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Stephen Higginson Tells Fish Stories To Parliament In 1771 and Gets Arrested For It

In 1771, the British government desperately needed to know how American colonists felt about fishing policies. Stephen Higginson filled them in, and almost got jailed as a traitor because of it.

Stephen Higginson served in many capacities during the American Revolution and the formative years of the country – military leader, representative to Congress and political intriguer.

Higginson was born in Salem, Mass., in 1743 into a family of politicians and clergymen. Well-connected, his single act of rebellion against his place in society seems to be his decision to marry Susannah Cleveland, his second cousin from Connecticut. As their families opposed the marriage (probably because of their youth), the couple ran away to New Hampshire to marry in 1764.

After returning to Salem, Higginson took up his position as a merchant trader, same as his father. He set up a home near East India Square in Salem across from the Lafayette Coffee House. Armed with introductions from his well-connected father, he sailed to England in 1771.

Stephen Higginson in London

Stephen Higginson

In England, Higginson had his first critical brush with politics. Higginson, on his travels in England to introduce himself to his trading partners, found himself summoned before Parliament to answer to an investigation about New England’s fisheries.

Higginson’s testimony gave a picture of how large and vital cod fishing was to the New England economy.

Seven hundred fishing vessels, most between 40 and 70 tons, worked the waters off New England fishing for cod. It took more than 4,000 people to man those vessels, Higginson estimated. Another 2,000 worked on shore, curing and preparing the catch for sale. And another 350 vessels, employing another 3,000 people, transported the fish to market.

Between 1768 and 1772, fish accounted for 35 percent of all New England exports by value. But the interests of the English and their American colonies often diverged when it came to codfish.

Fishing schooners

American fish fed slaves in the West Indies and Catholics in Europe. This resulted in New England fishermen trading with the French, importing French sugar, rum and molasses, as well as trading directly with the French in Newfoundland. Britain implemented a series of tariffs to limit New England fishermen’s ability to trade with the French, preferring to keep such trade for Englishmen.

By 1771, the arguing over the New England fishery had gone on for 40 years, and Britain’s Navy actively seized American fishing vessels caught trading with the French. Edmund Burke, a member of Parliament who sympathized with the colonists and their position, summoned Higginson to testify.

Stephen Higginson Testifies

The British, as usual, were concerned that New England was trading too much with Spain and France, rather than England.

Higginson explained that Britain remained New England’s primary trading partner. He suggested that restricting New England trade would result in the region being unable to pay its debts to English companies.

In particular, the Parliament questioned what New England fishermen would do if the government closed the fishery entirely.

A partial transcript of his testimony:

Under Questioning

Q. What would these people do if the Fishery was stopped?

A. I can’t readily resolve that question. I suppose they would remain where they are as long as they could subsist in hopes of being engaged in their old employment.

Q. But when that hope failed and they could no longer subsist?

A. Then they will probably go elsewhere?

Q. Whether they would settle at Halifax?

A. In general I think not … the Fishermen in Salem and other Towns are a very quiet and steady set of men They esteem the people of Halifax to be dissolute and of a quite contrary turn. I think therefore they would not sit down among a people so different in their manners. Another reason is that they think the Government of Halifax is arbitrary and have a terrible notion of it. Another, those who have been there have disliked the country very much as being inhospitable.

Q. Would they go to Miguelon and St Pierre and fish for France?

A. Don t think they would generally. From Marblehead some perhaps would.

Q. Why would they from thence?

A. Because the people there are of various nations Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch, but the others are born in the towns where they live, have tenements and freeholds there and would not leave their place of abode, I conceive.

Return of the Traitor

News of Higginson’s appearance before Parliament spread, and upon his return to Marblehead, the colonial authorities arrested him on suspicion of traitorous conduct. Higginson had walked a fine line in Parliament, both continuing to state the American case for greater freedom in operating the fishery while defending the loyalty of the colonists.

Fortunately for his sake, Higginson had brought a detailed account of his testimony home with him. When he presented what he had said, the colonial authorities reversed themselves and praised him for his poise and presentation.

Into the History Books

During the American Revolution, Higginson ran his ships as privateers, and in 1783 Massachusetts elected him to the Continental Congress. Following the war, he participated in the military force that put down Shay’s Rebellion in 1786 and 1787.

Higginson’s most well-known legacy involves his opposition to John Hancock, during Hancock’s term as governor of Massachusetts. Higginson was a firm Federalist, along with John Adams and many others. The Federalists wanted a strong central government, and they were opposed by the Anti-Federalists who wanted the states to retain more power in the new country that they were forming.

John Hancock, meanwhile, had become something of a political chameleon. He managed to win support from enough Federalists and Anti-Federalists to serve as governor.

Stephen Higginson led probably the harshest attack on Hancock, though there were many. He published the “Laco Papers” in a newspaper, castigating Hancock for a weak military record during the Revolution. He called into question Hancock’s fitness to serve, as well as the alliances he had struck with his opponents, including Samuel Adams. In addition to printing the letters in a newspaper, under the pseudonym Laco, he also had them bound and distributed.

The Laco Papers had a remarkable effect, though not the one Higginson intended. Historians agree that the publication most likely generated sympathy for Hancock and helped extend his political reign.

Thanks to: Life and Times of Stephen Higginson, Member of the Continental Congress (1783)

Images: Stephen Higginson, Delegate to Continental Congress, New York Public Library, Max Rosenthal(Etcher)

Postcard of fishing vessels at the Portland Dock, Maine, c. 1908.

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Maine Statehood: The Mexit From Massachusetts in 1820

The story of Maine statehood is also the story of a province and a people exploited by absentee owners and left defenseless in a time of war.

Most people view Maine statehood through the lens of the Missouri Compromise. To settle the national question of slavery, for a little while at least, Maine was admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.

A fish weir in Maine

But, like Brexit two centuries later, Maine statehood resulted from an aggrieved but divided populace. It took longer than Brexit — 28 years. It also took six referendums and a war before the District of Maine escaped the rapacious grasp (to some) of Massachusetts.

But they did it, and Maine statehood began on March 15, 1820.

“The day was noticed, as far as we have heard from the various towns by every demonstration of joy and heart-felt congratulation, becoming the occasion,” reported the Eastern Argus on March 21, 1820.

Before Maine Statehood

Maine had once been an independent colony, but in 1691 the English Crown granted a charter giving Maine to Massachusetts.

Then for a century Maine languished as a colony of Massachusetts. In 1750, the population of Maine was pretty much the same as it had been 100 years earlier: about 10,000.

Fishing vessel

The reason? Violence. The French claimed nearly half of eastern Maine. They allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy and waged nearly a century of intermittent war against English settlers. Fighting between the English and the French and Indians started with King Philip’s War in 1675 and ended with the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.

From 1689 to 1713, there wasn’t a single English home north of Wells. And today, Maine has virtually no 17^th-century houses in the state.

Only when the final Anglo-French war wound down did land-hungry Yankees start migrating en masse to Maine.

Land, Lots of Land

After the American Revolution, Maine’s population exploded. It rose from 56,321 in 1784 to 96,540 in 1790.

The land office couldn’t keep up with demand for land at $1 an acre up to 150 acres. Settlers could even claim 100 acres for free if they managed to clear 16 acres within four years.

Maine blueberry barren

Speculators, like William Bingham and Henry Knox, paid as little as 25 cents an acre for tracts of land the size of Rhode Island. When the American Revolution ended, Maine’s population had grown to 56,321. By 1820, 298,335 people lived in Maine.

Sardine Factory, by Leslie Landrigan

Maine began to prosper from fishing, lumber, shipbuilding and shipping, also known as the coasting or carrying trade.

Nineteenth-century records from Wiscasset show Maine’s “astonishing” dependence on lumber and shipping lumber, according to historian Ronald Banks. From January 1800 to January 1812, except two years for which figures are unavailable, 576 vessels left the port, wrote Banks. All 576 carried a main cargo of lumber, staves and other timber products. Only 20 carried something along with lumber. “There is no reason to believe Wiscasset was unique,” wrote Banks.

Maine in 1798

Blue Hill built so many ships that sawdust now makes up most of the first eight feet of mud in the inner harbor.

And yet the people who prospered most in Maine couldn’t catch up to those in Boston. The “better element” began to agitate for separation, arguing that Massachusetts overtaxed and underrepresented them. Boston, too, siphoned the profit from shipping and lumber through trade regulations.

From 1792 to 1807, Mainers took three votes on separating from Massachusetts. All three failed.

The Coasting Law

A big reason for Maine statehood to fail was a federal law governing interstate shipping. Congress gave Maine shippers a competitive advantage when it passed the Coasting Law of 1789.

Most coasting vessels were schooners like this (National Gallery of Art)

Coasting vessels, typically schooners, hauled cargo up and down the coast, much like trucks today carry freight on the interstate. The 1789 law required coasting vessels to clear customs in every state except the state next door.

As part of Massachusetts, Maine coasters didn’t have to clear customs until they reached New Jersey, a considerable advantage to Mainers. If Maine were to separate, coasters would have to clear customs in Massachusetts–a costly and time-consuming prospect.

Separation

The War of 1812 gave Mainers a new reason to separate from Massachusetts. Many in Massachusetts opposed the war, and Gov. Caleb Strong refused to send Massachusetts militiamen into the fight. He left Maine on its own. The British captured Castine, Belfast, Eastport and sacked Bangor and Hampden.

Strong did lift one finger in defense of Maine. He appointed a wealthy capitalist from Bath, William King, major general of the Maine militia.

After the war, William King did not forget Massachusetts’ negligence. Nor did many Mainers.

William King

King and many of the people of Maine were Republican-Democrats who supported Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Massachusetts, on the other hand, was dominated by Federalists. King believed the Federalists shut Republican-Democrats out of patronage and lucrative land, bank and insurance charters.

But the Federalists were on the way out, and the Republican-Democrats were on the rise. Maine’s Republican-Democrats thought statehood would bring lower taxes and freedom from self-important—and self-dealing–Federalists.

One of Maine’s many working waterfronts.

Many small farmers had grievances against the large landowners who charged them rent for land they thought they’d gotten free. Or they kicked the farmers off land they’d cleared and didn’t pay them for the improvements. The small fry in Maine’s interior thought Maine statehood would enable them to right those wrongs.

Besides, Maine was big enough to be its own state now, with a population of nearly 300,000.

Many Massachusetts Federalists wanted to free themselves from the Republican-Democrat Mainers who threatened to dominate them politically. They could solve that problem by cutting the province loose. So the Massachusetts Legislature on May 20, 1816, agreed to let Maine vote for separation.

Maine Statehood Fails in 1816

Maine held two votes in 1816 on statehood, and both times statehood lost. Coastal towns dependent on shipping voted overwhelmingly against it. No county cast more votes against separation than Hancock County. In heavily Federalist Blue Hill not one person from that town supported statehood. (The 1816 vote went 0-59 and 0-77.)

Stonington, Maine

William King realized the coastal towns voted against statehood because of the 1789 Coasting Law. Maine statehood would hurt Maine shipping and shipbuilding. Maine coasters couldn’t go all the way to New Jersey without clearing customs; they’d have to do it in Massachusetts.

The Maine State Capitol in Augusta.

Fortunately for William King, he had a brother, Rufus, a U.S. senator from New York. Rufus King and other allies in the Senate managed to revise the Coasting law.

And so on July 26, 1819, Maine took its sixth and final vote for statehood. A total of 17,091 voted for full Maine statehood versus 7,132 for remaining a province of Massachusetts.

Less than three months later, delegates from all over Maine traveled to Portland for the state constitutional convention. They took 18 days to draft a constitution, overwhelmingly approved by a popular vote in January 1820.

On March 15, 1820, William King became Maine’s first governor. Maine statehood was a reality.

With thanks to Ronald F. Banks, Separation of Maine from Massachusetts 1785-1820.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Wicked Blue Lights of New London Give Connecticut a Bad Name

On the moonless night of Dec. 18, 1813, a pair of mysterious blue lights at the mouth of the Thames River thwarted Stephen Decatur’s attempt to sneak through a British blockade.

Stephen Decatur.

A British squadron had chased Decatur’s three warships up the river from Long Island Sound in June, a year after the War of 1812 broke out. For six months, Decatur and his men remained stuck five miles upriver, unable to do more than nurse a hearty distaste for New London.

So when Decatur saw those blue lights, he immediately understood them as signals to warn the British of his attempted escape.

War of 1812

New England as a whole objected to the War of 1812, which brought hard times to the region. Banks failed, poorhouses overflowed and unemployment approached 50 percent of the workforce. New London faced the additional menace of a British invasion because of Decatur’s presence on the Thames River.

No one ever found out whether a British spy or an American traitor lit the mysterious blue lights. But the publicity surrounding the affair tarnished New England’s dominant political party, the Federalists, who implacably opposed the War of 1812.

Decatur vs. New London

U.S. Navy Commodore Stephen Decatur in 1813 was fresh off a military triumph. In 1812, his frigate United States captured the HMS Macedonian off the Canary Islands. Decatur had the ship repaired and refitted, and hauled his prize back to New York for wartime duty on the American side.

In June, a British squadron spotted Decatur’s three warships in Long Island Sound off Montauk Point. Decatur, with no room to maneuver, ordered his ships to flee up the Thames River. Two Revolutionary-era forts could protect the river from either side: Fort Trumbull in New London and Fort Griswold in Groton.

But New London, a hotbed of Federalism, resented both the war and Decatur. New Londoners treated Decatur not as a hero, but with “scathing remarks implying cowardice, duplicity, and other invectives.”

New London, 1813

The New Londoners exasperated Decatur. He tried to order Connecticut’s militia commander, Jorah Isham, to reinforce the old forts. Isham refused. Then when a U.S. Army general arrived to oversee New London’s defense, Isham disbanded the militia.

Decatur ended up building his own fort upriver and thoroughly disliking New Londoners.

Blue Lights

The USS United States

So on the night of December 18, the tide was right and so was the moon. Stephen Decatur planned to slip through the British blockaders. In total darkness, several guard boats cautiously guided his warships out of New London Harbor.

Just then a lookout whispered to an officer that he saw one of the blue lights burning near Fort Trumbull. Another of the blue lights burned near Fort Griswold on the Groton side of the river.

Decatur, furious, turned back. His warships never escaped. In April 1814, his men dismantled the vessels and Decatur returned to New York by land.

A Gross Libel

But days after the blue lights incident, he told his story to the editor of the New London Gazette and to the Navy Secretary. He believed treasonous New London Federalists had burned the blue lights to foil his escape.

The Gazette condemned the “traitorous wretches who dare thus to give the enemy over those great and gallant men.” The Gazette asked who had lit “these wicked lights, these torches of treason.”

The USS United States capturing HMS Macedonia

Indignant, New Londoners responded. They said the blue lights probably came from innocent fishermen or British spies. Maybe Decatur even made them up to excuse his failure to run the blockade.

The town’s Federalist congressman, Lyman Law, demanded an inquiry to clear up the matter. Federalist newspapers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut excoriated the Gazette for its “foul misrepresentation” and its “gross libel on the People of that patriotic state.”

Nonetheless, the incident tainted the Federalist Party – the party of Washington, Adams and Hamilton. “Blue light Federalist” stuck as an insult until 1833.

Blue Lights and a Convention

A year after the mysterious blue lights infuriated Stephen Decatur, New England Federalists met secretly in Hartford. They wanted to air their grievances with the war and with the Democratic-Republic administration of James Madison.

The so-called Hartford Convention included some Federalists who probably wanted New England to secede from the United States. The convention, however, didn’t recommend secession. The Federalists’ enemies promoted the fiction that it had.

The convention in Hartford and the blue lights in New London consequently gave Connecticut a reputation for disloyalty.

The Federalist Party fared even worse. Shortly after the Hartford Convention ended, so did the War of 1812. The Federalists fell from public favor, except in New England, and never regained power.

This story about the blue lights of New London was updated in 2023.

Image: Map of New London (cropped) By DigbyDalton – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30432617.

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The British Burn the Capitol – and Some New Englanders Celebrate

On August 24, 1814 the British troops stationed around the Chesapeake Bay during the War of 1812 made a march to Washington. Facing minimal and ineffective opposition, they then proceeded to burn the Capitol.

The British burn the Capitol

Leaving the citizenry largely unmolested, the troops also torched the building we now know as the White House, the Treasury and a host of others.

The British Burn the Capitol

All semblance of order had, for the most part, been expunged from the American militias. Their training, what little they had, consisted of a day of drills punctuated by wild drunkenness. Further, James Madison’s secretary of war thought Washington an unlikely target. So he spent more resources fortifying bustling port cities, such as Baltimore.

To the British army, fresh from thrashing Napoleon, sacking Washington was not much of an adventure. In New England, the leading political leaders of the day took it as simply one more sign that they were right and President James Madison was wrong – about almost everything.

For years, Washington’s policies disillusioned New England merchants. Admitting Louisiana as a state rankled. So did the counting of slaves as three-fifths of a man to determine representation in Congress.

After the British decided to burn the Capital, this is what it looked like.

But the trade embargoes of 1807 and 1813 were the real menace. These had severely hurt the merchants of the New England port towns. Though the embargoes spurred domestic manufacturing, the Federalists in power in government cared more about trade and finance.

They had tried in vain to stop the war. They’d even threatened to withhold support for U.S. loans unless they got their way in negotiated peace talks.

‘Let the British come’

The British didn’t just burn Washington. They also attacked Louisiana, New York and Maine, then part of Massachusetts. The assaults provided more evidence that Madison’s Democratic-Republicans had gotten the country into an extremely costly war.

Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut had all refused to send militias to join the war effort. In retaliation, Madison removed federal troops from New England, leaving the region to fend for itself.

With the attack on Maine, many worried that a British attack on the southern New England ports was now imminent. The Federalist leadership, however, remained sanguine.

Samuel Dexter

“Let the British come, anything is better than this accursed war,” New Englanders said, according to Federalist Samuel Dexter.

Give Peace a Chance

Here the matter stood, until word reached New Englanders that in Alexandria, Va. – another Federalist enclave – the inhabitants had welcomed the British into the city. They laid down arms, but the British troops stole their belongings. That gave the governors of New England pause, and it prompted them to build some limited defenses.

But mostly the fear of Britain only intensified the Federalists’ desire for peace with Britain and a return to trade with England and France.

Harrison Gray Otis

Harrison Gray Otis of Massachusetts, a leading Federalist, was one of the wealthiest men in the country. Otis and other Federalists called for a “convention” of the Federalists in Hartford.

Hartford Convention

The convention idea carried danger with it. It could turn volatile, and people could view it as an effort by New England to secede.

With official representatives from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont (and unofficial representatives from New Hampshire and Vermont), the Hartford Convention met in December and into January of 1815. Hardliners pushed for the states to secede, creating an enormous sense o drama.

Otis, a more moderate member of the Federalist establishment, pushed for a middle road. The states, he argued, should demand a series of changes to the Constitution.

The Demands

No trade embargoes could last more than 60 days, and they must require support from two-thirds of the congress to pass.
No new states could join the union without support from two-thirds of Congress.
Abolish the three-fifths rule that counted a slave as three-fifths of a man to calculate representation in the House of Representatives.
A declaration of war would require support from two-thirds of Congress.
States would receive federal tax dollars to support militias.
Presidents could serve only one term.
No president could serve as president if he came from the same state as his immediate predecessor.
No one not born in the United States could hold public office.

A New England Nation?

The London press followed the convention’s progress with enthusiasm and praised the New England states. A new nation organized in New England, they said, would make an admirable ally.

Armed with this list of demands, Otis and two colleagues marched off toward Washington and, as it turned out, political oblivion. By the time the Federalists arrived in Washington to press their case with Congress and the president, the issues were moot.

By February of that year, Andrew Jackson routed the British troops in the Battle of New Orleans. Further, the British began tiring of the war. Public opinion was highly critical of the soldiers decision to burn the Capitol and other government buildings.

With the war with France over, the British needed to restore trade with its former ally. It also didn’t need to prevent U.S. trade with France any more. And, the British military concluded, a war to take control of the United States would simply cost too much.

Both sides then agreed to a treaty that returned things basically to the status quo before the war. America could trade with the British and the French. The British retained their rights to force American seamen to serve on British ships. But without the war with France fueling the need for sailors, impressment didn’t arise as a major concern.

As for Otis, the press had a good laugh at him and the demands of the Hartford Convention. In the South the Federalist party was ruined forever, synonymous with treason and failing to support the country in a time of war.

This story was updated in 2021.

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