The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution

by Alfred F. Young

George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the historical mood of the 1830's. When the Tea Party became a leading symbol of the Revolutionary ear fifty years after the actual event, this 'common man' in his nineties was 'discovered' and celebrated in Boston as a national hero. Young pieces together this extraordinary tale, adding new insights about the role that individual and collective memory play in shaping our understanding of history.

Genres: History, American Revolution, Nonfiction, American History, Biography, American Revolutionary War, College

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Alfred F. "Al" Young was a pioneering American historian known for reshaping the study of the American Revolution by centering it on the lives and experiences of ordinary people. Born in New York City in 1925, Young’s early academic influences at Queens College and Columbia University helped develop his focus on working-class history. He earned his PhD from Northwestern University in 1958 and later taught for 25 years at Northern Illinois University, where he became a leading voice in social and political history.
Young’s landmark work, The Democratic Republicans of New York, earned the Jamestown Prize and established his reputation. He was a staunch advocate for academic freedom during the Vietnam War era, defending scholars facing political retaliation. After retiring from teaching, he expanded his scholarship at Chicago’s Newberry Library, authoring influential works like The Shoemaker and the Tea Party and Masquerade, which explored lesser-known Revolutionary figures.
In 2004, Young helped found Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, further solidifying his legacy. He died in 2012 at the age of 87, remembered for his deep commitment to elevating the voices of everyday people in historical narratives.

Reviews

[Breck Baumann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Historian Alfred F. Young takes a unique and bold approach on uncovering the life and times of a rather obscure character of the American Revolution, by splitting his work into two parts—first with the memory of a local shoemaker who took part in many of Boston's pivotal events during the course of that tumultuous era, and lastly with the nineteenth-century's recollection of a time long-neglected. Young captures the early lawless years of the American Revolution through the eyes of George Robert Twelves Hewes with his vivid recollection of the Boston Massacre and those bystanders (rebellious rabble) that perished almost a shoulder width apart from his stance and view. Further on, each concise chapter details Hewes' involvement and eventual christening of the brilliantly coined "Boston Tea Party":

Thus, the answer to the teasing question I started with, "When did they begin calling it the Boston Tea Party?," turns out to be something like this: ordinary people in their everyday speech, that is, the vernacular, may possibly have called the event the "tea party" or some variant of making tea in Boston harbor during and after it and may have continued to pass on this usage in oral tradition. But their betters referred to it as "the destruction of the tea," the serious, proper term.

The first part of Young's work is captivating, following Hewes' retribution and eventual regret with a barbarous tarring and feathering, recollections of the war with chance-meetings of such esteemed patriots as Washington and Hancock, and his family life and struggling career spent muddling on through to whichever odd cobbler, sailing, or windfall inheritance opportunity next came about. The latter half is unforgivable in its change in scope and purpose, with unstimulating meanderings on public memory of the Revolutionary War and infant U.S. Republic, and chapters (essays) that beg for Young's treatise to be wrapped up and come to a close. Frustrating as it is to have read such a wonderful first half on an obscure cobbler's exploits in Revolutionary Boston, the aforementioned second part is an uninspiring downward spiral that fails on too many levels—all of which is wrapped up and aptly summarized in the book's 'Afterword' conclusion. Young's approach in retrospect could have served fittingly as either a dual-biography on two bystanders of the American Revolution, or a succinct yet dedicated chronicle of Hewes' life, reminisces, and opinions of the War and late-eighteenth century North America.

[David Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

This 1999 book greatly pleased those of us dazzled by the long article, published in 1981, which forms the first part of SHOEMAKER AND THE TEA PARTY. Young's biography of George Robert Twelves Hewes was (and is) a touching memoir about the meaning of the American Revolution to one of its participants, an obscure shoemaker who was born poor and died poor but whose experiences ended his colonial habit of deference to authority. Part two is more reflective and in some ways more challenging, focusing on efforts by Boston's post-Revolutionary elite to control the public memory of the Revolution, and their use of Hewes to "domesticate" Americans' memory of the Boston Tea Party, in which he participated. Part one of the book works well with college students; part two is better suited for graduate students and educated laypersons.

[Timothy Finucane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The American Revolution was so much more than the few founding fathers we hear about in school. At it's heart was a revolution that was driven by the common people. This book does an excellent job showing how ordinary individuals influenced the outcome of the revolution and defined what America eventually became. A few of the individuals discussed are probably well known to many people, but most will likely not be in their high school history books, or if they are, not in the light shed here. These are the people who started the movements that follow us even to this day: women's rights, racial equality, religious freedom, freedom of the press, and financial inequality.

The book is a collection of 22 essays which makes it easy to pick up and put down as you move through it; each essay stands on its own. There was very little repeat of the material amongst the essays.

This is a must read for anyone who cares about our republic and its democratic principals.

[Kirstin Dobson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 actually. I liked this book for its interesting twist of an "unknown patriot" and the concept of the regular guy in the Revolutionary War. It also tells some interesting background on the Boston Tea Party, particularly how it was recorded in U.S. history. It's definitely a nonfiction read, though, not too light and too cutesy fiction.

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my taste, the most interesting feature of this book is Young's careful account of the genesis of the slogan "tea party."
Sometimes we forget that the people who lived the history didn't see it the same way that we do.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution, Alfred F. Young explores how an everyday person enters history through a biography of Bostonian cordwainer and revolutionary George Robert Twelves Hewes. Remembered by his biographers as one of the last survivors of the Boston Tea Party, Hewes stood out for his prevalence in Boston’s “mobbish” revolutionary activities, from the Massacre to cases of tarring and feathering. After being rediscovered in his nineties, Hewes’s status as a veteran and revolutionary hero led to two biographies compiled from interviews with the old shoemaker. Initially concerned with the accuracy of Hewes’s private memory, Young became engrossed with the public memory of the Revolution after discovering that the Hewes biographies contained the first instance of the term “tea party.” Young’s discovery led him to investigate the official and popular memory of the American Revolution in Boston. Through the life of Hewes and the history of the Revolution’s public perception, Alfred F. Young investigates how ordinary people shape historical events and remember their own history. Young weaves together the narrative of an individual and a broader retrospective on public memory to bring forth the role of the average person in history.

Until comparatively recently, historians ignored the common person. For the history of the American Revolution, Cold War anti-Communism excluded almost any study beyond the hagiographies of Founding Fathers. However, the wave of popular social movements in the 1960s opened the terrain of historical investigation to the social composition of the Revolution. In this context, Alfred Young began to study Boston’s “mechanics” or working class and their role in making the Revolution. The issue for social historians lies in the lack of historical records left by members of any working class in almost any period. In looking for the everyday person, Young found George Robert Twelves Hewes. Thus, The Shoemaker is not a history of Great Men, but instead an ordinary man and his role in history.

The first part of the book, “George Robert Twelves Hewes (1742-1840): A Boston Shoemaker and the Memory of the American Revolution,” provides a biography of the titular shoemaker. A poor shoemaker from a large family, Hewes witnessed the Boston Massacre firsthand, which radicalized him. Mobilized by the tragedy, he became a militant member of several “mobbish” street actions. As a revolutionary, Hewes partook in the Boston Tea Party and the tarring and feathering of the Tory John Malcolm. Through revolutionary action, George Robert Twelves Hewes raised himself in consciousness from shoemaker to a fellow citizen of wealthy Whigs such as John Hancock. With the outbreak of the War of Independence, Hewes volunteered for a short stint as a militiaman and as a privateer on two voyages. Despite his hopes for prize money during the war, Hewes exited the conflict poorer than before. Unable to make a living in Massachusetts, George Hewes moved to New York in 1815. While still unable to find fortune, Hewes found fame in his new home. Both James Hawkes and Benjamin Bussey interviewed Hewes and published biographies of him as one of the last survivors of the Boston Tea Party. By the last decade of Hewes’s life in the 1830s, the veteran became a hero in New England. Through his actions and historical remembrance, George Robert Twelves Hewes raised himself above an ordinary shoemaker into a revolutionary agent of history and an “equal” to other Great Men.

The book’s second part, “When Did They Start Calling It the Boston Tea Party? The Content for the Memory of the American Revolution,” explores how the Tea Party and Hewes entered public memory and history. In Boston, debates over the meaning of the Revolution began with the events themselves. Whig leaders distanced themselves from the actions of the “mob” and downplayed the role of plebian elements in their cause. Despite being sanctioned by Whig leaders, the destruction of the tea emerged as a genuine act of revolution and an act of aggression against Great Britain. While Whig leaders propagandized events such as the Boston Massacre as acts of British aggression, the revolutionary agency of the tea action raised a problem for public memory. In the post-revolutionary atmosphere of Boston, a conservative atmosphere allowed the revolutionary and popular acts of American independence to fade from memory. Despite attempts by the Bostonian elite to tame the memory of the revolution, the emergent political and social tensions of the early nineteenth century reintroduced the popular side of the Revolution into public memory. Workingmen associations and abolitionists reinterpreted and reemphasized the plebian elements of the American Revolution. By the 1820s, resurgent nationalism, growing democratic sentiments, and political debates between the Democrats and Federalists allowed the veterans of the War of Independence to reemerge as national heroes. The democratization of the memory of the Revolution allowed for George Robert Twelves Hewes to return to Boston as a hero of the Boston Tea Party. While official memory censored the mass politics of the American Revolution, the private memories of men like Hewes preserved them for the public. The common people enter public memory by common people retaining their private memory.

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party’s scholarly apparatus contains a collection of endnotes and an index. Alfred F. Young presents a historically rich and well-presented narrative of the life of George Robert Twelves Hewes and the Boston Tea Party. Too often, historical narratives and biographies become too enmeshed into their own stories and miss a broader point. Young avoids the pitfalls of some historical narratives and uses the story to make a broader point on the role of memory and the individual in history. He reveals the multiplicity of subjective responses to the Boston Tea Party as it happened and in its legacy. By applying modern hermeneutics of psychology, Young reinvigorates centuries-old history bringing it to life. Alfred F. Young’s accomplishment is readable for wider audiences to enjoy while being theoretically deep enough for historians to appreciate.

One of the minor weaknesses in The Shoemaker is the flattening of political and social differences across time regarding the public memory of the Boston Tea Party. In interpreting the event’s legacy, Young presents a Manichean divide between conservative Boston brahmins and a revolutionary plebian element. Young includes eighteenth century artisans, nineteenth century proletarians, abolitionists, and feminists within the progressive elements. The grouping of these categories as plebian assumes a one-to-one correspondence between class and politics and abstracts out the social turbulence of Boston in the nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century “mechanics” and artisans are not necessarily the same social class as the wage laborers organized under trade unions in the nineteenth. Abolitionists and feminists were often cross-class endeavors led by the reform-minded middle classes. Perhaps such sociological details are out of place in Young’s work on the subjective role of an individual “nobody” in history, but the option remains open for further analysis. Nevertheless, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party leaves grounding for a more extensive social history of the Boston Tea Party and its legacy.

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution by Alfred F. Young details the intersection between ordinary people and history. History is made by the masses and remembered by them. A poor cordwainer like George Robert Twelves Hewes wrote himself into the historical record by participating in revolutionary events and maintaining his memory of them for later generations. While Great Men shape official memory and history, the aggregate private memories of average men and women contribute to public memory. Thus, history remains a point of contention between different social groups rather than anything static.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Eric Hobsbawm used the arresting term “the invention of tradition” to direct attention to the conscious process in almost all countries, especially during the nineteenth century, through which elites and popular movements created the rituals, symbols, and texts of a politically usable history.” (p89)
We all are born with our own thoughts and live through our own set of experiences. So no matter how objective we try to be, our own opinions are clouded by those thoughts and experiences. So, investigating history, evaluating people from the past, analyzing arguments from historians…that’s the beauty and fun of history. Any attempt to analyze traditions, memories, and people-that’s all fascinating to me. So, in an attempt to revisit the Revolutionary War, I began reading this work. I thought it was all going to be a biography on Hewes which I would have been pleased with and did enjoy reading about. This poor man, struggling with a lackluster business and 15 kids (11 of which survived), through his part in the Revolution, gained an equal footing with the landed gentry that, in ordinary times, he simply couldn’t be on par with. At least through his service and participation in things like the “destruction of the tea”, he could have a voice, have power. But the biographical portion of this book goes beyond this tale. A presentation of Hewes life was certainly told but told through a bigger discussion on memory, on the delicate nature of oral history. Who is asking the questions? In what setting? How far removed are the people from the event they’re recalling? How would this affect their recall? All valid important questions.
Then, the book goes even further. From the introduction, you’re quickly introduced to the second portion of the book, and to be honest, the more interesting part-the idea of memory and how it can be co-opted by people to control the masses. Who, for example, decides whose names will show up in the history books? Who decides which titles become entrenched in our lexicon, which titles become iconic and emblematic of a time, such as the Revolutionary War? “What’s in a name? Does it make a difference how people name a historic event? Names are value-laden; they have political meaning…Take the Civil War…To the United States government, it was officially the “War of the Rebellion”; Northerners commonly referred to it as “the war to save the Union,” and less commonly as “the war to free the slaves.” To Southerners, it was “the war of Southern independence,” “the second American Revolution,” and later, “the war between the states,” all names that gave their cause legitimacy.” (pxvi). Interesting right? More relevant to the book, even more interesting is how the Boston Massacre was labeled “the riot on King Street.” This riot didn’t have to be the impetus for the war; it didn’t have to be so iconic. But that’s what it became. “The contest over names, I discovered, is part of a larger contest for the public memory of the Revolution, a process I now think of as a willful forgetting a purposeful remembering of American history.” (pxvii).
So this is the discussion in the second half of the book. He begins with the “destruction of the tea.” He looks at public and private memory. For example, the “destruction of tea” certainly lived in private memory but not so much public memory until the 1830s. It didn’t fit the image of a civilized, proper country fighting for its liberties against an oppressor. Apparently the Sons of Liberty may have tacitly encouraged all acts but only claimed those that were orderly and respectable. All others may have amassed support but were attributed to others, to the less favorable attributes of society. Officially, people back then “forgot” the very things we ask our students to study today. Interesting! The next chapter continues to explain how the memory of the revolution was “tame” and the Declaration of Independence was not even a part of the July 4th! People feared the connections that could be made with France, with Haiti, with the rights enumerated in the preamble. Furthermore, as the next chapter expounds, there was massive migration out of the city, a lack of systematic history education (no history textbook existed until the 1820s), and a conservative elite happy to change the message. In Chapter 5, Young explains how the memory was revived, how the War of 1812 helped create an upsurge of patriotism and therefore a bigger push for commemoration, how veterans voices were heard through pension requests, memoirs, etc., how history textbooks, albeit conservative, came into being, and how sentimentalism brought back the Liberty Tree and the Declaration of Independence. The following chapter explains how the Declaration of Independence became a part of the workingmen’s fight for better working conditions and the anti-slavery movement and how July 4th became a day for important legislation to symbolize that fight-i.e. the abolition of slavery in NY and the elimination of prison as a punishment for debt. “See your Declaration, Americans!!! Do you understand your own language?” (p153). Again, little facts I never knew. In Chapter 7, Young explains how the term “tea party” came into vogue and what it came to possibly symbolize in the 1830s. According to him, the term came to either mock the genteel class customs or it made a crazy, frightening event safe to commemorate, much safer than the tarring and feathering and rioting of the time. However, the part of dressing up like a Native American…well that part wasn’t safe to emphasize until “the stereotype of the ‘vanishing Indian’ was in place.” The afterword is also interesting as he features different events throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century that appropriated revolutionary images for their own “revolutionary” fights for equality or for peace. For example, burning Nixon in effigy in 1973…yikes!
So I know I’ve gone on and on but I really enjoyed the questions Young asked and the arguments he made. And I’ll end with yet another quote from him:
“Memories of the aged can be reliable even if they do not meet the criteria of the courtroom. In weighing evidence, a historian has to serve as defense attorney, prosecuting attorney, judge, and jury…The Tea Party, lost, buried, and willfully forgotten in public memory, was recovered in the context of popular movements claiming the Revolution. Hewes was appropriated at the time to serve a conservative version of history, but other Americans were free to make of him what they would, as they still are [for example as a working man fighting for equality]. The Tea Party became an iconic event in public memory because men like Hewes came forward with their private memories. We are doubly in debt-for what they did in history and for the history they have helped to recover.” (p193-194).
Anyway, interesting things to think about and things I’ll definitely bring to my students. They may be a little young but you’re never too young to start loving history. 

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not necessarily a book I would have picked up on my own - the title makes it seem like it would be a patriotic recounting of the Tea Party and it's role in the American Revolution, but since I work on Boston's Freedom Trail, I felt obliged to give the book a go, and I'm so glad I did! It was a lot meatier than I expected. I particularly enjoyed the first half of this book, which focuses on the life of George Robert Twelves Hewes, a lowly shoemaker who gets caught up in the Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, and the tarring and feathering of a prominent loyalist, John Malcolm. I didn't know much about the lives of poor Bostonians in the colonial/Revolutionary war era, and this book filled in a lot for me about what a poor white man's prospects looked like in the late 1700's.

The second half of the book lost me a bit, I have to admit. It explores the acceptance of the term "Tea Party" (as opposed to the way the event was initially described, as "the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor") and the way that various political groups, especially the conservative upper crust of Boston, attempted to use the Tea Party to further their political agendas. It's all very interesting, but I didn't know enough about the politics of the early 19th century to really understand which group wanted what. Even so, it's interesting to see how some things stay the same, and I liked the contemporary explorations of the Tea Party as an event that has been accepted and championed by both the left and the right in American politics (but how I wish the author had written an updated afterward in the early 2010's, and discussed the politically conservative Tea Party's appropriation of the Boston Tea Party event... alas, we must all draw our own conclusions from here).

[Duzclues · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic study of the struggle to define the goals of the American Revolution in the years immediately following it. A very enlightening read for anyone who has any strong feelings about the American Revolution.

[Lindsay Chervinsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Turns out the New York Times has pretty good suggestions, or at least very well educated ones anyway. This book is the latest collaboration between many well known scholars in the Revolutionary America field. Gary Nash, one of the editors, is particularly well known for his study of the lesser known revolutionaries who contributed to winning independence and their subsequent determination to preserve the ideals of the war.

As a project, it's particularly impressive that they were able to get so many scholars to participate. Furthermore, the essays, 22 in all, do a great job of following the central theme: demonstrating the important, and oft forgotten role that radicals played in making the Revolution a success and changing the future of America. The organization around a single topic provides the book focus and makes the book seem more like one large story, rather that a collection of short stories.

That being said, the structure of the book did have a few setbacks, at least from my perspective. Despite the great job that the editors did in pulling together separate essays, the truth is that each chapter was written by a different author who didn't really know what the others were saying. I'm sure there was a great deal of consultation, but due to publishing limitations and time lines, it would have been impossible to start the next chapter after the previous one was concluded. As a result, there were overlaps in information- particularly in the introductions. Several chapters introduce and explain the Alien and Sedition Acts and several analyze the formation of the Democratic Republican societies. While this information is critical to the development of the characters and the events discussed in the chapters, at times it does get a bit repetitive. The book is clearly written for well-educated, or at least audiences knowledgeable about the subject. Perhaps that focus highlights the repetitive information. I'm not sure there is a way to structure a book like this one without encountering that problem.

Finally, because the chapters don't follow one particular group of people or one specific line of events, I came away feeling as though there wasn't really a central "plot". Not that I expect non-fiction books to have a plot line like the ones I would find in a novel, but there is usually at least one story you follow. As I mentioned before, there is a central theme, but it's really not the same. There are some pros and cons to this setup. It's really easy to read a chapter, set the book down, and pick it up again later. Jumping in and out isn't really a problem. However, it does make the book less...driving. I can't quite think of a word to describe what I mean, so I will settle for driving. There isn't that same sense of push that inevitably calls me towards the last page.

Anyway, back to the review. The content is excellent and I really enjoyed being able to analyze and compare different writing styles side by side in one book. As a future scholar (hopefully), it gives me an amazing opportunity to take note of what tricks, styles and tools I'd like to make my own and what things I'd like to leave behind. I particular enjoyed the chapters on Phillis Wheatley by Davis Waldstreicher, Abigail Adams by Woody Holton, and the chapter on Revolutionary Black Founders by Richard S. Newman. I always enjoy writing that really dives into the characters and makes them come alive. I find the story is so much more enjoyable and really tells itself if the person feels real, rather than just words on a page.

There was one particular chapter that I took special note of, mostly to share with you. Remember when I reviewed Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When American Became Independent by William Hogeland last week and I said how I hadn't really heard much about the topic? Well, evidently the literary gods anticipated this statement and worked through my mother to send me this book. Because low and behold, I turn to chapter 4 and what do I see, "Philadelphia's Radical Caucus That Propelled Pennsylvania to Independence and Democracy" written by Gary B. Nash. So not only was it the topic I called for, but written by one of the most highly respected historians in the community. Double win. Needless the say, this evaluation of the events was much better written. I did find it interesting that the same group of characters Hogeland chose to discuss, were also contained in this chapter. Obviously, the intentions of the pieces were different. Nash's intention is to show that this group of motley individuals contributed to the Declaration of Independence and the future path of the United States. He certainly succeeds in this goal. Hogeland's goal is similar, but really focused on the minute details, conversations and behind-the-door political wranglings that produced the radical caucus in Philadelphia. Hogeland fails to fully connect how these events contribute in the long run to history, unlike Nash, who excels at this skill.

[C Manuel Contente · Rating 2 out of 5]

First half of the book was superb. The second half of the book, regarding memory and interpretation was poor.

[Sophia Alexis Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

While US History books aren't my favorite, this was different enough that I enjoyed reading this for class

[Tom Darrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book details the life of shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes and uses that biography as a framework through which the author explores the creation of the memory of the Boston Tea Party. The book is broken down into two parts, the first of which was originally published as an award winning article about 20 years before the book was. The biography is a pretty straightforward, showing some of the details of Hewes' life from his childhood in Boston, his decision to become a shoemaker, his involvement in several Revolutionary War events, his fading into obscurity and his rediscovery in the 1830s when he was in his 90s. The author makes good use of rather limited source material, although he relies heavily on two 1830s biographies of Hewes. Young does an excellent job at peeling apart the layers of memory and bias when using these works, stripping away what additions their authors made and determining what Hewes probably did. There are a few weak points where Young makes some leaps in judgement and assumptions about Hewes' motivations for doing various things, but that doesn't take much away from the overall story.

The second part of the book contains a more theoretical coverage of how the Boston Tea Party was largely ignored for the 50 or so years after the revolution and then brought back in the 1830s. Young does an effective job at demonstrating how Boston basically moved on from the Revolution once it was over. Many participants moved away, historical buildings were demolished and holidays dedicated to specific Revolutionary War events got folded in to the Forth of July celebration. In the 1820s and 30s, however, there was renewed interest in the Revolution because there were fewer veterans alive every year and there was an upsurge in patriotism following the War of 1812. Hewes was "discovered", and literally paraded about by various political factions to demonstrate their connection to the ideals of the Revolution. The working class used Hewes to demonstrate that common men were the motivating force behind the Revolution whereas wealthy conservatives used the 90 year old man to demonstrate that his rowdy past was contained.

Overall, I though this was an entertaining and effective book that fits into numerous genres. It is obviously a history of the American Revolution, but anyone interested in the study of historical memory or social class history would probably enjoy this as well.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, quick little read for anyone interested in the Revolution, the Early Republic, and memory. Young starts with what we know about this ordinary man who was involved in pretty much all the major events leading up to the Revolution in Boston- the Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, Tar and Featherings, etc... he fought in the war as well. He was a poor shoemaker, and Young wants to look at the events from his point of view. Really, though, as the book continues it ends up more about memory and how the Tea Party was remembered. Apparently, it was forgotten pretty quickly, and no one called it the tea "party". It seemed too revolutionary, and illegal (what with the thousands of pounds of destroyed property) and once the revolution was won the conservative elements in the American government really distanced themselves from acts like that. It was only once more radical elements like labor unions and abolitionists began to try to reclaim the revolution for themselves in the 1830s that people "remembered" the tea party, and started calling it the tea party. There is a lot of great stuff here about how events are remembered in different ways, throughout history, depending on the politics of the people doing the remembering.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice "chunkable" collection of 22 essays on issues of the formation of America beginning with reaction to the Stamp Act up to essentially the Jefferson Presidency. Each essay is a fairly short, stand alone piece making the book a great resource for teaching - pull out what you need and skip the rest. In keeping with the interests of Young, Nash, and Raphael, the collection pays particular attention to the undersung participants in the formation of the American Republic - workers, farmers, slaves and free blacks, women, country bumpkins-turned-politicians, and religious minorities. The elite are certainly present throughout the volume, but their presence mostly serves as a counterpoint to what these others - radicals, rebels, reformers - were doing. For, as the authors argue, it was the leveling work of these non-elite reformers that pushed American Democracy towards political, social and economic equality that the elites had never intended. (pg. 3) Their influence, the authors argue, forced the elite founding fathers to more deeply separate from the British system than they ever intended, thus making the American Revolution (more) radical.

[Dylan Rawles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book that looked at the role of lower class mechanics during the events leading up to the American Revolution, and shows how history is made up of more than just "Great White Men."It talks about the popular movements that led to the Revolution, the Stamp Act riots and Boston Tea Party, and how they were remembered by later generations.

After the Revolution, the Tea Party, or the "Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor", was largely forgotten thanks to the new money conservative elites that moved to Boston. They wanted to sanitize the history of any lower class unrest so that their social structures would stay intact. Then, in the 1820s and 1830s, as labor movements came into being, these popular movements were recovered and used to justify their protests.

Overall it is a fascinating look at how we remember things, and how different groups can take the same event and use it for their own political ends. It really shows how useful history is as a discipline and how when we look below the "Great White Men" we get a fuller picture of history.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is remarkably timely for a 10 year old book about events that happened over 200 years ago. The first half of the book is a biographical sketch of George Robert Twelves Hewes, a shoemaker from Boston who just happened to participate in the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and other events in the Revolutionary War, and though never very successful or important, lived long enough to become "the last survivor" and get his "15 minutes" of fame. The second half of the book discusses how public history is shaped by the participants and those who come after. In particular, it discusses how the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor - a minor event at the time - became "The Boston Tea Party", emblem of American liberty. A useful reminder that everything we learn about the past is colored by the assumptions, memories, and agendas of those who came before us.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Different type of history book. The first part of the book is about a poor shoemaker who participated in some of the most well known events of the revolution along with his story and how his story was discovered. The second part of the book is a discussion of how some events become remembered and documented. Many of the events we think we know about the American revolution were not documented until well into the 19th century and many of them after most of the significant players and locations were gone. Very thoughtful discussion.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Young analyzes the ways the personal and public memory influence our present historical understanding of events like the Boston tea party, the American revolution, and its heroes. He makes clear that what is remembered and celebrated is by no means inevitable, but shaped both by memory and the shifting needs of society. The first half of the book is an account of shoemaker George Hewes life and involvement in the Revolution, while the second unravels the shaping of historical memory. I found the second half to be both more "meaty" and interesting.

[Haley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for my history class this semester. Overall, I wasn't a huge fan of the book. I think if you're going to write a book about a forgotten figure in history and as it relates to the revolution, perhaps a subject without a commissioned painting would have been a better choice. Regardless, the second half of the book was incredibly interesting as it pertained to public and private memory and how revolutionary events were selected for their credibility on a national rather than personal level.

[Rahobeth Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very detailed and well researched. Can be a bit difficult to read and follow but the amount of detail included makes it worth the effort.
The book takes on a journalistic approach, asking how, why, and when for some of the biggest pre-war events in Boston.
A great addition to any reader who wishes to maximize their knowledge and potentially embrace the mindset of the 18th century Boston colonials.

[Ainslee Moorehead · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the best history book I’ve ever read. George Hews is such an interesting character but it’s really the second half that did it for me. If you’re not a historian it might be too much historiographical analysis for the average person to enjoy, but it was fascinating so even if you’re not sure it would be your thing check it out.

[Anna Boatwright]

Read this for class, and probably would have enjoyed it better if I had spaced out my reading before the assignment was due (lol)! Really interesting read about the American revolution and the role the “common man” played in Revolutionary America.

[Janet Biehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

New scholarship on the American revolutionary period, emphasizing the popular, working class movements and democratic institutions.

[Taylor Sappington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic set of essays that show us the truly revolutionary elements of our revolution. Most of whom forgotten who shunned by the folks in the history books today.

[Sarah Shepherd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book for class. I love reading micro history and this book didn’t disappoint there. I did feel in a couple of places that the author overreached in suggesting what Hewes felt.

[Mara Singer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you enjoy history, this is a wonderful book, easy to read, great tidbits I had never thought of or heard before.

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a fascinating argument about how we remember our history as a country.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alfred F. Young’s The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution is a work that operates on various levels. It examines the American Revolution as it relates to memory, both through one of its participants, George Robert Twelves Hewes, reminiscing at the twilight of his life many years after the fact, and as it is kept alive in the public memory of succeeding generations, often put to their own political ends. It also examines the changing significance of a particular pre-Revolutionary event, The Boston Tea Party, as Young surmises how it came by that nomenclature (it was known as “the destruction of the tea” in its own time), all of which is wrapped up in the 1830s biographies of Hewes that serve as Young’s initial source material.

Young’s book is split into two parts. The first is the (slightly modified) influential essay which the author first published in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1981. It examines the Revolution through the experiences and recollections of Hewes who, in the 1830s, had two biographies written about him as Americans were trying to reappropriate and reinterpret the era to reflect their own perspectives. Hewes remained a man of humble economic means throughout his life. One of his earliest memories (at least which Young relates) is of his meeting as a young man with John Hancock, one of the wealthiest men in Boston, and of the trembling deference he paid to him. Hewes became a shoemaker which was, in Young’s assessment, among the lowliest and little respected of professions, however, during the subsequent events of the Revolution, his position began to take on other associations as shoemakers became symbols of patriotic defiance. For Hewes, the American Revolution became about social egalitarianism, where a poor cobbler was as important as a wealthy merchant to the body politic. This is represented in his (most likely inaccurate) insistence that John Hancock himself was breaking open boxes of tea and casting them into Boston Harbor at his side. Young gives Hewes a partial justification in believing this, for as he states, though the “American Revolution was not a plebian revolution” there was nevertheless “a powerful plebian current within it” (206). When Hewes was next expected to show deference, this time to a ship’s captain, he refused to remove his hat.

In the second half of the book, Young asks the question: “When Did They Start Calling It the Boston Tea Party?” As the author curiously discovered, the 1830s biographies of Hewes are the first time in print that “the destruction of the tea” was referred to as the Boston Tea Party. Though the expression likely existed as a colloquialism since the incident occurred, it was not referred to as such formally for several decades. By the time Hewes, as a man in his nineties, was heroically paraded around Boston as a survivor of the Tea Party, politicians with their own sort of parties were jockeying to claim the memory of the Revolution. In Young’s view, Hewes was likely exploited by the more conservative, elitist Whigs of the day who wished to temper or forget the roles that the lower classes like himself had played. It was these sorts who began to adopt the expression Tea Party so as to make light of an event that was in fact radical and proletariat (indeed, it was the first truly revolutionary action before the war), and which they viewed as setting a dangerous precedent of “the rabble” interfering in political affairs (125). The same might also be said of Hewes’s second biographer, Benjamin Bussey Thatcher. It is probable that Hewes, a man who read little and lived an isolated existence, was unaware of the irony, caught up as he was in the praise and honors rightly afforded him. Taking this into consideration, Young’s work feels in the end like a proper tribute to Hewes and a posthumous correction of the propaganda that surrounded him, giving him his just due as a patriot mechanic, the way he would likely have wanted to be remembered.

Young’s account of Hewes is insightful and sympathetic. Through Hewes the reader is presented with an often overlooked “man on the street” perspective of the events which led to the American Revolution. Young follows him through three pivotal moments: catching James Caldwell after he was shot in the back at the so-called Boston Massacre; as a soot-faced vandal whose prominent whistle gave him responsibility on one of the ships on which the tea was being destroyed; and as an indirect instigator of the tarring and feathering of a Tory, John Malcolm, who had struck him on the head with his cane, nearly splitting his skull. In an era so often dominated with the voices of the more fortunate and learned of the time, such as John Hancock and John Adams, to see the events unfold through a humble shoemaker’s eyes, one who was not a mere bystander of these milestone events, is a true treat. Likewise, Young’s analysis of the Boston Tea Party’s naming is informative and well-reasoned.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that The Shoemaker and the Tea Party is a flawless monograph. Firstly, certain of Young’s choices are perplexing. While the book is helpfully illustrated, the placement of these images is difficult to understand. For instance, a Continental soldier’s powder horn is shown on page 59, but it is not explained until page 107. Secondly, Young assumes familiarity with the era on the part of the reader, offering no explanations to the casual references of many elements of the time. For instance, Young makes mention of “the Cincinnati,” and a lay reader is not likely to know, much less understand, that society’s controversial aristocratic implications to the type of social equality for which Hewes would have thought that he had fought (111). Continuing in this line, an understanding of Antebellum politics is also prefigured, for little to no explanation is offered for what constituted a Whig or Democrat, let alone what would make one an adherent of “conservative Jacksonianism” (170). Young’s audience, then, is not entirely a general one. For those with an intimate knowledge of such things, Young’s analysis will flow smoothly, but for those for whom such designations offer only vague associations, their inclusion without explanation may be jarring. Similarly, a map of Boston, or several for that matter, illustrating change over time, would have been helpful, as Young also assumes knowledge of the city, its streets, and many of its landmarks.

Other omissions, while not hurting Young’s analysis, tend to raise more questions than are answered within the text. Young gives the reasons for the Boston Tea Party participants “playing Indian” which encompass, essentially, the wish to remain anonymous and to incite terror (103). Could there be other reasons? The sociologist James W. Loewen thought so in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, released in 1995, four years before The Shoemaker was published. His conjecture is that the Indian was also symbolic of liberty, as colonists were keen to the largely democratic nature of Indian society, and were in turn influenced and motivated by it (Loewen 111). Playing Indian, therefore, adds another aspect to the protest in Boston Harbor with which Hewes might possibly have identified (though he was not dressed as an Indian himself). Whether or not Young was aware of this argument, or if he was whether or not he found merit in it, he does not say. Another absence is in his already mentioned assessment of Federalists’ and later elitists’ distrust of commoners’ interference in government, but no word is said of Shays’ Rebellion, which occurred on the other side of Massachusetts and of which prominent Bostonians were fearful and weary. Also, Young relates an 1834 song about the Tea Party event, of which one of the lines reads: “I mean, t’was done in seventy five, an we were real gritty,” and yet the destruction of the tea occurred in ‘73 (159). Young does not explain the writer’s error, although one might reasonably assume it has implications about how people remembered – or remembered inaccurately – the Boston Tea Party.

This last point leads to Young’s most glaring omission, felt perhaps more today than when the book was first published. The author describes the process of the tea’s destruction and the significance which it held for later Americans, yet he does not delve into the background of why the event occurred in the first place. What, exactly, were Bostonians protesting? Why those ships? Why that tea? It leads one to question what people in the 1830s, those who paraded Hewes around Boston and those who honored and admired him, thought was the cause of the event they were commemorating.

As it happens, this question has grown greater implications in recent years. The conservative Tea Party movement has amassed immense political power since its inception in 2009, and yet its spokespersons have had a less than favorable record of factually accurate historical understanding (for instance, former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has mistakenly said that Paul Revere warned the British and that the founding fathers recited the Pledge of Allegiance). One of the most common myths that permeates the movement’s followers, as well as historical “knowledge” of most Americans, is that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against high taxes, when in fact the tea which was dumped into the harbor was cheap due to what today would amount to a corporate tax break and a government sponsored monopoly. The cheap, legal tea cut into American smugglers’ profits, many of whom were prominent Boston merchants, but more than that it was the colonists’ loathing of taxation without representation that moved the event to fruition. It was not a question of high taxes – the taxes were marginal and felt by few – but of Parliament’s right to tax them in the first place without there being American representatives to vote in their own interests. Unfortunately, these distinctions appear lost on how most Americans today have preserved the Boston Tea Party in their collective memory, which goes to the heart of Young’s work. When did this change happen? It also speaks to the irony that Young describes of Americans holding tea parties to commemorate the event, serving and consuming a beverage that patriots saw fit for the fishes, not the human palate, as modern Tea Party protesters also serve tea and dangle tea bags from tricorne hats (186). Tea drinking carried implications of high society and elitism, just the very sorts that today’s “Tea Party patriots” claim to counter. Perhaps if Young had published his work a decade later he might have felt moved to comment on the questions and correlations I have just mentioned, to address how the Boston Tea Party has influenced or been influenced by our modern notions.

Despite all the criticisms that have just been put forth, The Shoemaker remains, also for those same criticisms, exceedingly relevant and thought provoking. It redeems George Robert Twelves Hewes, whose character at times leaps of the page, to the patriot mechanic he identified as while giving readers a glimpse into the worm’s eye view of a colossally complex and important time in human history. The book feels incomplete in many respects, but is nevertheless profoundly insightful into what the American Revolution meant for a populous, spanning its generations, as well as what it meant for a poor, good spirited old man who finally received recognition in his final years.

[Jim Drewery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over a century and a half ago French pamphleteer Alphonse Karr was apparently first to print the adage, “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” which translates in English as “the more it changes, the more it stays the same.”1 So it goes in the world of historians in the twenty-first century it seems. At the dawn of the millennium, Professor David P. Jaffe, then of the Graduate School of New York City College and current collaborator on the Digital History Project began his review of this volume by saying, “Memory--private and collective--is at the center of historical studies these days.”2 Nearly a decade and half later this observation appears more true than ever. One need only scroll through the daily litany of claims and counter-claims by organizations representing both sides of the political fence to understand the utmost degree of polarization existing currently in American politics.
Young shows us in The Shoemaker and the Tea Party though that nothing much has changed in American society or politics since the beginning. We are still a society of haves and have-nots and still there is a significant minority which feels disenchanted with the political and social direction the country is headed.
This volume is really two books, the first half of the book relates generally the life of a common man who experienced first hand some of the most iconic incidents of the revolutionary era in Boston. George Robert Twelves Hewes, the son of a tanner, born sixth of nine siblings with three older brothers and standing barely five foot tall, was hardly up to such a weighty title in either stature or prospects as a young man. Thus he became a shoemaker and sometimes fisherman, from which he managed (just barely) to raise his own family in colonial Boston. He was what in today's vernacular would be referred to as, “the working poor”, a relative nobody in history. Likely he would have remained so if not for the growing interest in and emergence of the field of American History in the 1830's. For this is when Hewes was first discovered by biographers of the day who initially, and mistakenly it turned out, declared him the last survivor of the “Boston Tea Party”, the first recorded use of this now iconic phrase. Young relates through the first hand memories of Hewes, as related to biographers in the 1830's, how the average man on the street viewed the British Army then occupying the city. The reader easily gets a sense of the frustration and indignation felt by the common citizenry who were routinely cheated and abused by the soldiers. We also get a sense of how deeply this event etched the resentment and desire for justice after yet another senseless killing of unarmed colonials by Redcoat soldiers. Hewes was in the thick of the disturbance that night which he said began over an unpaid barber bill. He personally knew four of the five massacre victims, catching James Caldwell in his arms as he fell dying from a British bullet. Clearly this event, in his mind and memory catalyzed the revolutionary spirit within himself. Through the years of our history other injustices and great social and political movements have united great numbers of our citizens in a similar spirit outrage and indignation on questions of suffrage, slavery, busing and a host of others.
Hewes also relates his first encounter with John Hancock, who invited the lowly young apprentice to call on him at his home after he had repaired a shoe for one of the city's leading citizens. The pride he felt at being rewarded for a job well done and appreciated and for the opportunity to speak with the great man of his own views of the world, if even only for a moment. He recounts then how the two of them came to be chopping open the same chest of tea on the night of December 16, 1773. Here again we get a clear sense of the empowerment these incidents harnessed within Hewes', a sense that he was a part of this glorious thing, a vital part too, as important as any other. The sense of empowerment stuck with Hewes and was manifested in a couple of memorable incidents.
Hewes showed that empowerment, twice over in the tarring and feathering of John Malcom in 1774. Malcom was an obnoxious and ill-tempered sort. An ardent supporter of the crown and was employed by the royal customs service. He was stopped by Hewes from beating a young lad on the street for some minor infraction. When Hewes intervened, Malcom cussed him and called him a vagabond. Hewes retorted he might not be rich but his credit was as good as any other man and at least he had never been tarred and feathered. This referred to an incident when Malcom had gotten said treatment, all be it over his clothes earlier in Portsmouth. Malcom damned him again and hit him in the head with his cane, nearly cracking his skull, rendering him unconscious for a good while. When he came to, Hewes duly swore out a warrant for assault against his attacker as a good citizen should. That evening however a crowd physically removed Malcom from his home with the intention of fully tarring and feathering for his many misdeeds against the citizenry. Although Whig leaders of the Sons of Liberty tried to dissuade the angry crowd, arguing to let the laws handle it. The crowd would have none of it, Malcom had shown himself to be an enemy of liberty in their eyes. Saying that he had unlawfully used his power and position to seek revenge publicly against those he felt a private vendetta and was in fact above the law. They would have their justice this time and with that Malcom was disrobed and fully tarred and feathered. Hewes was devastated by news of the mob action, wanting his attacker to face the justice of the courts not the vindictive punishment of a mob. He tried to aid his attacker, attempting to break through the crowd to place a blanket over Malcom, who now still refusing to publicly resign his commission was also being threatened with lynching. The angry mob would have none of that either and Hewes was forcefully warned to back off by its leaders.(46) Still Hewes displayed a sense of compassion for the suffering of others for which America has so often and so generously displayed, both at home and internationally.
In the second half of the book Young illustrates how the prominent political leadership of the revolutionary era, the heralded Sons of Liberty, sought to control, but yet distance themselves, from such unruly spontaneous displays of mob rule. Similarly after the revolution the prominent civic leaders also sought to downplay the events like the “destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor” and other such riotous demonstrations. Replacing these private memories of the rank and file of the revolution, with a more palatable version which made its way into the first history books on America which emerged in the 1820's. Gone from this version were characters like Hewes and his slain friends from the Boston Massacre. Instead of angry mobs of young toughs... sailors, cobblers, tanners and the like, carrying out acts of lawlessness under the cover of darkness, theirs was a vision of an inspired class of middling citizens standing up in the light of day and claiming their “inalienable rights.” He explains how the commemorations of previously iconic dates, like the Boston Massacre, the Tea Party, Pope's Day and the Stamp Act protests were all swept aside by the Fourth of July holiday as the public day of remembrance of the revolution, with George Washington as the lone revolutionary hero.
Young also explores how changes in the city's population help to facilitate this process as many men of the working class like Hewes simply never returned to Boston after the end of the British occupation or even after the revolution. Instead many moved west in search of better economic opportunities, but the city continued to grow with the arrival of new immigrants and with the growth came civic renewal and change. Over the years the progress of the city erased many of the landmarks of the era and the monuments initially erected to honor the revolution like Charles Bullfinch's doric column built on Beacon Hill in 1790. Within thirty years both the monument and Beacon Hill were gone from sight and from the public memory of the American public as well. Now long since vanished as well to the onslaught of time and progress like so many others like John Hancock house.
This is a highly insightful, well researched, documented and written piece of work that is as entertaining as it is informative. Young has provided a most illuminating look at the revolution from the eyes of a common citizen at ground zero of the American move toward independence. A piece of history which might likely have been forgotten had it not been for the stark economic realities most revolutionary war veterans faced in the early years of the nineteenth century. Their narratives written for veteran's benefit applications in the early 1800's, including that of Hewes brought back the memory and spirit of the revolution that grasped the public attention at the time. Young was seemingly fortunate to have two separate biographical accounts written in 1833 and 1835 by James Hawkes and Benjamin Bussey Thatcher respectively. While both men had the advantage of personally interviewing Hewes, as Young said his challenge was, “essentially a major double task...first of separating Hewes from his biographers and the second of sifting the memories of a ninety year old to recover actions and feelings from sixty to eighty years before.”(7) While he has done an enviable job in accomplishing this task, more details about Hewes' life and exploits during this extraordinary age would have been a welcome addition. Clearly Young feels the importance of men like George Robert Twelves Hewes was immeasurable to the success of the revolution, of this there can be no dispute. Without the belief, consent and approval of at least a large minority of a population involved, any revolution has little chance of success and even less of maintaining any gains made.
Young shows us how Boston, that cradle of Yankee rebellion has gone about remembering, or in some case forgetting the whole of its revolutionary roots. Whether this was indeed by design of the powers which have governed or simply the natural ebb and flow of time, urban growth, and civic progress one must discern for themselves. Still one can not help but wonder if we really have progressed so far down the road of enlightenment as we as a society like to think we have. Perhaps that after more than two centuries, the fact over fifteen percent, some forty-six million our population still lives in poverty suggests we still have farther to go to achieve the “American Dream.” He also reveals how so many political and social factions have asserted their own claim as the keepers of the true “Spirit of '76” over the years. It is easy to see why so much debate still revolves around what our collective memory of the revolution should be and how this has over time manifested itself into the polarized state of the current American politics. As we see this is really nothing new, those differences in the vision for the country's future as seen from the left and right, the haves and the have-nots, city and country, men and women, or Black and White have always been there. Sometimes simmering under the surface for years, but eventually exploding in our streets as they have so often done over all ilk of issues. In the Tea Party of today one may still observe “the powerful plebeian current” which Young saw as a driving force of the revolution. Perhaps we should all take time to contemplate whether the modern keepers of the Constitution are still aware of the need to “consult the genius of the people” as its author, James Madison once wrote would be necessary for its survival.(204)