The Eye of the Storm
New York & The Quartering Act ∙ Champagne Charlies ∙ The Townshend Acts ∙ Nonconsumption & Nonimportation ∙ A Farmer in Pennsylvania ∙ Lord North Takes Charge ∙ The Massachusetts Circular Letter ∙ Impressment by the Romney ∙ The Seizure of the Liberty ∙ The Glorious Ninety-Two ∙ The Sons of Liberty Rise Again ∙ Redcoats to Boston
The Townsend Acts
A decade would pass between the repeal of the Stamp Act and the battles of Lexington and Concord, which is considered by most to be the ‘official’ beginning of the American War of Independence. Though the Stamp Act crisis had passed, another was around the corner. Patriot leaders took the lessons of the Stamp Act to heart, and they would press for the same sort of intercolonial unity that had been so critical to the effectiveness of the boycotts that helped put the Stamp Act in its grave. Even more, they would lean more heavily on reasoned, logical, and constitutional protests than on riots and violence.
In this vein they paid particular attention to leading philosophers on natural law, constitutional government, and individual rights. Philosophers ancient and modern were brought to the head of patriotic fervor. The radicals’ obsession with philosophy, political science, and the lessons of history would, over the next decade, lead to the rise of gifted and determined leaders and the forging of a coherent political philosophy. The historian Page Smith notes, ‘The American Revolution began in 1765 with resistance to the Stamp Act. It was then in its most radical phase; in the years that followed it became more and more moderate, more and more carefully tuned and modulated, more and more sophisticated in its ideology, and in its strategies as well as its tactics. The American Revolution is thus distinguished from other revolutions in that its most radical popular phase came first, its moderate phase last.’
The repeal of the Stamp Act fostered a boom in colonial pride: the colonists considered that they, by their petitions and boycotts, had been instrumental in defeating the Stamp Act. British merchants, however, saw the repeal in an entirely different light: whereas the colonists believed they had defeated the Stamp Act by their grit, determination, and resolve, the British merchants were convinced they had rescued the Americans from themselves. These merchants insisted that the Americans put a swift end to their childish bickering about Parliamentary taxation; the Virginia planter, George Mason, observed that their addresses to the colonies resembled ‘the authoritative style of a Master to a school-boy: “We have, with infinite difficulty and fatigue got you excused from this one time; pray be a good boy for the future; do what your Papa and Mama bid you, and hasten to return them your most grateful acknowledgements for condescending to let you keep what is your own; and then all your acquaintance will love you, and praise you, and give you pretty things… [But] if you are a naughty boy, and turn obstinate, and don’t mind what your Papa and Mama say to you, but presume to think their commands (let them be what they will) unjust or unreasonable, or even seem to ascribe their present indulgence to any other motive than excess of moderation and tenderness, and pretend to judge for yourselves, when you are not arrived at the years of discretion, or capable of distinguishing between good and evil; then everybody will hate you, and say you are a graceless and undutiful child; your parents and masters will be obliged to whip you severely, and your friends will be ashamed to say anything in your excuse; nay they will be blamed for your faults.”’
British merchants, though glad that the Stamp Act had been repealed in wake of the boycott, feared that the repeal would invigorate colonial haughtiness, leading, perhaps, to more damaging boycotts in the future. Their fears were soon to be realized, and a portent of the future came on the heels of the repeal. The colonial victory in Parliament empowered the colonists, and their resentment of the older acts of Parliament – such as the duty on molasses and the Currency Act – only grew. Popular sentiment was primed to question any Parliamentary decree, and the Quartering Act in New York City became a hotbed of contention – and a headache for General Thomas Gage, commander of British forces in North America.
In 1766 the New York legislature refused to abide by the terms of the Quartering Act from the year prior. This act required colonies to house troops in barracks, taverns, or vacant buildings (though not in private homes). Furthermore, the Act required the colonies to supply the troops with their enumerated provisions, firewood, candles, and cider or beer. When the Quartering Act passed, most British troops were stationed in the west in the aftermath of the French and Indian War, but the Stamp Act Crisis found them steadily moving east, and the newcomers were scattered across the Hudson and clustered around Albany in the colony of New York. The New York landlords used the troops in quelling an uprising by tenant farmers, but when it came to providing for the British regulars who had put a stop to the insurrection, the New York legislature refused to acknowledge their responsibilities even when the paper document was passed before their eyes. New Yorkers argued that since the British troops stationed in their colony were there to protect all the colonies, they shouldn’t have to pay for all the upkeep. Why, after all, should they be tasked with paying for the protection of their neighbors? The citizens of New York feared that if they acquiesced to the Quartering Act, the cost to them would increase year by year until they were bled dry; and if London saw that they were willing to pay for the army, why not make them pay for the navy as well? Furthermore, the legislature saw the Quartering Act as yet another Parliamentary attempt at taxing the colonies absent colonial assent; and inspired by the repeal of the Stamp Act, they felt they had the clout to refuse. Little by little, however, the legislatures began to retract, providing funds to build barracks in Albany and New York. By finding money that had been available since 1762, they proclaimed that they weren’t abiding by the Act; and in truth they weren’t, as they still refused to provide drink, salt, and vinegar as proscribed.
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| a map of New York City in 1797 |
The North American and West Indian merchants had forged a temporary brotherhood in the wake of the American boycotts, and their union had been instrumental in forging the repeal of the Stamp Act. This ‘merchant alliance’, which had been such an asset to the Rockingham administration, became a liability when Rockingham supported a proposal to establish a free port in the West Indies. The merchants felt betrayed, and their alliance crumbled – and Rockingham’s power began to disintegrate along with it. His political tumble opened space for Grenville to maneuver back into power. George III, whose loathing of Grenville was no secret, sought a new ally in an old hero: the aging William Pitt. Anticipating Grenville’s upcoming power grab, the king dismissed Rockingham and put Pitt in his place.
Pitt took the Privy Seal (a title absent function) and received an earldom, and henceforth he would be known as the Earl of Chatham. He moved from the House of Commons (the lower house of Parliament) to the House of Lords (the upper house). The king had sought after Pitt no less than three times, but Pitt declined each time; now, at age 57, he was coming off a five year political ‘sabbatical,’ and the effects showed: though he had continued attending Parliament, he usually professed ignorance or apathy towards the debates. Allowed to choose his own ministry, Pitt named the Duke of Grafton as the First Lord of the Treasury. Grafton was young and rich, and his opponents mocked him as a horse jockey with a whore as a mistress; these accusations weren’t off-base, for he spent an inordinate amount of time riding horses and sleeping with a certain Ms. Parsons when he should have been tending to official business. As the First Lord of the Treasury, he ostensibly headed the government. Having been elected by Pitt, Grafton stood in awe, as he all but worshipped the Earl of Chatham. Pitt appointed the Earl of Shelburne as the Secretary of State for the Southern Department; although talented at persuasion and pacification, Shelburne was a shy introvert who didn’t feel at ease in the political realm. Henry Conway remained the Secretary of State for the Northern Department; Camden became the Lord Chancellor; and Egmont, who despised Pitt, headed the Admiralty. Northington, a King’s Friend, became president of the Council. And in a move that would ripple down history, Pitt elected Charles Townshend as the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
As Chatham’s administration started the new year, Rockingham had lots of hopes – but these hopes ran contrary to those of Chatham. Pitt favored the colonists and understood their grievances, making Townshend’s place in his ministry an odd breed. Pitt declared as his goal to ‘crush faction, end the instability of the previous half-dozen years, and restore peace and harmony to the government of England.’ His more pragmatic goals – to bring the East India Company under control and to settle colonial problems – met stiff resistance. For all his ambitions, Pitt’s bad health got the best of him: bent low under chronic gout and plagued with increasing mental lapses, in 1767 this ‘lunatic with a crutch’ (according to The Chronicle) abandoned the stress of government and secluded himself at his country estate in Bath. He didn’t feign isolation but embraced it, refusing to admit but a few visitors. Absent their pinnacle of leadership, Pitt’s administration had no choice but to keep trucking forward. At first Grafton, the Lord of the Treasury, called the shots, but the hardheaded, bullying Townshend usurped his place as the engine behind the administration. Pitt, Grafton, and Conway were amicable towards the colonies; who, after all, could forget Pitt’s defiant speech before Parliament during the debates regarding the future of the Stamp Act? Had Pitt not resigned to Bath, and had Grafton summoned the nerve to stand tall against Townshend, perhaps the crown would’ve learned the lessons from the Stamp Act debacle and played kindly with the colonies. But Townshend would have none of that.
Chatham’s absence opened a power vacuum he was determined to seize. He loathed the repeal of the Stamp Act (though, ironically, he had voted for it), and he believed Rockingham’s ministry had blundered in their treatment of the colonies. He joined hands with those staunch hardliners who were convinced that the biggest problem in the colonies was a lack of gratitude; and as historian Page Smith notes, “The call for gratitude is the unmistakable signal that all moral authority has been dissipated; nothing is left but a generally fruitless appeal to gratitude. It is the cry of all parents who have lost, usually through their own obtuseness, the obedience of their children. And so Mother England mourned her ungrateful children, and was determined to punish them.’
As the Parliamentary sessions of 1767 drew near, Townshend began piecing together a plan that would deal with the two biggest issues in colonial America: the refusal of the New York Assembly to abide by the Quartering Act and the need to raise revenue in the colonies to pay for the troops who protected them against the native Americans to the west. The Parliamentary sessions opened with debates on the cost of the army. The army wanted 400,000 pounds for their troops stationed in America, and Grenville suggested the colonies pay half that cost out of their own pockets. It was for their defense, after all. Parliament balked at this (the memories of the Stamp Act crisis were still sharp), but Townshend, the true head of Chatham’s administration, pledged that a good deal of the revenue (though far from half) would indeed be raised across the Atlantic. Chatham was suffering failing health when he received news of Townshend’s pledge, but that didn’t keep him from working to oppose it. He perceived Townshend’s power and sought to dethrone him by replacing him with Lord North, but North refused the appointment. Exhausted and sickly, Chatham did nothing else to upset Townshend; he simply returned to his private life in Bath. Perhaps he knew he lacked the stamina to wrangle power back after so long an absence, or perhaps he was acting in synch with a cavalier ‘to hell with it’ attitude that so many of us adopt when we’re knowingly approaching our demise. The Parliamentary debates continued without him, and though the ministers on the one hand accused him of deserting them, those on the other refused to heed his counsel when he gave it.
In May 1767 Townshend offered his proposal for dealing with the recalcitrant New York Assembly and the need to raise funds for the British troops stationed overseas. As to the latter, British forces in America would be cut by half, and the cost of maintaining them would be wholly shifted to the colonists. Because the royal officials tasked with carrying out Parliament’s orders were hampered by their dependence on the colonial assemblies, Townshend suggested that they be paid directly by the crown so that they would become independent executives freed to enforce Parliament’s decisions, especially in regards to the new taxes to be levied. Townshend thought that he could avoid the chaos that ensued after the Stamp Act by enforcing ‘external’ rather than ‘internal’ taxes. The Stamp Act tax had been internal (in the sense that they were collected at places of business), but the taxes he proposed would be external (in the sense that these import duties, in the form of commercial regulations, would be collected at ports of trade). Townshend’s error, shared by many of those within Parliament, was assuming that the colonists made a strong distinction between internal and external taxes. In the confusing morass of the Stamp Act fiasco, it became assumed ‘common knowledge’ among Parliamentarians that the colonists made such distinctions; in reality, however, the colonists did no such thing. Though they addressed ‘internal’ and ‘external’ taxes, the motivation was from a sweeping condemnation of any taxes outside representation; the idea that they firmly held to such a distinction outside the polemics of argument against the Stamp Act was a reality that was ‘lost in translation’ across the Atlantic. Thus Townshend’s entire argument rested upon an erroneous assumption regarding colonial beliefs about taxes.
Since the colonists had accepted the Trade and Navigation Acts, Townshend mused, why should they get upset about these new taxes, which could be viewed as extensions of those earlier acts? These ‘external taxes’ would be placed on a list of certain English manufactured goods that were craved by the colonies (such as glass, paper, certain painters’ materials, and tea). According to the mercantilist laws of the time, these items couldn’t be manufactured in the colonies and thus had to be purchased from England. The money raised by these taxes would be used in ‘defraying the charge for the administration of justice and support of civil government… and further defraying the expense of defending, protecting and securing’ the British colonies. In other words, the revenue would be used not only to pay the British troops stationed in the colonies but also to pay the civil authorities (colonial governors, judges, etc.) so that they would be freed from dependence upon colonial legislatures. The colonists would be paying for a heavier hand on their backs – and it was just the beginning of what Townshend had in mind.
To make sure these taxes were raised, Townshend suggested two accompanying acts. The first would established an American Board of Customs Commissioners directly subordinate to the British Treasury, with its headquarters in Boston, and this Board would be invested with extensive powers to oversee and enforce the trade laws. Grenville wanted all colonial officials to take an oath upholding the Declaratory Act in which they agreed that ‘the colonies and plantations in America are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.’ Parliament loved Grenville’s idea, but the Commons rejected it for being both redundant and provocative. In addition to establishing a new board of trade in the colonies, Townshend wanted to revive the writs of assistance (or general search warrants) that had caused such contention in the colonies six years earlier. Furthermore, Townshend proposed a revived Vice-Admiralty Court in which to deal with smugglers evading trade laws.
And what to do about the cantankerous New York Assembly? Townshend offered an easy solution: just suspend the Assembly until it agreed to comply with the lawful Quartering Act. The Earl of Shelburne, Secretary of State for the Southern Department and the man ostensibly in charge of colonial affairs, wanted to go further: he suggested sending a military officer to govern New York with the power ‘to act with force or gentleness as circumstances might make necessary,’ and that this military governor be given authority to house troops in private homes if the Assembly continued to be uncooperative. Shelburne went so far as to suggest in a private letter to Pitt that anyone who wrote (or even spoke!) against the Quartering Act should be considered guilty of high treason and subject to trial in Great Britain if it was deemed impossible to get a guilty verdict in the colonies. Pitt wisely ignored him, and Parliament sensibly discarded Shelburne’s volatile ideas, but Townshend didn’t back down on his desire to suspend the New York Assembly.
It didn’t take a savant to see that Townshend’s proposals would foment trouble across the Atlantic. The Rockinghams, having fallen from power in the wake of the Stamp Act’s repeal, couldn’t gather enough support to overcome Townshend’s proposals. Edmund Burke prophesied that England wouldn’t see a single shilling from the colonies and that when news of the acts reached America, it would throw the colonists ‘into despair.’ Burke’s warnings went unheeded, and by the end of June 1767 Townshend’s proposals were integrated into legislation and approved. The Revenue Act of 1767 (known in immortality as The Townshend Acts) would go into effect in October that year – and in one fell swoop the new administration had ushered in another chapter of unrest and discontent within the colonies. Historian Robert Middlekauff notes, ‘What Townshend and Parliament had done in the Revenue Act was to revive fears and resentments in a people already convinced that a plot against their liberty and property had been hatched in 1765. Moreover, the plan to pay royal officials with the money raised simply made the statute worse. Not only were colonial pockets about to be picked, but another constitutional protection was to be removed.’
When news of the Townshend Acts reached America, it was met with a trifecta of objections. The colonists objected first of all to Townshend’s creation of a Board of Customs Commissioners directly under crown control; secondly they objected to the writs of assistance that empowered customs officials to conduct free-for-all searches in homes and businesses; and most of all they objected to the manner in which governors, judges, and other royal officials would be paid by the crown rather than by the people they served. Not everyone, however, objected to the acts. An American merchant in London wrote, ‘The great object [of the acts] is the reduction of the public debt and the encouragement of every branch of commerce, upon which the national credit wholly depends.’ From his perspective (a perspective shared both inside and out of the colonies), the welfare of the British empire, which was itself the welfare of the American colonies, amounted to more than the tea-kettle whining about ‘precious liberties.’ Such people believed that colonial firebrands who made such a big deal of their principles were, at heart, self-serving.
The future of colonial agitation spun on the pendulum of the Suspending Act of 1767, incorporated into the so-called Townshend Acts, which was set to go into effect on 1 October that year. On that date the New York legislature would be deprived of its right to pass acts, and all acts passed after that date would be declared ‘null and void’ – so long as the legislature persisted in its opposition to the Quartering Act. In an odd case of redundancy, Governor Moore – who had succeeded Cadwallader Colden – was ordered to veto any legislation passed after that date. If and when the New York Assembly complied with the Quartering Act, the suspension would be lifted.
Many colonists questioned the constitutionality of the Quartering Act, but most were actually amicable towards it. Even the troublemaker Samuel Adams, despite protesting in a letter to a friend that the Quartering Act should be resisted in the same vein as the Stamp Act, added, ‘If a number [of soldiers] should happen to come into a province through necessity and stand in need of supplies, as is the case at present here, it is not a disgrace to us to suppose we should be so wanting in humanity, or in regard to our Sovereign as to refuse him the aid with our free consent.’
The issue, of course, was free consent.
And all things being equal, the New York Assembly held its ground.
Across the Atlantic Pitt had written to Lord Shelburne prior to the Parliamentary debates of 1767 that a ‘spirit of infatuation has taken possession of New York. Their disobedience to the Mutiny Act [a.k.a. the Quartering Act] will justly create a ferment here, open a fair field to the arraigners of America, and leave no room to any to say a word in their defense.’ As we have seen, his prophecy rang true, and Townshend and his cronies were eager to sink their teeth into the New York Assembly. Pitt’s prophetic abilities went even further afield a few days later, when he wrote that New York had ‘drunk the deepest of the baneful cup of infatuation, but none [of the colonies] seem to be quite sober and in full possession of reason. It is a literal truth to say that the Stamp Act of most unhappy memory has frightened those irritable and umbrageous people quite out of their senses.’ Townshend’s heavy-handedness against the New York Assembly would begin turning the wheel of colonial agitation yet again, and the epicenter of this turning would find its spark – and eventual conflagration – in Boston.
The Boston patriots found the dissolution of the New York Assembly nothing short of an outrage, and they petitioned Governor Bernard to call a special gathering of the Great and General Court so that Bostonians could hash out ways to support their beleaguered sister colony. Bernard refused to cow before their demands, so the patriot leaders called their own meeting on 28 October 1767. By the end of their meeting they proposed a resolution encouraging local manufacture in addition to a ‘nonconsumption’ agreement that forbid supporters of ‘colonial liberty’ from purchasing English goods. The patriots unleashed an advertising campaign for ‘buying American’: women ought to content themselves with simple clothes rather than English finery, and whiskey – hailed as ‘a real American drink, by God’ – ought to be consumed in place of rum. The patriot advertisers declared that by choosing whiskey over rum, Americans would be ‘a more hardy and manly race of people when our constitutions are no longer jaundiced nor our juices vitiated by abominable West Indian distillations.’ Tea, a staple of the American diet, could be brewed at home with pine needles. Such ‘Pine Needle Tea’ was said to ‘far surpass the teas of India, whether in fragrance, color or virtue.’ This was the epitome of false advertising, to be sure. The patriot leaders knew that nonconsumption would hurt the interests of British merchants, and though the patriots may have relished the thought of a fresh wave of riots, they remembered that the pleas of the merchants in the wake of American boycotts during the Stamp Act Crisis served their aims better than wanton violence. The Bostonian patriots, unlike the ministers in Parliament, had taken the lessons of 1765 to heart: they would put their faith in economic pressure rather than in crowds of club-wielding malcontents.
When Massachusetts’ Great and General Court opened on official business that fall, the patriots strove to give their unofficial nonconsumption agreement the air of legality, asking the legislature to adopt a colony-wide nonconsumption agreement. The legislature, despite its sympathies for New York, didn’t want to go that far. But the patriots didn’t give up: they met with a number of Bostonian merchants and created a nonimportation agreement in which agreeable merchants would refuse to import English commodities except for salt, coal, fishing supplies, lead, and shot for the next year. This nonimportation agreement differed from the earlier nonconsumption agreement in that whereas the former was a refusal to buy certain English goods already unloaded in the colonies, the latter was a refusal to even import such goods. The merchants, fearing that they would be losing money for no purpose if they were alone in nonimportation, refused to comply unless New Yorkers and Philadelphian merchants jumped on board. New York, much embittered by the dissolution of its assembly, agreed to join; but Philadelphia toed the line and refused to commit. Though frustrated, the Bostonian patriots pressed on: they called a town meeting in August 1768 and called for the nonimportation of all British goods for the next year. Bostonian merchants were to be persuaded; and if they couldn’t be persuaded, they were to be forced to comply. Many Bostonian merchants weren’t keen on losing money to the patriot cause, but the patriots retaliated with threats against their lives and property. Come nightfall their ‘signs, doors, and windows were daubed over… with every kind of filth, and one of them particularly had his person treated in the same manner.’ Such ‘persuasive’ methods happened up and down the Atlantic seaboard: in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, nonimportation supporters pledged ‘never [to] have any fellowship or correspondence’ with those who violated nonimportation; additionally, those who continued trading with Great Britain were to have their names published ‘to the world… as a lasting monument to infamy.’ In a communal society such as that in the colonies, public humiliation was far more a deterrent than it is today. In Virginia, the social fabric became to rip asunder: in one instance, a miller refused to grind the corn of an Anglican clergyman who spoke against ‘the danger and sin of rebellion’; to make matters worse, patriotic doctors refused to treat his sick wife and children.
The ball of economic pressure went a-rolling in Boston, implemented by force where need be, and the ball gained steam. The New York chapter of the Sons of Liberty joined the nonimportation agreement as soon as word reached them of Boston’s decision. The cautious Philadelphians didn’t leap to join; their legislature had sent a petition to Parliament asking for relief from the new duties, and they didn’t want to hinder its affect. But when Parliament ignored their petition, Philadelphia adopted nonimportation in March 1769. The southern colonies didn’t depend on commerce as much as those in the north, so their adoption of nonimportation was slower going. In Virginia, Colonel George Washington took the floor in the House of Burgesses, read a text of Resolves, and reaffirmed the claim that only Virginians could tax Virginians. He denounced the British ministry for its harshness towards Boston, and he decried threats from England that a 200-year-old law from the days of Henry VIII could be dredged up to ship patriots to England to be tried for treason. Many of the Virginians present – including Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry – had friends who could be on such a short-list – and many of their own names would be on it. When Washington took his seat, no one rose to oppose him; the Speaker called for a vote, and the Burgesses approved Washington’s motion. The next day, Virginia’s royal governor Lord Botetourt dissolved the House, so the members abandoned the capitol and reconvened at the Raleigh Tavern. Here they began whittling together a statement in which they joined Massachusetts in nonimportation; the vote was passed in May, and they sent out letters to notify the other colonies of their decision. Maryland joined nonimportation the month after Virginia; South Carolina threw in their lot, and its resolution of nonimportation began, ‘We, his Majesty’s dutiful and loving subjects,’ and declared that until ‘the colonies be restored to their former freedom’ by the repeal of the Townshend Acts, the signers would ‘encourage and promote the use of North American manufactures’ and refuse to import ‘any of the manufactures of Great Britain, or any other European or East Indian goods.’ By the middle of 1769, all of the colonies were enforcing nonimportation agreements.
This sweeping nonimportation agreement is notable for two reasons. First, it shows, as aforementioned, that the Sons of Liberty and their patriot sidekicks saw the value in reasonable rather than reactionary opposition. As the years progressed, the boycott would shrink British exports to America by half, and several members of the ministry would advocate a policy of conciliation, going so far as to proposing a wholesale repeal of the Townshend Acts (but George III, fearing the repercussions of such a repeal, famously demanded that ‘there must always be one tax to keep up the right’ to tax). Secondly, the united front of colonial assemblies embracing the nonimportation agreement revealed a heretofore unseen level of intercolonial cooperation. The historian Page Smith notes, ‘[The] contacts between patriot leaders in various colonies, the “ripening of counsels,” the opening of lines of communication or the strengthening of lines already established during the Stamp Act crisis, were all-important steps in the development of colonial solidarity and the capacity for concerted action.’
It can be argued that had the Stamp Act crisis never taken place, Townshend’s port duties would have garnished little fanfare; but in the wake of 1765, things just weren’t the same. Townshend had correctly pointed out that his duties were little more than extensions of the Navigation Acts that the colonies had nonchalantly accepted for decades, but because of the rhetoric of the Stamp Act crisis (both within and without the colonies), these duties were now viewed as oppressive. The colonists felt that they had forced the repeal of the Stamp Act by their earlier boycott, so it made sense to express their displeasure in the same way with the Townshend Acts.
A Farmer in Pennsylvania
The British Ministry, learning of the nonimportation agreement’s march through the colonies, ordered the colonial governors to force the legislatures to rescind any and all resolutions directed against the Townshend Acts and to dissolve the assemblies if they refused. About half of the colonial governors obeyed, and thus the New York Assembly received a newfound common cause with a number of colonies up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The ministers had hoped that the threat of dissolution would bring the colonial legislatures to their senses, but it only served to further stoke the flames – and the flame would become an inferno in at the turn of the 1770s with what’s gone down in history as ‘The Boston Massacre.’ But, alas, we are getting ahead of ourselves.The nonimportation agreements serve as a sort of overreaching theme of colonial resistance between 1768 and 1770. Riots and outbreaks of violence, such as had accompanied resistance to the Stamp Act, were rare. That isn’t to say, of course, that nothing of importance happened during these years. One could argue that these disgruntled albeit peaceful years were the ‘seasoning’ of the trials to come. Passion and emotion were the hallmarks of resistance to the Stamp Act, but as patriots held their breath in anticipation of London’s next move, they were simultaneously formulating reasonable and philosophical objections to (what they viewed as) Parliament’s belligerence. It was important, according to one historian, that ‘resistance be orderly and dignified and supported at every stage by closely reasoned arguments.’ A case study of such reasoning is found in John Dickinson’s series of twelve letters entitled A Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies (essayists of colonial days didn’t value succinctness as we do today!).
Dickinson’s first letter was published by the Philadelphia Chronicle before being picked up by the Boston Gazette on 14 December 1767. The Gazette was a radical Whig weekly, and its publishers – Benjamin Edes and John Gill – were ‘mouthpieces’ for the Sons of Liberty. Dickinson’s letter would be the first of twelve to be published in the colonies, and his series had a wide audience, being printed in all but four of the major colonial newspapers and republished across the Atlantic in Paris and Dublin. His letters would have a mind-boggling impact on the colonial consciousness that wouldn’t be matched until the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1776.
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Dickinson’s ‘treasonous’ thesis went as follows: ‘Parliament had no power to tax for revenue; the Townshend Acts violated all known [English] rights; [and] the suspension of the New York Assembly set a precedent that could strangle any elected colonial body.’ Dickinson wrote that the Townshend Acts were the result of the sordid arts of intriguing men whose pestilential ambition could only alienate the colonies and sow discord. He attacked two of the biggest bones of contention in the Acts: the raising of a revenue against the colonies and freeing royal officials from the constraints of colonial legislatures. He argued that while Great Britain had the right to regulate the trade of its colonies, ‘[never] did the British Parliament [until recently] think of imposing duties in America for the purpose of raising a revenue… This I call an innovation; and a most dangerous innovation.’ Townshend’s policies were nothing short of an assault on colonial liberties; the revenue raised would be used to pay royal colonial officers to free them from the constraints of their constituents. This would reduce the legislatures to passing only sanctioned laws ‘for the yoking of pigs’ or the ‘pounding of stray cattle.’ He gave voice to the fear gnawing at the colonists: with judges dependent solely on the crown, and given backbone by a standing army, ‘what innumerable acts of injustice may not be committed, and how fatally may the principle of liberty be sapped by a succession of judges utterly independent of the peoples.’ More further-thinking colonists feared that these crown-fed officers, given years to grow, would turn America into a squierarchy wherein the government would be run by a handful of powerful families and their allies. Liberty would be squashed to powder and washed away with the slightest rain.
In lieu of these dangers, what, Dickinson asked, was the appropriate response? He called upon the colonists to react: ‘[Behold] the ruin hanging over your heads. If you ONCE admit that Great Britain may lay duties on her exportations to us for the purpose of levying money on us,’ would she not levy duties on all manufactures she supplied? In that case ‘the tragedy of American liberty is finished.’ He continued, ‘Can the Parliament legally take money out of our pockets WITHOUT OUR CONSENT? If they can, our boasted liberty is but Vox et Praeterae nihil (A voice, and nothing else.)’
Sensing the passions of those inclined towards violence, Dickinson admitted that the use of force was warranted when the liberties of the governed were at threat of annihilation, and he showed how ‘English history affords frequent examples of resistance by force.’ But force, Dickinson argued, was not yet justified, and he admonished his readers to avoid illegal and violent action. ‘The cause of liberty is a cause of too much dignity to be sullied by turbulence and tumult. It ought to be maintained in a manner suitable to her nature. Those who engage in it should breathe a sedate, yet fervent spirit, animating them to actions of prudence, justice, modesty, bravery, humanity, and magnamity.’ In other words, the beleaguered colonists ought to work within the confines of the English constitution. ‘Let us behave like dutiful children who have received unmerited blows from a beloved parent.’ He gave no whisper to independence (indeed, independence wouldn’t catch on for many years, and the very thought of it was treasonous to only but a handful of the staunchest patriots); he yearned for the trials of his day to be over and the historically harmonious relationship between Great Britain and her colonies restored. He hated the thought of the colonies ‘torn from the body to which we are united by religion, liberty, laws, affections, relations, language and commerce.’
In his twelfth and last letter, Dickinson wrote, ‘[Let] these truths be indelibly impressed on our minds – that we cannot be happy without being free – that we cannot be free without being secure in our property – that we cannot be secure in our property if without our consent others may as by right take it away – that taxes imposed on us by Parliament do thus take it away – that duties laid for the sole purpose of railing money are taxes – that attempts to lay such duties should be instantly and firmly opposed – that this opposition can never be effectual unless it is the united effort of these Provinces – that therefore benevolence of temper towards each other and unanimity of councils are essential to the welfare of the whole – and lastly, that for this reason, every man amongst us who in any manner would encourage either dissension, diffidence, or indifference between these colonies is an enemy to himself and to his country.’
Dickinson’s letters found traction in both the colonies and across the Atlantic, and though praised by the colonists, they were (without surprise) condemned in England. Dickinson, having correspondents on the home island and aware of the ins-and-outs of British propaganda at home, knew how his letters would be taken across the ocean, and he wrote (perhaps more for the benefit of the people of England than for the colonists at home): ‘The people of Great Britain will be told and have been told that they are sinking under an immense debt; that great part has been contracted in defending the colonies, that these are so ungrateful and undutiful that they will not contribute one mite to its payment, nor even to the support of the army now kept up for their defence, protection and security; that they are rolling in wealth and are of so bad and republican a spirit; that they are aiming at independence; that the only way to retain them in obedience is to keep a strict watch over them, and to draw off part of their riches in taxes, and that every burden laid upon them is taking off so much from Great Britain. These [false] assertions will be generally believed…’
Governor Bernard of Massachusetts, for what it’s worth, loved the letters. He sent a copy to Lord Barrington in London[1], saying, ‘[This] is not a fictitious argument but a real one.’ He warned Barrington that if Parliament ignored the ‘American Pretensions,’ the heart and soul of Dickinson’s letters would be confirmed in the colonists’ eyes. Barrington would witness the fulfillment of Bernard’s prophecy.
The colonies-wide acceptance of the nonimportation agreement would likely have been impossible were it not for the patriotic fervor induced by the tracts and pamphlets flooding off the printing presses. Another motivation lie in the Massachusetts Circular Letter, which was adopted by Massachusetts and sent out to the other colonies during the same meeting of the Great and General Court where the patriots’ desire for an official nonconsumption agreement was rejected. Though they were disappointed at the Assembly’s timidity regarding nonconsumption, the Circular Letter was a victory that would bolster their cause.
The letter was drafted in the autumn of 1767 and passed by the Massachusetts House in February 1768. The letter would be sent to Dennis DeBerdt, the province’s agent in England, and it would be circulated among all the other American colonies (hence it being a ‘Circular’ letter), and it included a plea for a colonies-wide united front against the Townshend Acts. In short it condemned the Townshend Acts because they established taxation without representation (a throwback from the Stamp Act Crisis), reiterated that ‘virtual’ colonial representation in England was impossible, and insisted that making colonial judges and governors independent of the people – and, dare we say, even considering doing such a thing – was intolerable. The Circular Letter reemphasized the colonial conviction that ‘as the supreme legislative [Parliament] derives its power and authority from the constitution,’ and that the constitution in turn ‘ascertains and limits both sovereignty and allegiance,’ Parliament couldn’t pass laws that contradicted the constitution ‘without destroying its own foundation.’ It was ‘an essential unalterable right in nature, ingrafted into the British constitution, as a fundamental law, and ever held sacred and irrevocable by the subjects within the real, that what man hath honestly acquired is absolutely his own, when he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent.’ The beleaguered colonists were resolute ‘with a decent firmness’ to ‘assert this natural, constitutional right.’ In truth the Circular Letter wasn’t a radical document. Its main purpose was to persuade colonial legislatures to ‘harmonize with each other’ and rekindle against the Townshend Acts the sort of intercolonial cooperation that had been so effective against the Stamp Act.
Governor Bernard, despite his love for Dickinson’s letters, was infuriated by the Circular Letter, and he noted that ‘time and experience will soon pull the masks off those false patriots who are sacrificing their country to the gratification of their own persons.’ Bernard feared how the new administration in London would take the Circular Letter. Townshend had been struck with a terrible sickness, and he died on 4 September 1767, a month before his policies would take effect in the colonies. The weakly Pitt nominated Lord North to fill the vacancy, and this time North accepted, becoming the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Only a few weeks later Conway resigned from his position as leader of the House of Commons, and it wasn’t long before Shelburne and Pitt tendered their own resignations, leaving North at the administration’s helm. Pitt and Grafton had been somewhat friendly towards the colonies, despite Townshend’s bullheadedness, but North was a different breed altogether: he’d voted for the Stamp Act, voted against its repeal, and had been a proud supporter of the Townshend Acts. He filled the slew of vacancies in his administration with men who believed the only way to bring the colonists to heel was to force them into subservience.
Lord North elected Wills Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough, to fill the newly-created position of Secretary of State for the Colonies. Hillsborough was a hard-liner who thought it foolish to concede anything to the colonies, and when he received word of the Massachusetts Circular Letter, he interpreted it as rebellious hotheads conspiring to ‘promote unwarrantable combinations, and to excite an unjustifiable opposition to the constitutional authority of Parliament.’ He considered Massachusetts’ appeal to the other colonies to be ‘a treasonous cabal, a blatant effort to foment rebellion.’ He showed his iron fist, instructing all colonial governors to order their Assemblies to ignore the Circular Letter or be dissolved. As for the Massachusetts Assembly, it was to be dissolved until it would make an official apology for that ‘rash and hasty proceeding.’ His instructions against the Circular Letter reached Boston, but the timing couldn’t be worse: Boston had subsumed into chaos, and it all began with the arrival of Her Majesty’s Romney, a fifty-gun man-of-war.
The Liberty Affair
The HMS Romney first set sail in 1762 and served as the flagship for Thomas Gage, the British commander-in-chief in America quartered in New York City. In 1768 Captain Corner was tasked with supporting the Townshend Acts in Boston, but upon arriving in Boston his crew was short-handed. He decided to resolve his dilemma via the use of a press gang (pictured here). This was a common practice wherein members of the ship’s crew, led by an officer or two, would go ashore and round up new sailors from the local bars and pubs. Those who were snatched had to choose between service or death, as refusal to serve was viewed as treason. Captain Corner sent a longboat with some officers and crew to the Boston wharves, and it wasn’t long before they grabbed a sailor already employed with the Boston Packet. The sailor was escorted to the Boston Packet to gather his things, but a crowd gathered and started cursing the British sailors and throwing stones (Captain Corner should’ve known that Boston was the absolute worst place to unleash a press gang). The colonists decried the press gang as illegal, since a Parliamentary statute passed a century earlier during the reign of Queen Anne had declared impressment in American waters against the law. The situation heated up, a scuffle ensued, and the impressed sailor managed to writhe free into the safety of the crowd. Captain Corner, who had anchored his fifty-gun Romney close to shore, saw the melee from the ship’s deck and ordered a call to arms, in effect threatening to fire upon the crowd. Corner had crossed a new line: this was the first time a British warship had openly threatened to fire on rowdy colonists. 
In April 1768 the customs commissioners thought they’d finally hooked Hancock when the smuggler had two minor customs officials (called tidesmen) bodily removed from one of his brigs for going below-decks without permission and absent a writ of assistance. The seething commissioners wanted to file criminal charges against Hancock for interfering with customs officers in the performance of their duties, but the attorney general didn’t want to move forward with it because, in his eyes, the tidesmen had indeed overstepped their bounds. The commissioners appealed directly to the Treasury Board in England, and their charges made it clear that they were focusing on Hancock not because his actions were necessarily heinous – they had, in this instance, been legal – but because they wanted to make an example of him for his ‘political offenses.’ Procedural and legal issues took a backseat to what the commissioners viewed as the real crime: challenging royal authority, particularly their authority. They argued that if Hancock were let off the hook, royal authority in America would take another step backwards. Their pleas went nowhere, but they were determined to trip up Hancock.
On 9 May one of Hancock’s sloops, the Liberty, sailed into Boston Harbor – and the commissioners began their backroom dealing. The two tidesmen who boarded the Liberty reported that no cargo was unloaded or undeclared, and passing inspection, Hancock paid the required duty, and the ship’s crew unloaded twenty-six casks of Madeira wine the next day. The Liberty lay at the wharf for nearly a month and took on a new cargo of whale oil and tar. On the morning of 10 June, one of the tidesmen, Thomas Kirk, swore that he lied on his report a month earlier and that, in reality, the inspection hadn’t gone smoothly. Kirk said that the ship’s captain tried to bribe him, and after he refused he was imprisoned below-decks for several hours, during which he could hear the sounds of unloading taking place above him. The captain released him and promised Kirk that he’d be brutally recompensed if he breathed a word of his ordeal to anyone. Kirk was willing to come forward now because the captain who had threatened him had died – but he died on 10 May, the day after the ordeal, so why had Kirk waited so long to break silence? The other tidesman called Kirk a liar, and Kirk retorted that the tidesman wouldn’t know any better since he’d been drunk and passed out at home. The whole ordeal put Hancock and the Liberty in the commissioners’ gun sights, and surely Kirk salivated at the one-thirds profit he’d make from the ship’s proceeds if it were confiscated and sold. The commissioners moved quickly, but the charge they leveled against Hancock had nothing to do with supposedly smuggled wine: they charged him with loading the oil and tar without a permit.
 |
| an illegal unloading of Madeira wine. Though likely innocent of the charge this time, Hancock was a known smuggler. |
The commissioners ordered Comptroller Benjamin Hallowell and Chief Collector Joseph Harrison to seize the Liberty. Hallowell and Harrison, the latter of whom brought along his younger son, descended on the Boston wharves and moved in on the ship. They boarded the sloop at sunset and flashed their papers, and a crowd began gathering on the wharves. The disgruntled dockhands knew better than to keep Hallowell and Harrison from doing their job, and they probably figured that if the sloop was seized, it was only a matter of time before bribes or a biased court saw it back in the water.
But then the HMS Romney got involved. The warship dispatched a longboat that began making its way towards the Liberty. Captain Corner’s men were under orders to take over the sloop and anchor it in the harbor under the man-of-war’s shadow. Seeing the longboat coming towards the wharfs, and remembering Corner’s earlier display of arrogant bravado, the disgruntled dockhands began shifting from their ‘just play nice’ attitude. The longboat came alongside the Liberty and the sailors disembarked on deck. Hallowell and Harrison were sent off the boat, for now it was the navy’s business. As Romney’s men prepared to move her into the harbor, the crowd reached its boiling point and exploded. Members of the crowd clambered over the sides of the Liberty and began swinging at the British sailors. The sailors fought back, keeping the brawlers at bay as they unmoored the sloop. The sailors regained control of the vessel, knocking their assailants back onto the wharf, and they pushed the sloop off into the harbor. No one was killed or badly injured, but tempers were flaring and the crowd, roused to action, turned on Hallowell and Harrison.
Hallowell and Harrison should’ve left the scene the moment they were expunged from the deck; but whether from curiosity or the belief that being in the Romney’s shadow meant no ill hand would befall them, the two men and Harrison's son were suddenly stranded among the hostile crowd as the royal troops steered the Liberty into the deeper waters of the bay. They tried to shoulder their way through the crowd and out the other side; Harrison escaped down a cramped dark alley, but his son was pushed to the ground and dragged along the docks by his hair. Hallowell faced a similar fate: he was knocked down and beaten. By the time a few good-spirited men whisked him away to safety, Hallowell was bruised and covered with blood.
News of the seizure of the Liberty spread through Boston, and the crowd that had gathered on the wharf turned into a mob of several thousand that began terrorizing the city. Customs officials foolish enough to be found on the streets were beaten bloody, and the mob turned on the their houses, frightening their families and breaking windows. Some of the mob returned to the wharves, hoping that the ruckus would’ve drawn the Romney’s longboat back to the wharf – a good scuffle with royal troops always made for a good time! – but the longboat was back under the warship’s shadow alongside Hancock’s confiscated Liberty. Unwilling to leave the wharves without making their presence known, they requisitioned one of the customs officials’ pleasure boats and smashed it to pieces. They carried the dismantled boat into town and used the pieces to fuel a bonfire. The mob didn’t die down and dissipate until nearly one in the morning, but their message was clear: the next day, Saturday of 11 June, the commissioners, customs officials, and their families sought refuge on the cramped decks of the Romney.
The warship’s log noted sixty-seven refugees, a number Captain Corner couldn’t sustain on his ship. It wasn’t long before the refugees were shuttled to the island fortress of Castle William. They knew better than to return to town, so they bunkered down and waited as one of their own boarded a ship for England to give news of what had transpired. That same day Samuel Adams and James Otis, wanting to monopolize the events of the previous day, called a town meeting under the Liberty Tree. A misty rain fell, but that didn’t deter the crowd, which grew so large that they had to move the meeting into Faneuil Hall. Still more people showed up, and they shifted once against to the Old South Meetinghouse. The Bostonians supported a petition to Governor Bernard that complained of ‘an armed force, seizing, impressing, and imprisoning the persons of our fellow subjects.’ Bernard tried to meet them where he could, disavowing the impressments and promising to talk to Captain Corner (a few days later Corner publicly promised not to impress anymore Boston seamen).
On Monday 13 June Bernard called a meeting of his Council. Concerned about the repercussions of Friday night’s mob, he contemplated asking for British troops to be brought to bear on the town. The mounting tensions had reached their boiling point, and the town was spiraling out of control. His position wasn’t one to be envied, and he knew it: he felt torn between ‘two fires,’ the mob on the one hand (which would blame him for further incidents if he called for troops) and the British authorities on the other (who would blame him for the same incidents if he didn’t call for troops). Bernard knew, however, that bringing troops would exacerbate the problem. The best solution was to eradicate his rivals, uproot their invisible government, and break the power by which they transfixed the colonies. Bringing troops to Boston to put the patriots in their place could be interpreted as a declaration of war against the colony, and so he vacillated in indecision. On Monday the 13th he leaned towards placating the British authorities, and he asked his counselors their thoughts on bringing troops to regain order. The counselors didn’t want to throw themselves behind such an action, because they knew they would be targeted just as the customs officials had been (they told Bernard they didn’t want to be ‘knocked on the head’). Rumors of his request filtered down to the Sons of Liberty, and they used the rumored future presence of troops to stoke the fires of discord even higher. The Sons of Liberty proposed to ‘clear the land of vermin, which [will] come to devour them.’ The patriot leaders called a series of town meetings underneath the Liberty Tree, petitioning Bernard to order the Romney out of the harbor, restating their opposition to Parliamentary taxation, and instructing Boston’s House of representatives to try and determine if, indeed, British troops would be making landfall in Boston. Bernard struggled to ascertain the best route forward, and then things got even worse: Hillsborough’s instructions to Bernard – and to all colonial governors – regarding the Massachusetts Circular Letter reached the colonies.
Hillsborough ordered Governor Bernard to dissolve the Massachusetts Assembly until it made an official apology for the Circular Letter. All other colonial governors received similar orders. News of Hillsborough’s orders spread through the town, and John Hancock – who had risen even higher in the peoples’ eyes since the seizure of his Liberty – called a protest meeting. He lamented ‘this dark and difficult season’ and asserted the right of ‘American Subjects’ to petition ‘their gracious Sovereign.’ Representatives from ninety-six Massachusetts towns showed up for the impromptu meeting, and they urged the Assembly to uphold the Circular Letter, even if it meant dissolution. The Assembly passed a vote, and the Circular Letter’s detractors lost by a vote of 17 to 92. The town celebrated the vote with ringing bells and booming cannons. Effigies of the Earl of Hillsborough were hanged and burned. The haggard Bernard read a letter from the Assembly stating that they had made their decision by 'a conscientious… clear and determined sense of duty to God, to our king, our country, and to our latest posterity.' The seventeen who voted for rescinding the Circular Letter were condemned as the ‘Seventeen Slaves’; those who voted to uphold it were praised as the ‘Glorious Ninety-Two.’ The Boston Gazette printed the names of the Glorious Ninety-Two, and members of the Assembly who had been absent during the vote hastily wrote Speaker Cushing to inform him that, had they been present, they would’ve thrown in with the Ninety-Two. Paul Revere designed a commemorative punch bowl to be displayed at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern. He engraved the bowl to the memory of the ‘NINETY-TWO who, undaunted by the insolent Menaces of Villains in Power, from a strict regard to Conscience and the LIBERTIES of their Constituents, on the 30th day of June, 1768, voted NOT TO RESCIND.’ Two pennants carried the words 'Magna Charta' and 'Bill of Rights', and a piece of paper titled 'General Warrants' was torn in pieces.
Boston took the lead, and the other colonies followed. Colonial assemblies voted to uphold the Letter, and those who voted against it were hauled over the coals. In a twist of irony, Hillsborough’s attempts at dismantling colonial unity only forged tighter bonds among them. If the colonies couldn’t stand together, then they would fall together – and fall they did. Up and down the Atlantic seaboard colonial assemblies shut their doors, and in Virginia a soldier who had fought alongside British regulars in the French and Indian War wrote that he was ready to take up arms to defend his liberties. His name was George Washington.
'We Want No King!'
Boston was careening into anarchy, and the Sons of Liberty became the de facto government. The Sons of Liberty had evolved from a radical underground movement with informal (albeit not secret) membership during the years of the Stamp Act to a vast and multifaceted organization with official membership rosters encompassing citizens from all levels of society. They had extended networks and chapters in major cities, and a typical meeting consisted of up to two hundred fifty members gathering together, discussing politics, playing music, drinking spirits, and singing along to tavern songs such as John Dickinson’s ‘Liberty Song.’ In Boston Samuel Adams announced, ‘I am no friend to “Riots, Tumult, and unlawful Assemblies”… but when the people are oppressed, when their rights are infringed, when their property is invaded, when taskmasters are set over them, when unconstitutional acts are executed by a naval force before their eyes, and they are… threatened with military troops, when their legislature is dissolved!... in such circumstances the people will be discontented, and they are not to be blamed.’ By the fall of 1768 Samuel Adams and his compatriots had virtually taken over Boston, and Governor Bernard felt like he had run out of options.Bernard told London that a ‘trained mob’ controlled the town. He thought it clear that ‘it is the intention of the faction here to cause an insurrection against the Crown officers, at least of the Custom house, as soon as any kind of refusal of their extravagant demands against Great Britain shall furnish a pretense for so extraordinary a step; and that they depend upon being joined and supported in this by some of the other colonies.’ He mused that ‘the distemper contracted by the Stamp Act seems to be too deeply rooted to be cured without physick; none of which has been applied as yet, unless what has increased the disease may be called so.’ Concessions had been made to the disgruntled colonists, but those concessions seemed only to embolden them. The most sensible route, Bernard thought (or hoped?) was a determined enforcement of the Parliamentary acts. Had troops been dispatched to Boston during the Stamp Act Crisis, Bernard believed, ‘there would have been no opposition to Parliament now, and above all no such combination as threatens [the] overthrow of the British Empire.’ But as things stood, Boston ‘has been left under the uninterrupted dominion of a faction supported by a trained mob.’ He summoned his Council and again asked if they could call for troops; the Council again, fearing for the safety of themselves, their families, and their property, said No. An exasperated and resigned Bernard would write to Lord Barrington, ‘It is all over now.’
A more apt observation would be, ‘Now it is beginning.’
Bernard’s Council may have feared the presence of troops, but higher-ups – both close to home and far away – made the decision for them. Thomas Gage, the commander-in-chief of the British colonies, had been keeping a wary eye on Boston, fearing that a resurgence of rioting was only a matter of time. The aftershocks of the Liberty’s seizure confirmed his fears, and he dispatched an aide-de-camp to assist Bernard in facing the crisis. He further supplemented that support with military might, ordering Lieutenant Colonel William Dalrymple, stationed in Halifax, to send the 14th and 29th Regiments of Foot to Boston. Gage was very clear with Dalrymple: ‘Keep a tight leash on your men.’ The severest of discipline was needed, for one little mishap could spark a conflagration. Had Gage been more forward-thinking he would have heeded his own advice and kept the 29th Regiment in Halifax; they had already caused trouble with colonists in Quebec and New York, and they had a penchant for ill discipline.
More troops would be coming from across the Atlantic. News of the Liberty riot reached Hillsborough along with the letter from the self-exiled refugees on Castle William. The beleaguered customs officers insisted that ‘Unless we have immediately two or three regiments [of British troops], ‘tis the opinion of all the friends to government that Boston will be in open rebellion.’ Hillsborough, with the support of Lord North, ordered the 64th and 65th Regiments – then stationed in Ireland – to reposition in Boston. He declared that the army and navy in American waters were to assist the civil officers – especially the officers tasked with collecting revenue – in the performance of their duties, and they were to enforce ‘a due Obedience to the Laws of this Kingdom, the Execution of which has, in several instances, been unwarrantable resisted, and their Authority denied.’ He included, in a letter to Bernard, two opinions by British attorneys – one from 1716 and the other from 1740 – that the statute of Queen Anne’s time forbidding impressments in American waters was no longer applicable. Historian Page Smith notes, ‘The ultimate effect, then, of the Liberty incident – in itself neither very important nor unusual – was the dispatch of armed force in the form of two regiments of redcoats that would (the British cabinet hoped) cow the people of Boston into submission. A simple matter of a customs inspection had escalated into a confrontation between the determined and fractious people of Boston and the might – and pride - of the British Empire.’ Thus a total of four regiments – two from Nova Scotia and two from Ireland – would be descending on volatile Boston (right into Samuel Adams’ lap!). Boston’s customs officers wanted troops to quell what they viewed as rebellion, and Hillsborough and North agreed. They should have paid attention to someone who knew a thing or two about colonial attitudes: in 1766 Benjamin Franklin had warned Parliament that the deployment of troops might be the catalyst of a very real – and dangerous – rebellion. Thus as British troops began preparations to make their new home in Boston, Franklin’s warning would be to put to the test.
Bernard received news of the incoming troops on 27 August 1768. Dreading an insurrection if the troops arrived unannounced, he leaked the information on 9 September – and it backfired. The rumors of incoming British troops were confirmed, and the patriots used that confirmation to galvanize outlying Massachusetts towns to action. A committee from a Boston town meeting asked Bernard what he knew about the troops, and he told them he couldn’t share that information. They asked him to call up the Great and General Court so they could discuss how to react to the impending ‘dread and calamity’; Bernard refused, saying that he lacked the authority to do so until such authority was granted to him by the king. The patriots shrugged their shoulders and called for an unofficial convention, inviting delegates from the outlying towns. The convention met on 22 September at Faneuil Hall, and the convention’s leaders made a stark display of their intentions: resurrecting an old statute declaring that every soldier and household should have a musket and ammunition, the selectmen brought four hundred muskets into the meeting and put them on display. They claimed the muskets were necessary because of ‘the prevailing apprehension, in the minds of many, of an approaching war with France.’ The joke didn’t make Bernard laugh.
The convention opened with seventy representatives from sixty-six towns and a number of districts, and before the convention closed on 27 September, representatives from thirty more towns came through the musket-swept doors. James Otis, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock represented Boston; Cushing, a moderate Whig, presided over the convention and Adams served as the clerk. The Reverend Andrew Eliot of Boston, who observed the proceedings, noted that the convention devolved into three parties: one party was afraid that the convention was illegal and itched to disband; another advocated putting the future of Boston into the hands of the people, whatever they decided; and a third suggested that when the troops arrived, they take the government into their own hands. The more moderate-minded delegates comprised the majority and served as a check both against the timid and the brash, much to Samuel Adams’ dismay. In a personal affront to Adams, many of the town delegates had been instructed to refuse support to any illegal or unconstitutional measures put forward by Adams and his ilk.
The convention admitted that they had no claim to ‘authoritative or governmental acts,’ and they fruitlessly petitioned Bernard to call up the Great and General Court so they could request a redress of grievances. Bernard again refused and fed into the fears of the timid party, hinting that they might face criminal charges if they continued moving forward. The convention called his bluff and passed a petition to the king and a ‘Result of the Convention,’ which neither advanced colonial constitutional theory nor threatened to forcefully oppose the landing of troops. Though a number of items were discussed, officially the meeting revolved around a desire for summoning the legislature.
Adams’ views may not have won the day – but it did burn some ears.
‘We will not submit to any tax!’ he proclaimed.
To this many delegates nodded their approval.
‘We will take up arms!’
This made heads turn – and some just shook.
And then he went a step further than anyone else would dare:
‘We are free!’ he shouted, ‘And we want no king!’
End Notes:
[1] Lord Barrington (1717-1793) was Britain’s Secretary at War during both the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence. Bernard and Barrington were cousin-in-laws and regularly corresponded.
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