(More b-roll, cut from my forthcoming book Founding Finance.
Might have some resonance for those in protest today against
government money corruption and high finance.) We often see
1760′s and ’70′s patriot Boston as especially well-unified,
across social and economic classes, against British oppression,
and it’s true that, certainly with the occupation, much unity
did prevail there. But dramatic examples of conflict in the
relationship between Adams and the Loyal Nine and Sons of
Liberty, on the one hand, and Boston’s workers and poor on the
other, occurred even during one of the most famous Boston riots,
the Stamp Act protest of August 1765. In the same traditional
styles of protest we’ve seen [or will have seen, in the
forthcoming book] in the Regulator riot in Hillsborough, North
Carolina, the Boston protest involved attacks on not only on
hated stamp-administration offices but also on officials’ homes.
A large crowd — which today might have appeal for both the Tea
Party and Occupy for being of mixed clas