE (2024...

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