Boston Despoiled
To Master the Colonies ∙The Intolerable and Coercive Acts ∙ The Boston Port Bill ∙ The Massachusetts Government Act∙ The Administration of Justice Act∙ The Quartering Act∙ The Quebec Act ∙ All America Aflame ∙ Gage Arrives in Boston ∙ The Militarization of Boston ∙ The Worcester and Cambridge Debacles∙ A Colonial Powder Keg
Parliament's Response to the Tea Party: The Coercive Acts
Parliament opened on 13 January 1774 with no mention of the colonies – though the Boston Tea Party had taken place, news of it had yet to cross the Atlantic. Parliament knew the colonies chafed against North’s Tea Act, but actions taken against it remained unknown. Just a few days into the new Parliamentary session, North championed a reduction in Great Britain’s military forces. The martial-minded George III loathed these cuts, but he preferred them over raising the land tax that would fall upon the country gentry upon whose favor his administration rested. North’s 1774 naval appropriations provided for just 15,600 seamen and 4,400 marines, and land forces were cut to no more than 18,000 troops. Just a few days after this, rumors of the Boston Tea Party began arriving from ships bound from America. The first anecdotes broached on 19 January, and they were bolstered six days later when the merchant ship Polly cruised into Gravesend still stocked with the tea intended for Philadelphia. Two days later, on the 27th of January, Governor Hutchinson’s official report on the Boston Tea Party reached England. Rumors solidified into fact, and the news hit England like a gut-punch.
Even America’s staunchest supporters stood aghast at the Tea Party: Rockingham declared it could in no way be justified, and William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, belittled it as purely criminal in nature. Within weeks, over one hundred forty addresses condemning the Boston Tea Party reached the king. The conservative press lambasted Samuel Adams, who commanded ‘a banditti of hypocrites,’ for challenging Great Britain’s dignity and honor by ‘a blow in full face of the world.’ The criminal enterprise of the Boston mob was ‘the most wanton and unprovoked insult offered to the civil power that is recorded in history.’ Tory trumpets proclaimed that England could never again hold her head high among the affairs of men if she allowed ‘a petty little province, the creature of [her] own hands, the bubble of [her] own breath’ to defy her in such a high-handed manner. Newspapers broadcast the Bostonians as ‘the first movers, and the main spring of all this contention,’ a ‘nest of rebels and hypocrites.’ While most Whig newspapers didn’t stand behind the actions of Boston, despite being sympathetic towards her, some had the audacity to throw in their lot with the ‘rebels and hypocrites’: the London Packet put forth the view that colonial resistance to the Tea Act evidenced ‘equal honor on the spirit and understanding of the colonists.’ Another writer in the same paper wrote that the Tea Party proved that ‘the ministers, or rather that miserable Cabinet Junta in whom only the King thinks proper to confide, are as cordially despised in America as they are detested in England… The passion for power on one side and the resolution to preserve liberty on the other, give a very serious, a very dreadful complexion to this dispute.’[1]
The Tea Party was the talk-of-the-town when Benjamin Franklin met with the Privy Council on 29 January regarding the stolen Hutchinson letters, and the raised temperatures no doubt fed into Franklin’s roasting. A few days later, Major General Thomas Gage – on home leave from his New York posting in the colonies – met with the king in the Closet at St. James. Gage had requested the audience to assure George of his ‘readiness to return at a day’s notice, if the conduct of the Colonies should induce the directing [of] coercive measures.’ Gage plumbed the atmosphere in England and deduced that the response would be swift and harsh: though the colonists no doubt hoped that the Tea Party would induce the repeal of the Tea Act, Gage and others saw that to do so would set dangerous precedent. Parliamentary authority had been weakened by the repeal of the Stamp Act and the repeal of most of the Townsend Acts due to American nonimportation, and in a sense its kowtowing to the colonists had already set a precedent of conformity that fueled colonial courage. The Declaratory Act, intended to ‘save face’ in the light of the Stamp Act’s repeal and to establish that Parliament, despite bending to colonial will, retained its authority, was in the end nothing more than a declaration worth less than the paper upon which it was printed. Parliament had been blasted for being soft on the colonists, for in addition to backing down off previous Acts, they’d sacrificed one of their officers to the colonials in the wake of the Boston Massacre (John Adams represented Preston, but according to royal law, Preston should’ve been tried in a military rather than civil court), and the military pulled their troops from Boston to Castle William to appease colonial rancor. Parliamentary softness, it was argued, had convinced the colonists that their defiance could prompt Parliament to bend to their will, and the Tea Party was just the latest challenge. Its boldness was not only shocking but telling: the colonists were stepping up their game, and if Parliament continued its policy of appeasement, it could expect nothing less than high-handed defiance whenever an unpopular law was passed. This wouldn’t stand; the pattern needed to be broken. There must be a limit to Parliament’s tolerance, and the Tea Party was seen by most well-to-do Englishmen as proof-positive that Parliament’s strategy of appeasement was failing. Gage knew the way the wind was blowing: Parliament’s hands were all but tied, and coercive measures against Boston would no doubt be on the docket soon. When that happened, Gage wanted the king to know that he was ready to enforce Parliament’s edicts when the call came.
The king savored his meeting with the Major General, determining him to be ‘an honest determined man.’ Gage assured the king that the defiant Bostonians would ‘be Lyons, whilst we are Lambs; but if we take the resolute part they will undoubtedly prove very meek.’ These words were like music to George’s soul, for the king was convinced that the American patriots were cowards in their bones – but, cowards or no, something needed to be done, and done quickly. In truth the king feared the direction colonial unrest was heading: he feared that ‘independence is their object,’ which Great Britain could ‘never submit to.’ George feared that if the colonies wrested their independence from the mother country, it was only a matter of time before the West Indies became dependent upon America. As if that weren’t enough, he feared Ireland, too, would fall into the American orbit, leaving England ‘a poor Island indeed, for reduced in trade, merchants would retire with their wealth to climates more to their advantage and shoals of manufacturers would leave this country for the New Empire.’ George saw the Boston Tea Party as nothing short of rebellion, and to seek appeasement in any way – by repealing the Tea Act, for example – would only bolster the American unrest. The correct answer was to put a hard stop to Boston’s unraveling, and to this end he ordered Gage to meet with North and convey his ideas ‘as to the mode of compelling Boston to submit.’ Though Boston wasn’t alone in its defiance of the Tea Act – Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston had a hand in it, as well – Boston, the ‘hotbed of rebellion,’ was seen as the locus point of strife. If colonial insolence were the coiled body of a snake, Boston was its head; and rather than poking the snake all along the body, the best way to kill it would be decapitation.
The king’s Cabinet resolved that the Bostonian ringleaders who pulled the strings of the Tea Party needed to face justice, for they had violated the law and challenged Parliamentary authority. The Tea Party was, in the words of the king, ‘quite subversive of the obedience which a colony owes to its mother country.’ Further inflaming Parliament’s feelings was the fact that the 18,000 pounds worth of destroyed tea belonged to the British East India Company, many of whose shareholders sat in Parliament; the Company was a goose-egg for many Parliamentarians, and they hated to see the nest plundered. Beyond that, North saw the Tea Party as preempting a response that would determine the future of England’s affairs with the colonies: ‘[We] are not entering into a dispute between internal and external taxes, not between taxes laid for the purpose of revenues and taxes laid for the regulation of trade, not between representation and taxation, or legislation and taxation; but we are now to dispute whether we have, or have not any authority in [America].’ Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the American Colonies, queried the Attorney General Thurlow and Solicitor General Wedderburn for an opinion on whether the Tea Party was in fact a crime of high treason; and if it was, who was it that committed the crime? Thurlow and Wedderburn jumped with gusto at the opportunity, relentlessly interrogating anyone who’d been in Boston at the time of the incident. After a week they sent their findings to Dartmouth: high treason had indeed been committed, and the culprits were leading patriots including John Hancock, Thomas Cushing, Dr. Joseph Warren and his brother James, and – of course – the Adams cousins; the anonymous members of Boston’s Committee of Correspondence were also enveloped into the charges. Before Dartmouth could clap his hands in glee, the report bemoaned the fact that there wasn’t enough evidence to make the charges of treason stick. A disgruntled Dartmouth, intent on throwing the ringleaders in irons and bringing them to England for trial (and, he hoped, a swift hanging), could only swallow the bitter pill that the Tea Party ringleaders, for want of evidence, were left free to roam Boston’s streets.
This didn’t mean, of course, that no action against Boston would be taken: on 7 March North put before Parliament a collection of reports collected by crown servants in Boston. These documents included newspaper retellings of the event and seditious handbills. A statement by the king was read in which George declared the events in Boston outrageous and unwarranted, and he asked the Lords and Commons to take the necessary steps to halt the unrest and carve out laws that would prevent the turmoil from bubbling up again. He encouraged Parliament to fashion laws that would force ‘the just dependence of the Colonies upon the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.’ He ended by ominously stating that ‘We must master [the American colonies] or totally leave them to themselves, and treat them as aliens.’ Harsh measures against Boston would undoubtedly be resisted by many Englishmen – particularly those of the merchant class who relied on American trade, and Boston, remember, was a pivotal American trading hub – and so Parliament engaged in a press-focused propaganda campaign to shore up support. Merchants, bankers, and shippers were targeted, and daily periodicals and newspapers were ‘systematically filled with writings painting in the strongest colors, and in particular urging the impossibility of the future existence of any trade to America if this flagrant outrage on commerce should go unpunished.’ North denounced the Tea Party as ‘an insult,’ ‘an unparalleled outrage,’ ‘a heinous act which called for severe and exemplary punishment,’ and he announced that he planned ‘for a thorough reformation.’ The expertly-woven propaganda had its intended effect, and these pivotal classes of society began to lean in favor of strict measures against the cantankerous colonies. The bills North would introduce would usher in a new era of punitive harshness, to the point that even die-hard conservatives balked at the steps taken; nevertheless, these waves of propaganda helped calm the storm enough for the bills – which would be known as the Intolerable Acts in the colonies – to march into law.
The four bills – The Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Government Act, The Administration of Justice Act, and The Quartering Act – were known as ‘The Coercive Acts’ for the simple fact that they were designed to coerce Boston’s submission to crown authority. That submission was their goal is evident in George’s hopeful statement: ‘The die is cast. The colonies must either submit or triumph. I do not wish to come to severe measures, but we must not retreat. By coolness and an unremitted pursuit of the measures that have been adopted I trust that they will come to submit.’ The Coercive Acts, when coupled with The Quebec Act – which was not designed in response to the Tea Act and which had nothing to do with Boston, but which nonetheless remained extremely unpopular not only in the colonies but also in England – were known as ‘The Intolerable Acts.’
Coercive Act #1: The Boston Port Bill
On 14 March, North introduced the first of the so-called ‘Coercive Acts.’ Before the introduction, William Bollan, agent for the Council of Massachusetts, read a petition in the House in which he related that the Bostonians’ ancestors had overcome ‘difficulties, perils and hardships inexpressible and innumerable’ to raise ‘the King’s American Empire out of a dreary and dangerous wilderness’; their efforts, coupled with those of their descendants, had greatly increased British commerce and shipping, adding dignity and strength to the Empire. The Actia Regia of Queen Elizabeth and her ancestors guaranteed the colonists ‘perpetual enjoyment of their public liberties,’ and it was these liberties that they felt threatened. Bollan prayed that the House allow him to plead their case – but the House was in no mood to listen to a harangue devoted to a tiresome catalogue of supposedly violated ‘rights.’ George hadn’t left any ambiguity in what he desired: the House wasn’t meeting to soothe the colonists but to put an end, once and for all, to the colonial crisis. Appeasement had failed; it was high time for sterner measures. The speaker of the House ordered the petition to lie on the table, and North took his stand to do the king’s work. He introduced a bill aimed at Boston, ‘the focus of tumult and the originator of all colonial disturbances.’ The bill, crafted by Thurlow and Wedderburn, ordered the commissioners of customs removed from Boston and the Boston port closed to all shipping – except for ships carrying fuel, provisions, or supplies bound for royal forces – on 1 June. The port would remain closed until ‘complete satisfaction’ had been made to the East India Company for the destroyed tea; on top of this, royal officials were to be reimbursed from colonial pockets for the damage done to their homes and offices by the riots over the last decade. Even then ‘the Crown… will not be obliged to restore the custom house unless His Majesty is thoroughly convinced that the laws of this country will be better observed in the harbor of Boston for the future.’ Not only, then, were the Bostonians required to pay for the dumped tea and to compensate royal officials for damage done: they also had to get on their knees and grovel to the king for relief. The bill’s purpose was threefold: recoup the money lost in the Tea Party, secure Boston’s port for business untainted by mobs and riots, and – most harshly – to punish Boston. North believed that the bill would not only cow the Bostonian radicals but also send a message to the other colonies: ‘Take note of Boston’s punishment and save yourselves such a destiny!’ When the other colonies saw Boston’s fate, radicalism would be curbed up and down the Atlantic seaboard.
The radical, punitive nature of the bill came as a shock to England’s populace: it had been kept under wrapsas long as possible, for its designers knew that the best hope of its approval was springing it upon Parliament with little chance given to the opposition to work against it. Boston’s port was the town’s lifeblood, and closing it not only affected seafarers, merchants, and fishermen but also factory workers, brokers, bankers, shipwrights, tavern keepers, ship chandlers, warehousemen, and longshoremen. Because even the ferries between Boston peninsula and Charlestown were to be shut down, supplies for the town could only come across the narrow Boston Neck that linked the peninsula to the mainland. Redcoats would once again be stationed in town – not stuck on Castle William as they’d been for the last four years – and Royal Navy ships would blockade the harbor. The harshness of the bill stunned America’s supporters into shock, and they lacked the means to galvanize quick resistance at the bill’s first reading. Though Mr. Dowdeswell, for example, managed to decry the bill as ‘mischievous and discriminatory’ and asked why the Bostonians couldn’t speak up in their defense before being burdened by such a punitive bill, Colonel Isaac Barre – a staunch friend of the colonies – supported North’s proposal, convinced that the Bostonians deserved the bill’s ‘moderate’ punishment: ‘I like it, adopt, and embrace it cheerfully for its moderation.’
When news of the Port Bill broke from the confines in Parliament, Whig Englishmen bowled over in surprise. An American in England wrote that Parliament had kept the bill secret as long as possible due to ‘fear that had it been known, the Parliament House would have been destroyed.’ Though conservative newspapers praised the bill with raucous cheers, Whigs had the support of British merchants who were still owed more than four million pounds by their American customers (the closing of Boston’s port would hurt their chances of being paid their due). Whigs condemned the bill for the simple fact that it would punish the innocent along the guilty or even punish the innocent while the guilty walked free. A liberal journalist writing under the pseudonym ‘Pacificus’ declared that the ‘general opinion of the people of England’ was that the punitive measures of the Port Bill were ‘unjust and oppressive, as well as senseless and impolitic.’
The bill was read for a second time in Parliament a week later, and this time Barre changed his tune (whether he had more time to study the bill or was persuaded by the outcry among Whigs and even moderate Tories is unknown); he announced that the Port Bill was ‘a vengeful step… [Keep] your hands out of the pockets of the Americans and they will be obedient subjects.’ Edmund Burke proposed conciliation, arguing that the best way forward wasn’t to turn Boston into a poverty-stricken hellhole but to return to the state of affairs that had existed before the Stamp Act Crisis, repealing all the statutes passed that had been so galling to the Americans: ‘Revert to your old principles [and] leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into a distinction of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions. I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it… Let the memory of all actions in contradiction to that good old mode, on both sides be extinguished forever. Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it… Do not burden them with taxes; you were not used to do so from the beginning.’ Rose Fuller, former chief justice of Jamaica and a friend of the colonies, prophesied that the Bostonians would in no way pay for the destroyed tea and that the bill would precipitate a ‘colonial confederacy’ that required a build-up of troops. He suggested Boston be fined rather than shut down, to which North replied, ‘Now is our time to stand out, to defy them – to proceed without fear, [for] we are in earnest, we will proceed with firmness and vigor… [We] mean to punish them [and to] assert our rights.’ He rejected Fuller’s prophecy that more troops would be needed: ‘Four or five frigates would do the business!’ Considering Fuller’s prediction of a ‘colonial confederacy,’ North scoffed, refusing to believe that other colonies would ‘take fire’ for Boston’s sake. North was seconded by Mr. Van, who declared that the American crimes were ‘flagitious’ and that ‘the town of Boston ought to be knocked about their ears and destroyed. Delenda est Carthago’ – just as ancient Carthage had been razed to the ground and its earth salted, so, too, should Boston should be wiped off the map. ‘You will never meet with proper obedience to the laws of this country,’ Van snarled, ‘until you have destroyed that nest of locusts.’ Another Parliamentarian opined that if the Americans could flagrantly defy Parliament without fear of reprisal, it was only a matter of time until ‘they will without ceremony reject the whole statute books, and so save Parliament any further trouble… [If] the kingdom [of Great Britain] is tame enough, they may proceed to control and tax it, instead of Parliament regulating and taxing them.’
At the Port Bill’s third and final reading on 25 March, the opposition launched desperate last-minute attempts to overturn it. A petition from Americans living in London was read in which they asserted ‘the rights of natural justice and the common law of England’ were inalienable; because the rules of justice demanded that no one be condemned unheard, and because the Tea Party was committed by unknown persons, it was not only unreasonable but also patently unjust to punish innocent Bostonians. The bill, they argued, would erect a precedent by which anyone in America could be punished because of an unidentified few. Furthermore, such a ‘rigorous and arbitrary’ punishment would alienate American affections. ‘To prevent the dissolution of that love, harmony and confidence between the two countries which was their mutual blessing and support,’ the petition begged the House to reject the bill. Dowdeswell took the floor again to condemn the bill as ‘totally unjust and unfair;’ it wasn’t only Bostonians who were being punished but also merchants and shippers. Dowdeswell warned that if the House foolishly passed the bill, it would ‘inflame all America [and] you will by and by have your hands fully employed.’ Burke built upon Dowdeswell’s premonitions when he said (quite prophetically) that ‘The consequences [of the bill] will be dreadful and I am afraid destructive; you will draw a foreign force upon you at a time when you little expect it; I will not say where that will end, but think, I conjure you, of the consequences.’ A Royal Navy captain who’d been governor of West Florida described the bill as ‘cruel and coercive,’ ‘the abortion of an indecisive mind… incapable of comprehending the chain of consequences which must result’ from its passing. Like Rose Fuller, he predicted a ‘general confederation’ of American colonies which ‘most probably will end in a general revolt.’
The warnings given by the opposition – of foreign interference (eventually fulfilled by France’s entry into the American War of Independence on the side of the united colonies), of a colonial confederation, of a build-up of hostilities, and of a general revolt – went unheard and unanswered by the bill’s proponents. North’s cadre of supporters enjoyed an overpowering majority in the House, so they just picked their teeth and yawned as the opposition ranted and raved. When it came time to vote, the bill passed the House and was sent to the upper house Lords for confirmation. The Lords received a pair of petitions by leading Americans in Boston – authored or signed by such men as Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, and Thomas Pinkney – in which they deduced that the bill was ‘calculated to condemn and punish’ the Bostonians without giving them a fair hearing, and that the bill would set an unjust precedent to deny colonists of their lawful rights. These petitions were backed by Parliamentarians such as Rockingham, Camden, and Shelburne, but they couldn’t stop the bill’s passage through the House of Lords. The seeming easy of the bill’s passage into law convinced the king that God was on his side (for if God was not on his side, why had he provided a majority to his cause?); he wrote North on 23 March that ‘the feebleness and futility of the opposition of the Port Bill shows the rectitude of the measure.’
Coercive Act #2: The Massachusetts Government Act
The second of the Coercive Acts was the Massachusetts Government Act, 'For the Better Regulating the Government of the Province of Massachusetts Bay,’ which North introduced on 15 April. He stated that the bill’s purpose was to remove power from the ‘democratic part’ of the people, which had showed nothing but contempt for British law. The royal governor would be empowered ‘to appoint the officers throughout the whole civil authority;’ this included members of the Provincial Council, which according to the Massachusetts charter were to be chosen by the lower House of Representatives. Town meetings would be reduced to once a year, and they were to deal only with matters of local interest. Sheriffs would no longer be elected but would be chosen by the governor, and these duly-chosen sheriffs would be tasked with empanelling juries (ostensibly juries sympathetic to Parliamentary rule). Though the bill received support, at least one conservative Parliamentarian, Lord George Germain, considered the bill too mild: he detested having ‘men of a mercantile cast… debating about political matters.’ He loathed how the Massachusetts government had been overtaken by ‘a tumultuous and riotous rabble, who ought, if they had the least prudence, to follow their mercantile employment and not trouble themselves with politics and government.’ Such things were far above their station, and thus a popularly-elected assembly – such as the one bound in the colony’s charter – was ‘a downright clog’ on the government, and the existing jury system twisted justice and produced ‘the most palpable enormities.’
At the bill’s second reading a week later, the opposition deftly opposed it. Dowdeswell said that the Bostonians had ‘labored with unwearied industry and flourished’ under their democratic charter which ‘breathes the spirit of liberty.’ The bill would destroy their charter in order to establish ‘a most ridiculous superiority.’ George Savile prophesied that the dismantling of charter rights would result ‘in bloodshed and strife.’ General Henry Conway made it clear that, for all practical purposes, the House was talking about the charter rights of ‘all America,’ saying, ‘We are the aggressors and innovators, and not the colonies. We have irritated and forced laws upon them for these six or seven years past… These Acts respecting America will involve this country and its ministers in misfortunes, and I wish I may not add, in ruin.’ North challenged the opposition: ‘The Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects, plundered your merchants, burnt your ships, denied all obedience to your laws and authority… political necessity urges this measure; if this is not the proper method, show me any other which is preferable, and I will postpone it.’ The opposition couldn’t offer anything North found more appropriate, but Thomas Pownall warned that the bill wouldn’t solve the problems but make them worse: ‘The measure which you are pursuing will be resisted by a regular system… I told this House, it is now four years past, that the people of America would resist the tax which lay then upon them… I tell you now, that they will resist the measures now pursued in a more vigorous way.’ Pointing to the newly-sprung Committees of Correspondence, he warned that these were but the first steps that would irrevocably lead to a colonial congress. ‘[Should] matters ever come to arms,’ he warned, ‘you will hear of other officers than those appointed by your governors.’
On 2 May the bill was read for the third and final time. George Savile stood to present a petition drawn by ‘several natives of America.’ These petitioners had studied both the newly-passed Port Bill and the now-debated Government Act ‘with astonishment and grief,’ seeing in them ‘the horrid outrages of military oppression [and] the desolation of civil commotions’ should the bills be enforced. The tendency of the bills was ‘to reduce their countrymen to the dreadful alternative of being totally enslaved or compelled into a contest the most shocking and unnatural, with the parent state which has ever been the object of their veneration and their love.’ John Dunning accused North of implementing a ‘system of tyranny,’ and he warned that the bill, when read between the lines, stipulated ‘war, severe revenge, and hatred against your own subjects. We are now come to that fatal dilemma – “Resist and we will cut your throats; submit, and we will tax you” – such is the reward of obedience.’ The acts already adopted and those being debated would ‘disunite the affection of the Americans’ and instead of promoting harmony and obedience would produce ‘nothing but clamor, discontent and rebellion.’ Colonel Isaac Barre opined, ‘The question now before us is whether we will choose to bring over the affections of all our colonies by lenient measures, or to wage war with them?’ He cautioned that Massachusetts wouldn’t be alone in her resistance: ‘[You] will very soon have the rest of [the] colonies on your back.’ He condemned the bill, stating that ‘A law that shocks equity is reason’s murderer.’ The people would turn out ‘… a set of sturdy rebels… therefore, let me advise you to desist.’ Fox pulled all the opposition’s arguments into a single thread to pose the basic question: ‘Whether America is to be governed by a force or management?’ If Massachusetts were stripped of her charter, ‘for God’s sake let it be taken away by law and not by legislative coercion.’ Bishop Jonathan Shipley took the stage to voice his opposition: ‘I look upon North America as the only great nursery of freemen now left upon the face of the earth.’ As for the colonies ‘whom we are now so eager to butcher,’ he believed that all Englishmen did well to ‘cherish them as the immortal monuments of our public justice and wisdom; as the heir of our better days, of our old arts and manners, and of our expiring national virtues. What work of art, or power, or public utility, has ever equaled the glory of having peopled a continent without guilt or bloodshed , with a multitude of free and happy commonwealths: to have given them the best arts of life and government, and to have suffered them under the shelter of our authority, to acquire in peace the skill to use them.’ But, as the bishop continued, ‘By enslaving the colonies you not only ruin the peace, the commerce and the fortunes of both countries, but you extinguish the fairest hopes, shut up the last asylum of mankind. I think, my Lords… that a good man may hope that heaven will take part against the execution of a plan that seems big not only with mischief but impiety.’
Though the opposition managed to put on a good show, North’s majority saw the bill through and shuffled it to the Lords. In the upper house, a number of Lords opposed the bill – such as Rockingham, Portland, and Richmond – and they drew up a ‘Dissent’ to be recorded in the Journal. The bill passed the Lords and went into law, but the opposition wanted it clear that they stood against it; to this end they declared in their Dissent that the bill was unjust and tended to exterminate the powers of the popularly-elected assembly as it increased the crown’s power. The bill put the lives, liberties, and properties of the king’s subjects at the fancies of the royal governor and his chosen council while destroying the invaluable rights that the Bostonians had enjoyed for over a century. They wrote that the bill’s punitive nature was ‘unexampled in the records of Parliament.’ The Dissent didn’t bother North, who was already bringing a third and fourth bill to the table designed to beat the Bostonians to their emasculated, impoverished knees.
Coercive Act #3: The Administration of Justice Act
The third of the Coercive Acts was known as the Administration of Justice Act, 'For the Impartial Administration of Justice.’ It stipulated that any crown officer, including any members of the royal Navy or army, charged with murder or any other capital crime while suppressing riots or disturbances could be tried in another colony or be sent to England, at the whims of the royal governor. North introduced the bill by stating that the English government, resolute to enforce British law, wouldn’t tolerate ‘the least degree of disobedience.’ The fact that crown officials, soldiers, or sailors charged with a crime as capital as murder could be whisked away to a more favorable judge and jury in England deprived the colonists of their right to a jury of one’s peers, and in practice it meant that brutal officials or soldiers could mistreat the colonists with little fear of reprisal (it’s not surprising, then, that the bill came to be known as ‘The Murder Bill’ in the colonies). In addition to these stipulations, the Administration of Justice Act declared that the ringleaders of the Tea Party were to be apprehended, shipped to England, and tried for their crimes. In addition, Thomas Gage would be relocated to Boston where he would take Governor Hutchinson’s place; Gage would be given adequate authority and tools ‘to prevent the first rise of disobedience.’
Colonel Isaac Barre raised a fist against the bill. ‘Sir, I am sorry to say that this is declamation, unbecoming the character and place of him who utters it. In what moment have you been quiet? Has not your Government for many years past been a series of irritating and offensive measures, without policy, principle, or moderation? Have not your troops and your ships made a vain and insulting parade in their streets and in their harbors? It has seemed to be your study to irritate them and inflame them. You have stimulated discontents into disaffection, and you are now goading that disaffection into rebellion.’ He prophesied that when the ‘banners of rebellion were spread in America’ Great Britain would be undone. Barre would resist ‘the frenzy’ of the Parliamentarian ministers who were extending towards Boston not an olive branch but a sword. Alderman Sawbridge decried the bill as ‘pernicious, ridiculous, [and] cruel.’ Sawbridge keyed in to North’s deeper motivation: not only did he aim to enslave the Americans, but if given the chance he would enslave the English, too! Sawbridge hoped that the Americans would resist these destructive bills: ‘If they do not, they are the most abject slaves that ever the earth produced, and nothing the [Prime Minister] can do is base enough for them.’ Despite this opposition, the bill passed both the Commons and Lords, and on 20 May the king assented to the bill and it became law.
The fourth and final of the Coercive Acts was the 1774 Quartering Act, which authorized crown officers in North America to requisition billeting space for troops and to take over uninhabited structures in areas where barracks weren’t available. The bill went even further, however, in that it permitted troops to be quartered with private families. The Quartering Act of 1765 had required civil authorities to provide barracks for royal troops, and an amendment to the bill the next year allowed troops to be quartered in inns, taverns, and vacant buildings – but the provisions of the 1774 bill struck at the cherished right to privacy and property. The reclusive Earl of Chatham made one of his few appearances in the House of Lords to oppose the bill; in an emotionally-charged speech, he denounced the bill as so ‘diametrically opposite to the fundamental principles of sound policy, that individuals possessed of common understanding, must be astonished at such proceedings.’ He accused North’s administration of purposely irritating the Americans ‘to be revenged on them for the victory they gained by the repeal of the Stamp Act.’ He ended his speech with an appeal: ‘I am an old man, and would advise the Noble Lords in office to adopt a more gentle mode of governing America; for the day is not far distant when America may vie with these kingdoms, not only in arms, but in art also.’ The bill nevertheless passed the Lords and went into law, and Chatham later wrote, ‘I fear the bond between us and America will be cut off forever. Devoted England will then have seen her best days, which nothing can restore again.’ He made it clear, however, that he had no truck with colonial independence: ‘Although I love the Americans as prizing and setting a just value upon that inestimable blessing, liberty, yet if I could once persuade myself that they entertain the most distant intention of throwing off the legislative supremacy and great constitutional superintending power and control of the British legislature, I should myself be the very first person [to] enforce that power by every exertion this country is capable of making.’
Coercive Act #4: The Quebec Act
The last of the Coercive Acts dealt not with Boston but with the British province of Canada. Canada had been won at the peace talks following the French and Indian War, and it was administered by Major General Guy Carleton. Carleton framed the bill as an effort to placate the former French citizens under his rule. The one thousand English-speaking Protestant British in Canada were vastly outnumbered by the 120,000 French-speaking Catholic citizens: were the French to decide to rise up against their new overlords, the British would be hard put to keep reign on the situation. To promote law and order, Carleton proposed allowing the French residents of Canada to practice their Catholic faith in peace, to be ruled by French rather than British legal codes, and to confirm the seigniorial rights of French aristocratic landowners. Furthermore, the province’s borders were to be established southward to the Ohio River, embracing the modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and most of Michigan. Parliament approved of Carleton’s proposal and moved to make it into law.
When news of the ‘Quebec Act’ broke, outrage gripped England. The modern ideas of religious tolerance and ecumenicism were largely foreign in England at the time; it was just and proper to be Protestant, and Catholicism was hated with as much fervor as modern fundamentalists loathe Islam. One newspaper announced that in the Quebec Act one could spy ‘that old prostitute, the whore of Babylon.’ An opposing member of the House of Lords condemned the act for foisting on part of the British Empire ‘Popery, arbitrary power, and French laws.’ The London Chronicle mused that ‘a stroke of this kind, aimed at the religion and liberties of our country, must awaken the most drowsyslumberer among us.’ When the king appeared in public, he was barraged with shouts of ‘No Popery! No French government!’ The controversial Quebec Act won many Englishmen to the American cause, and by the late summer of 1774, many people who’d been ‘on the fence’ regarding the colonial crisis were throwing in their lot with the Americans. England’s Bill of Rights Society sent five hundred pounds to the beleaguered Boston patriots, and the Common Council of the City of London held a meeting in which they denounced the Coercive Acts and presented a petition to the House of Lords to reverse the actions of the Commons. A handbill was found circulating among British troops in which soldiers were encouraged to refuse service in the colonies. The St. James Chronicle captured the spirit of the times: ‘There never was a time when the citizens of London so universally inclined to the patriot side. The late unpopular American acts have totally sunk the ministry in the esteem of all ranks of the people that wish well to their country.’
The historian Page Smith notes the tumble-down effect of the Intolerable Acts in inciting even more turbulence in the colonies: ‘In the Intolerable, or Coercive, Acts which followed each other in the space of little more than three months, the British ministry, with the same fatal obtuseness that had characterized its policy toward the American colonists from the beginning of the Revolutionary crisis, took precisely those steps best calculated to arouse the determined resistance of all the colonies. The Boston Port Bill demonstrated the government’s willingness and capacity to destroy the economic foundations of a colony that sufficiently offended it. The Massachusetts Government Act was an arbitrary alteration of the constitutional arrangements existing between the mother country and a particular colony. The Quebec Act seemed to threaten what was dearest to many colonists from New Hampshire to Georgia – their sacred Protestant faith. Thus the colonies’ economy, government, and religion were, it appeared, all imperiled, all subject to the whims of a remote and unfriendly set of officials and a thoroughly unsympathetic Parliament.’
The Colonial Response
The first copies of the Port Bill reached Boston on 10 May 1774, and their provisions shocked Tories and patriots alike; even Governor Hutchinson, who’d hoped the Tea Party would prompt sterner measures from the Crown, could scarcely believe Parliament had gone so far. One newspaper editorial charged that Boston was to be ‘inhumanely murdered in cold blood [and] by such an act of despotism as an eastern divan would blush at.’ Samuel Adams, writing to Arthur Lee in London, gave voice to the thoughts of many colonists: ‘For flagrant injustice and barbarity one might search in vain among the archives of Constantinople to find a match for it.’ He assured Lee that the citizens would see to their own safety, though they would do so not ‘in a servile compliance with the ignominious terms of this barbarous edict.’ He hoped that other colonies would rally to Boston’s defense and that an American union would ‘gloriously defeat’ the crown’s designs. Writing to Benjamin Franklin, he praised the Massachusetts Committees of Correspondence for enlightening and animating the province: ‘They are united in sentiment and their opposition to the unconstitutional measures of government is become systematical, for colony communicates freely with colony. There is a common affection.’ Though he couldn’t foresee what Parliament had up its sleeve, ‘[It] will be wise for us to be ready for all events… It is our duty at all hazards to preserve the public liberty. Righteous heaven will graciously smile on every manly and rational attempt to secure the best of all His gifts to man, from the ravishing hand of lawless and brutal power.’ In the words of historian Samuel Griffith, ‘Adams realized a nation was struggling to be born. He saw himself as the midwife.’
Express riders hoofed across the Boston Neck and spread throughout Massachusetts, shouting the news, passing out handbills stamped with a skull and crossbones, and dropping mourning wreaths and liberty caps where anyone tended to gather; the news turned the province into a firestorm. Three days after the Port Bill reached Boston harbor, Adams sent Paul Revere with a circular letter to the Committees of Correspondence in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. The letter conveyed the reactions of the Boston town meeting: ‘The Town of Boston is now Suffering the Stroke of Vengeance in the Common Cause of America.’ Adams hoped the Bostonians would take the stroke ‘with a becoming fortitude, and that the Effects of this cruel Act, intended to intimidate and subdue the Spirits of all America will by the joint Efforts of all be frustrated.’ The purpose of the circular letter wasn’t merely to convey information but to shore up help; Boston would need assistance if she were to be kept from wilting under the harsh edict: ‘This Town singly will not be able to support the Cause under so severe a Trial.’ By the end of May, news of the Port Bill had spread throughout all the thirteen colonies.
As the circular letter was being ridden throughout the colonies, the Boston Sons of Liberty gathered and immediately proposed another round of nonimportation: it had worked with the Stamp Act and with (most of) the Townsend Acts, so why not employ it again to seek relief from the Port Bill? Though the Bostonian patriots, who had the most to lose under the Port Bill, supported nonimportation (and why shouldn’t they, since they’d be forced into nonimportation anyhow starting in June?), the other colonies weren’t so keen to join. Sweeping nonimportation hurt British commerce, but it did so with plenty of friendly fire: colonial merchants lived off trade, and the last two rounds of nonimportation had been crippling. Many were still struggling to catch up on their losses, and they weren’t eager to resume pinching pennies. Those merchants in favor of nonimportation would only do it if the other colonies joined in, which made sense, for if only a few colonies adopted the measure, the result would be twofold: first, the non-importing merchants would suffer while their competitors thrived by taking over their business; and second, the British response would be slower because the effect on British commerce would be less than if non-importation were colonies-wide. Money-hungry merchants saw in the Port Bill an opportunity for self-advancement; as the historian Bruce Lancaster notes, ‘With the prosperous trade of [Boston] at an end, could not New York, Philadelphia, Newport, and Charleston merchants reach out for a big slice of Boston’s commerce?’ It didn’t help Boston’s cause that the event that precipitated all this – the Boston Tea Party – was an act that most colonial merchants frowned upon, for as much as it sent a message to Parliament, it also directly hurt the middlemen merchants who were just trying to feed their families and pay their dues.
Boston’s call for nonimportation failed, but that didn’t mean the town had no support. Colony after colony promised material support, and denunciations of the Port Bill – and of the ‘Intolerable Acts’ in general, as copies of the other acts reached the colonies like repeated hammer blows on liberty – ranged from Georgia to Maine. Despite this, no one seemed to know exactly how to proceed; Smith notes that ‘Patriot leaders in other colonies were pulled a dozen ways at once: admiration for Boston, distrust of Boston, a constantly revived hope of reconciliation with the mother country, a genuine fear of British power – the mightiest power in the world – and, mixed in, a strange brew of personal fears and ambitions.’ Those colonies closest to Boston, such as Connecticut, showed the most immediate and solid support. The Connecticut General Assembly declared themselves ‘dutiful and faithful subjects of His Majesty King George the Third,’ and in the next breath resolved ‘that the late Act of Parliament inflicting pains and penalties on the town of Boston, by blocking up their harbor, is a precedent justly alarming to the British colonies in America, and wholly inconsistent with, and subversive of, their constitutional rights and liberties,’ and ‘that the apprehending and carrying persons beyond the sea to be tried’ was ‘unconstitutional and subversive of the liberties and rights of the free subjects of this colony.’ The Assembly resolved that it was ‘the indispensible duty which we owe to our king, our country, ourselves, and our posterity, by all lawful means in our power to maintain, defend and preserve these our rights and liberties, and to transmit [them] entire and inviolate to the latest generation – and that it is our fixed determination and unalterable resolution faithfully to discharge our duty.’ Close to a thousand citizens rallied in the town of Farmington to honor ‘the immortal goddess of Liberty’ by erecting a forty-five-foot pole and burning the Port Bill; the town then passed its own set of resolves denouncing ‘the present ministry’ as ‘being instigated by the devil and led on by wicked and corrupt hearts’ to put the colonies in chains, and indicted ‘those pimps and parasites who dared advise their master to such detestable measures.’ The small town of Brooklyn promised the Bostonians that they were ‘ready to march in the van and to sprinkle the American altars with our hearts blood, if the occasion should be… You are held up as a spectacle to the whole world. All Christendom are longing to see the event of the American contest. And do, most noble citizens, play your part manfully…’
Marylanders were ‘wrought up to a high pitch of extravagance.’ William Eddis of Annapolis wrote to his English sister on 28 May that ‘All America is in a flame… [People have] caught the general contagion.’ He feared ‘the most dreadful consequences.’ In South Carolina, one citizen asked, ‘Where is the mighty difference between destroying the tea, and resolving to do it, with such a firmness as intimidated the Captains to a return? Besides did not every province applaud the Bostonians?’ If Boston broke under the Port Bill and submitted to Parliament, South Carolina would soon see ‘our courts of Justice removed – our harbor blockaded – navigation stopped – our streets crowded with soldiers… and, after a little time, the now flourishing Charles-Town reduced to a neglected plain.’ The South Carolina Gazette mused, ‘If a few ill-minded persons take upon them to piss against the door of a Custom-house officer, or of the cellar where the tea is lodged, upon the same principle [as that in the Boston Port Bill] all in Charles-Town ought to be laid in ashes.’ These fears were taken up in North Carolina, where a handful of communities began forming militia companies and drilling under veterans of the French and Indian War. A representative assembly in Beaufort advised North Carolinians to pay no taxes to any royal official.
In New York, effigies of ‘that blood-thirsty wretch’ Lord North – along with Governor Hutchinson and Solicitor General Wedderburn (who became a centerpiece of colonial hatred after his Privy Council debauchery towards Benjamin Franklin) were dragged through the city streets and set afire. A town meeting was held to determine what actions were to be taken in Boston’s support. Twenty-five hotheaded patriots were elected to represent the province in the meeting, but a more conservative faction managed to hold sway. Benjamin Booth, a conservative patriot, wrote to Philadelphian allies, ‘You may now be assured that such a committee will enter into no intemperate hasty resolutions… It is expected that the first business this committee will go upon… will be to propose a convention to all the neighboring colonies save Boston, to advise the Bostonians what they ought to do in their present critical situation.’ He hinted that the New York town meeting might advise Boston to pay for the tea and seek a royal pardon. The high-ranking New Yorkers were resolved ‘to guard against a species of tyranny exercised under their noses, which they conceive to be more dangerous to their liberties than anything hitherto attempted by the British Parliament’ – in other words, the conservative party chafed against the radical patriot elements that were advising sterner (and more rebellious) responses to the Port Bill. Booth wrote that ‘a spirit of libertinism once raised among the common people, is not so easily suppressed as we now find to our sorrow.’ Booth’s desire was for conservative heads to prevail; this is why he didn’t like the idea of Massachusetts participating in a ‘congress,’ for though they lie at the epicenter of the drama, their radicalism was well-known and often put on a pedestal. New York’s merchant class tended towards conservatism, and they wrangled to keep the tide from flowing in the favor of what Gouvernour Morris called the ‘mobility,’ the ‘unlettered and radically inclined’ artisans, tradesmen, longshoremen, and day laborers. Ultimately the New York meeting issued a call for another congress like that which had met during the Stamp Act Crisis; at such a convention, different courses of action could be considered, pros and cons weighed, and a concerted action palatable to both radicals and conservatives could be approved. Of course, the conservatives hoped to keep the radicals from going too far, and the radicals hoped to browbeat the conservatives off their fence-sitting high horses. If Massachusetts were forbidden attendance, the chances of a concerted conservative response greatly increased.
In Virginia George Washington pinpointed the issue as to whether the colonists should ‘supinely sit and see one province after another fall prey to despotism?’ He wrote his friend George Fairfax urging that the colonies unite with beleaguered Boston and ‘not suffer ourselves to be sacrificed piecemeal, though God only knows what is to become of us, threatened as we are with so many hovering evils as hang over us at present.’ In Williamsburg, the younger and more radical juniors in the House of Burgesses – such as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee – denounced the Port Bill as ‘a hostile invasion’ and affirmed that the Burgesses ‘must boldly take an unequivocal stand in the line with Massachusetts,’ and to this end they sought to rouse their fellow Virginians ‘from the lethargy into which they had fallen.’ To accomplish this, Jefferson put forward a resolution naming 1 June – the day on which the port of Boston would be closed – a day of fasting and prayer. Jefferson got his idea straight from English history, for such solemn days were utilized during the English Civil War; he was giving a subtle nod to the civil war that ripped England asunder. The Burgesses passed the resolve, and by evening on 24 May express riders were carrying copies of the resolve to Norfolk, Alexandria, Petersburg, Richmond, and Fredericksburg. The royal governor, Lord Dunmore, was handed the resolves at breakfast the next morning, and appalled at the implication that king and Parliament lacked ‘wisdom, moderation and justice,’ he summoned the Burgesses to meet immediately, and upon calling them to order he declared the resolves a seditious document and dissolved the House. This didn’t faze the Burgesses, who met the next day at Raleigh Tavern (pictured below), where they passed more resolutions even harsher in their denunciations. The Port Bill was paraded as an attack on all the American colonies, and the resulting document – entitled ‘An Association, Signed by 89 Members of the House of Burgesses’ – was a summons for political action. The document stated that not only had the mother country ignored ‘dutiful applications’ for redress of grievances, but king and Parliament had ‘pressed for reducing the inhabitants of British America to slavery by subjecting them to the payment of taxes imposed without the consent of the people or their representatives.’ The Port Bill was ‘a most dangerous attempt to destroy the constitutional liberty and rights of all North America.’ The Burgesses believed ‘that an attack, made on one of our sister colonies, to compel submission to arbitrary taxes, is an attack made on all British America, and threatens ruin to the rights of all, unless the United Wisdom of the whole be applied.’ They, like New York, urged a ‘general congress’ among appointed deputies from all the colonies; in such a congress, they vowed, they would take concerted effort in support of Massachusetts. They also called upon all Americans to boycott East India Company products (except for saltpeter and spices).
Pennsylvania moved slower than the other colonies in responding: they wanted a united effort among the colonies, so they bid their time until they were able to deduce the ‘colonial temperature’ via actions taken up and down the Atlantic seaboard. On 20 May, leading Philadelphian Sons of Liberty called for a meeting at City Tavern to discuss how best to support Boston. New York’s call for a congress had reached the city, but the more conservative faction was hesitant to join, and they had the support of John Dickinson, the ‘Pennsylvanian Farmer,’ who’d become more conservative over the years. His marital connections with top-tier Quaker families meant that his support was critical for any concerted action: if Dickinson wanted a congress, it would happen, but if didn’t, then it wouldn’t. The leading Sons of Liberty knew his support was necessary, so three of them – Joseph Reed, Thomas Mifflin, and Charles Thomson – rode out to his estate at Fairhill a few hours before the scheduled town meeting to persuade Dickinson to support a congress. They plied his nerves with alcohol, and when Dickinson finally relented to their arguments to support a congress, Reed and Mifflin mounted their horses and rode pell-mell for Philadelphia with the news. Thomson stayed behind not only to keep Dickinson’s nerves fortified but also to prevent his wife and mother-in-law from talking him down. Thomson and Dickinson waited to the last minute to ride out, and by the time they reached City Tavern, the overheated and excitable Thomson fainted. Reed rose before the Sons of Liberty and advocated extreme measures in support of Boston; these extreme measures weren’t meant to be approved but to make the call for a congress seem moderate in comparison for the benefit of the conservative members. Dickinson’s support of a congress persuaded many conservatives to make the jump, and the meeting ended with a summons for a general meeting of Philadelphia citizens on 18 June.
The first day of June, on which the port of Boston was shut down, was a Day of Mourning in Philadelphia. Flags were hung at half-mast, the bells of Christ Church tolled dirges throughout the day, and church services were held in which ministers begged God’s intervention on behalf of Boston and all the colonies. The Philadelphian merchant Christopher Marshall recounted, ‘Sorrow mixed with indignation seemed pictured in the countenance of inhabitants and indeed the whole city wore an aspect of deep distress.’ At the scheduled meeting on 18 June, the Boston Port Bill was declared ‘unconstitutional,’ ‘oppressive,’ and ‘dangerous’ to the liberties of the colonies; the summons went out for a ‘congress of deputies’ to assemble for the purpose of ‘re-establishing peace and harmony [on] a constitutional foundation.’ The delegates resolved unanimously that ‘there is an absolute necessity that a Congress of Deputies from the several colonies be immediately assembled… for the purpose of procuring relief for our suffering brethren, obtaining redress of our grievances, preventing future dissentions, firmly establishing our rights, and restoring harmony between Great Britain and her colonies on a constitutional foundation.’ A special Committee of Correspondence was created, with John Dickinson as chairman, to plumb ‘the sense of the people.’ These measures were steps in the right direction, but the Bostonian patriots were disheartened to hear that the river port city of Philadelphia wouldn’t be embracing nonimportation. Thomas Mifflin defended Pennsylvania’s decision, warning that American unity could fall apart if nonimportation were vigorously rammed through before more reasonable attempts at redress were engaged and found wanting. Masked within his warning was the message that if more ‘reasonable’ attempts failed, nonimportation might be on the table.
As the Pennsylvanians debated how to move forward in league with Boston, Joseph Reed received a letter from Lord Dartmouth in England: ‘I will still hope that a little time will convince you, and all that can think with coolness and temper, that the liberties of America are not so much in danger from any thing that Parliament has done or is likely to do here, as from the violence and misconduct of America itself. I am persuaded I need not take pains to convince you of the absurdity of the idea [that] the intention of government is to enslave the people of America.’ Dartmouth insisted that if the colonists were ‘wise enough to submit’ and to promise no more trouble, ‘they will turn [Britain’s] indignation into sympathy and goodwill… they will perhaps obtain all they wish, and receive that indulgence and compliance with their desires, which they never can extort by sullen opposition or undutiful resistance.’ The Pennsylvanians, however, had no interest in submitting when their colonial rights were at stake. Dickinson, emboldened by the steps taken and beginning to slip back into his earlier passions, wrote another essay on colonial rights, encapsulating both the convictions and hopes that were settling on a so-called ‘continental congress’: ‘So alarming are the measures already taken for laying the foundations of a despotic authority of Great-Britain over us, and with such artful and incessant vigilance is the plan prosecuted, that unless the present generation can interrupt the work, while it is going forward, can it be imagined that our children, debilitated by our imprudence and supineness, will be able to overthrow it, when completed?’ He added, ever in his conservative style, that ‘this is not a time, either for timidity or rashness. We perfectly know, that the great cause now agitated, is to be conducted to a happy conclusion, only by that well tempered composition of counsels, which firmness, prudence, loyalty to our sovereign, respect to our parent state, and affection to our native country, united must form.’
Resolves in favor of Boston and the call for a congress were but the more philosophical support offered to Boston. Though the Bostonians wished their call for nonimportation had been embraced, they were more than encouraged by the material support that began crossing into Boston from across the Neck: Marblehead sent money, a barrel of olive oil, and promised eleven cartloads of fish; Charleston sent money and two hundred barrels of rice; New York guaranteed Boston a ten-year supply of food, and as a pledge of their seriousness they drove over a hundred sheep across Long Island, bound for Massachusetts; and Connecticut sent a convoy of three hundred bushels of rye and Indian corn, along with more sheep. The convoy was driven by Israel Putnam, a veteran of the French and Indian War. Up to forty wagons crossed the Neck between Salem and Boston each day to transport supplies to the city. Boston’s merchants, reduced to trading across the Boston Neck, reworked their business plans. Rum traders orchestrated the landing of West Indian molasses at Marblehead, its transport by wagon across the Neck into Boston, where it would be refined into rum, and then sent it back across the neck to Marblehead for shipment to the West Indies. Though this meant that net profits were greatly reduced, it was nevertheless a working system that enabled them to eek by.
North had hoped that the Port Bill would bring Boston to its knees and cow the other colonies into submission, but – as anyone familiar with colonial sentiments and pride could’ve foreseen – it had the opposite effect. An Irish peddler recently emigrated to Pennsylvania wrote a friend across the Atlantic, ‘There is the greatest unanimity here, among all ranks of people, and except a very few, all the Americans of every denomination are warm in the cause and determined to defend their natural and constitutional rights to the last drop of their blood. [It] is really amazing to see the spirit of these people, from the highest to the lowest. I have had a pretty good opportunity of being acquainted with the sentiments of the people in general as I have rode above four thousand miles through this province [Pennsylvania], Maryland, and East and West Jersey, and there is hardly a farmer or tradesman in any part of the country that won’t talk of the rights of the Americans, the encroachments of the British Parliament and tell you they have no right to tax us without our consent, and each of these, both men and women with pleasure would sacrifice something for the good of their country. I profess myself a friend to this country and would, if there were a necessity for it, take up arms against either England or Ireland in defense of American rights.’ Charles Lee, a former English officer who’d put down roots in America, scoffed at Gage’s prediction that the colonies could so easily be subdued; he wrote a friend in England, ‘What devil of a nonsense can instigate any man of General Gage’s understanding to concur in bringing about this delusion? I have lately, my Lord, run through almost the whole colonies from the North to the South. I should not be guilty of an exaggeration in asserting that there are 200,000 strong-bodied active yeomanry, ready to encounter all hazards. They are not like the yeomanry of other countries, unarmed and unused to arms. They want nothing but some arrangement, and this they are now bent on establishing. Even this Quaker province is following the example… Unless the banditti at Westminster speedily undo everything they have done, their royal paymaster will hear of reviews and maneuvers not quite so entertaining as those he is presented with in Hyde Park and Wimbledon Common.’ Another Pennsylvanian wrote to a member of Parliament that opposition to the Intolerable Acts was so widespread and volatile that ‘several hundred thousand Americans would face any danger with these illustrious heroes [the patriot leaders] to lead them. It is to no purpose to attempt to destroy the opposition to the omnipotence of Parliament by taking off your Hancocks, Adamses and Dickinsons. Ten thousand patriots of the same stamp stand ready to fill their places.’
On 13 May the twenty-gun sixth rate H.M.S. Lively dropped anchor in Boston Harbor, and the fifty-five-year-old Thomas Gage leaned over the railing with a spyglass to observe the docks and wharves of Boston. Gage had served in the British military for nearly twenty years and had fought alongside George Washington at the disastrous Battle of the Monongahela during the French and Indian War. Three years later he served in the failed attempt to take French Ticonderoga, and after serving a stint as the Governor of Montreal following the winning of Canada, he was named commander-in-chief of the British army in North America. Though Gage was on the wrong side of colonial unrest, he nevertheless retained a modicum of popularity with the colonists. This was undoubtedly aided by the fact that his wife, Margaret Kimble, was full-bred American and belonged to a leading New Jersey family. George III hoped that Gage’s popularity would help him clamp down on the crabby Bostonians, but even his marital connections couldn’t ease the fact that he’d arrived to do something that galled even the English. His numerous titles – governor-in-chief, captain general, and vice admiral – made him the de facto military governor of Boston. Such a position had been unheard of in the British Empire since the downfall of the Stuart kings: military authority was to be placed under civil authority, but Gage’s title reversed this. Though king and Parliament felt that Gage’s powers were needed to quell the unrest, the measure was distasteful to any Englishmen who prized hard-won liberties; Gage’s commission andthe powers granted him convinced many colonists that ‘an evil ministry was determined to suppress their constitutional liberties, by force and arms and “enslave” them step by step.’
Just a few days prior to his departure from England, Dartmouth gave Gage his instructions. The king bestowed upon him unlimited powers to handle ‘every opposition.’ If ‘the madness of the people’ made it necessary, Gage was to use British armed forces ‘with effect.’ Though Dartmouth implored Gage to suppress the unrest ‘by mild and gentle persuasion,’ he reminded him that the king expected the ‘full and complete submission of the town of Boston’ – if kind words and a gentle spirit failed, then bayonets might be needed to get the job done. Gage’s more explicit orders included moving the seat of Massachusetts government from Boston to Salem, arresting the ‘ringleaders and abettors’ of the Tea Party, and purging the Council of anyone who opposed Parliamentary rule. Anyone who advocated rebellion was to be run over the coals. Upon reaching Boston Harbor, Gage disembarked onto Castle William. There he met with Governor Hutchinson, who agreed that if he acted the lion, the colonists would behave like lambs. Gage held more meetings with his naval and military commanders and with the commissioners of customs – who had been taking sanctuary at Castle William – about how to go about closing the port in June. They also discussed the garrisoning of Boston: Gage had arrived with the 43rd Regiment, who would not be bunkering down in Castle William but would be stationed in town. More troops were loading transports bound for Boston, and a serious build-up of military force was planned over the next six months.
On 17 May storm-clouds broke over the harbor, driving pelting rain down onto the town. The streets became swamped with puddles, but that didn’t prevent people from turning out to witness Gage’s debarkation into the city. Though most held their heads down, letting the rain roll off the brims of their hats, or wrapped cloaks around them to keep out the wet, a few citizens unrolled newfangled inventions made of oiled silk spread over whalebone ribs; these were some of the first umbrellas. A heavy mist lie on the bay as the barges carrying Gage and his redcoats rowed toward the wharf. The crowded citizens were joined by rain-soaked Massachusetts provincial troops who lined the route reserved for Gage’s entourage, and an ‘honor guard’ of troops waited to receive him: these included the provincial troop of horse, the Boston Grenadier Corps, the Honorable Artillery Company, and the Boston Cadets led by Colonel Henry Knox. The Corps of Cadets, whose men had seized the tea ships in the two weeks leading up to the Boston Tea Party, stood ready to receive their new overlord. Standing on the wharf to greet Gage were patriot leaders that included Paul Revere, Will Molineux, and Joseph Warren (Samuel Adams had the good sense to stay away). The leading Sons of Liberty wanted to receive Gage with honor and respect; to show defiance or disrespect would undercut the colonial unity Boston hoped to receive from the other colonies, and they wanted to show the more violent-minded radicals that restraint was necessary if they wished to see their goals realized.
The barge pulled up to the wharf and the gangplank lowered. The general, wearing a highly-decorated scarlet cloak, descended to the wharf, flanked by redcoats in their red coats, white piping, and gold embroidery. As Gage stepped onto the wharf, the crowd cheered. The cannons in the anchored warships let off a thunderous applause; church bells tolled in celebration; the town’s artillery batteries joined the thunder of the warships. Thus Gage and his soldiers were welcomed with all due pomp and ceremony, but it was merely skin-deep; as the historian Christopher Ward notes, ‘The flapping flags, the pealing bells, the saluting guns, all the parade and circumstance of welcome were mere matters of form; the huzzas of the populace were no more than throat deep. The people of Boston knew what [Gage’s] coming meant and what his orders were; they dreaded what he had come to do.’ A procession formed to escort Gage through the town. The provincial troops stood stiffly at attention, doing their best to salute Gage and his soldiers in a professional manner, and though Gage politely returned their salutes, the redcoats couldn’t help but sneer at these play-acting wannabes. As the procession headed up King Street towards the town house, the provincials fell in behind them, and the crowds in turn fell in behind them. Upon reaching the town house, Gage presented his royal commission to the President of the Council and was duly sworn in. The high sheriff, standing on the outside balcony, proclaimed Gage’s assumption of duties. The throngs of people in the streets below cheered, but their cheers were drowned out by the firing of three brass cannon worked by the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company and three volleys of musketry from the provincial soldiers. Gage then retired with the town’s leaders to Faneuil Hall, where everyone drank and partied and had a good time – at least until the general proposed a toast to Governor Hutchinson, a proposal which resulted in a vehement hiss. No matter pomp and ceremony, the Bostonians wouldn’t degrade themselves so far as to give a toast to him.
Gage was no fool: he knew the true sentiments of the Bostonians and didn’t count on their submission right out of the bag. Thus he wasn’t surprised when the town refused to provide quarters for his troops, forcing the 43rd Regiment to peg their white canvas tents on Boston Common in full view of the town. Boston merchants turned their backs on commerce with royal officers and soldiers, and artisans likewise refused their services. Gage decided to build his own barracks for his troops, but he couldn’t find anyone willing to even sell timber or straw. Though he was able to find a few carpenters willing to build the structures, the Sons of Liberty got into their heads and they resigned their commissions in order to preserve ‘the union now subsisting between town and country.’ Gage called a meeting of the town’s selectmen, who admitted that they would prefer to have the troops living in barracks, for that would help promote discipline (they remembered how the 29th Regiment had been spread throughout town and how that had led to a breakdown of order and a rise in hostilities that culminated in a so-called massacre). At the same time, they insisted their hands were tied when it came to supporting the building of barracks. An exasperated Gage couldn’t hold his tongue: ‘Good God! For God’s sake, gentlemen! Do consider, gentlemen!’ But they refused to shift their stance, and the 43rd – along with other arriving regiments – remained encamped on the Common as spring inched its way towards summer.
On 1 June the port of Boston shut down: British warships blockaded the harbor, soldiers patrolled the docks and wharves, and those trade ships and vessels that hadn’t managed to clear out before the deadline were left tied to their posts or anchored in the bay. The ferries crossing between Boston and Charlestown ceased, and all civilian supplies were forced to come across the Boston Neck. Thomas Hutchinson, relieved of his post by Gage (pictured here), was scheduled to depart for England at the beginning of June after the harbor was shut down. A group of desperate merchants met with him and proposed to split the cost of the tea among themselves and asked Hutchinson to carry their proposal to Parliament. When the Boston Committee of Correspondence learned of this, they moved to intercept; a few days later they announced a ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ in which the signers would stop all trade with England, refuse to purchase any goods imported after 31 August, and break trade with anyone who refused to pledge their support. At a meeting on 17 June they voted against payment for the destroyed tea, and on the 27th they endorsed the Solemn League and Covenant. The distressed merchants fought tooth and nail against these motions, at one point even trying to have the Committee of Correspondence dissolved. It was their livelihoods at stake, after all, and over a hundred of Boston’s merchants signed and published a protest against the Solemn League and Covenant as well as against the Committee of Correspondence. Gage, too, responded to the motions of the town meeting, issuing a proclamation condemning the Covenant as an ‘unlawful instrument’ and the circular letter carrying its announcement throughout the province and other colonies ‘scandalous, traitorous and seditious’ and ‘calculated to inflame the minds of the people.’ This ‘unwarrantable, hostile and traitorous combination’ was not only dangerous but also criminal. Anyone adhering to the covenant could be considered ‘as the declared and open enemies of the King, Parliament, and Kingdom of Great Britain.’ He ordered the town magistrates and officers to ‘apprehend and secure for trial’ those who’d signed the ‘illegal’ covenant. Gage’s proclamation read less like the intelligent ponderings of a stable-minded governor and more like the enraged, knee-jerk outbursts of a disabused plaything. Because he had no way to enforce his mandates outside Boston’s environs, where his bayonets didn’t reach, the proclamation was little more than bluff of brawn – and the magistrates and officers tasked with apprehending the conspirators knew better than to try and follow their orders.
In early June Gage moved the customs commissioners and their records to Plymouth, and he prorogued (i.e. dismissed without dissolving) the Great and General Court of Massachusetts and shifted it to Salem. Gage expected the first Salem meeting to address how best to seek reconciliation with England, but the House of Representatives, ‘deeply affected with the unhappy differences which have long subsisted and are increasing between Great Britain and the American colonies,’ resolved instead – in line with New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania – to promote a ‘general congress’ of colonial delegates ‘to consult upon the present state of the Colonies and the miseries to which they are and must be reduced, [to] deliberate and determine on wise and proper measures [for] establishment of their rights and liberties, civil and religious, and for the restoration of union and harmony between GB and the Colonies, most ardently desired by all good men.’ Delegates for the convention – who planned on meeting in Philadelphia in September – included the Adams cousins, Robert Treat Paine, Thomas Cushing, and James Bowdoin. The House drew up a statement lambasting Parliament’s schemes to impose ‘arbitrary rule’ on America, and they voted an embargo on all goods from the mother country. When news of these seditious talks reached Gage, he frantically dispatched a secretary to Salem to officially dissolve the House. The secretary arrived to find the doors locked and barred, so he nailed Gage’s proclamation dissolving the assembly to the door and left before he found himself ensconced in a mob. The response to the dissolving of the House was swift and sure: at a meeting in Cambridge, a provincial congress – recognized only by patriots but whose body included both patriots and Tories – was elected to replace the General Court, and they passed a bill to raise a militia force of twelve thousand. Artemas Ward and Jedediah Preble were named Generals. The militia and their ‘minutemen’ – the most agile and most accurate marksmen, making up about a fourth of each militia company and subject to immediate call – took their responsibilities seriously, drilling each day in their village greens.
Gage had been sent to Boston to quash the unrest, but within weeks he was getting reports of homegrown militias preparing to defend their liberties with ball and bayonet. He had a hard enough time keeping tempers cool in Boston, but his powers stretched only as far as his redcoats could march. His only solace was that just as the Massachusetts countryside was building up its ‘armed forces,’ so, too, were the redcoats entrenching themselves, regiment after regiment, in Boston. The 43rd had come with him in May, and the 4th arrived just ten days after the closure of Boston’s port. The 59th, 5th, and 38th regiments arrived shortly thereafter – and these were just the beginning of the build-up, making the earlier days when only two regiments marched through Boston’s streets seem like a balmy vacation.
In June Vice-Admiral of the White Samuel Graves arrived in Boston Harbor and took control of the British fleet in North America. At the time he had little with which to work: one fifty-gun ship, four frigates, and sixteen sloops and schooners. He asked for three more ships of the line, and these were promised – but he still lacked what he needed to fulfill his orders, as he was expected not only to harass the rebellious province, overawe the radicals, and restrain colonial trade, but he was also tasked with patrolling the St. Lawrence River, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. To make matters worse, many of his sailors – like many redcoats – were deserting to the American colonies. His first report to First Lord of the Admiralty Sandwich expressed discouragement at how desertion from troops ashore ‘was considerable, but more so from the Navy.’ When regiments arrived on transports, Gage ordered the ships to remain anchored in the harbor in case the situation got out of hand (much to the chagrin of sailors who had thought they’d be allowed to return home to England). Graves collected small boats tied up or docked along the harbor’s shores and had them moored around his flagship to better ensure control and oversight of the harbor.
In October Gage’s forces were bolstered again by the 10th and 52nd regiments from Quebec, parts of the 18th and 47th from New York, and two companies of the 65th (who’d already spent time in Boston back in the late 1760s) returned from Newfoundland. This gave Gage nearly three thousand troops in town, not including the 64th Regiment stationed on Castle Island. In December he received another boost: the warships Asia and Boyne arrived with a contingent of four hundred marines. By the start of 1775, Gage would have around forty-five hundred combat troops at his disposal, and these included five artillery companies and four hundred sixty marines from naval vessels. The harbor would be ringed by men-of-war such as the H.M.S. Scarborough and Somerset, along with frigates, sloops, and transports. These warships and their support craft didn’t only form a cordon around Boston but also slipped nooses around the throats of smaller ports situated along the harbor’s fringes, such as at Hingham and Weymouth. By the middle of June 1775 – around the time of the Battle of Bunker Hill – Gage’s forces numbered between 6300 and 6700 troops, and by the end of that month even more regiments were en route. Some historians have calculated that Boston’s civilian population, gradually emptying with the continuing arrival of troops, was reduced to three thousand – less than a fourth of the pre-occupation population of sixteen thousand. If this is accurate, then by the one-year anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, redcoats slightly outnumbered citizens; and by early summer 1775, redcoats outnumbered Bostonians by more than two-to-one. Boston truly became a military encampment.
Though these numbers are staggering, in the early summer of 1774 Gage had much less to work with: his soldiers, despite new regiments arriving regularly, remained outnumbered by the hostile citizens. Gage knew better than to try and rule by the point of a bayonet; in the words of the historian Thomas B. Allen, he ‘would try to govern by sheathing his sword and picking up a pen: There would be no immediate arrests, no curfew, no raids on Rebel meeting places.’ He refused to impose martial law and made no attempt to shut down the patriot printing presses (the freedom of the press was as sacred in England as it was in the colonies, and to do so would be to suicide his mission). Fistfights between redcoats and unemployed citizens were commonplace, as was to be expected, and Gage went out of his way to prevent as many blowups as possible: he humbly listened to citizens’ complaints and punished soldiers guilty of crimes against the people. One officer, using one of the redcoats’ popular nicknames for their commander-in-chief, complained in his diary, ‘If a soldier errs in the least, who is more ready to complain than Tommy?’ Gage forced his soldiers to abandon their side-arms when patrolling the streets, which turned many redcoats against him. Patrolling soldiers received sullen stares and provocative gestures from the townsfolk; the threat of violence lie like a sheen just under the surface of every interaction. Sir Hugh Percy, Gage’s second-in-command, found the Bostonians to be ‘extremely violent and wrong-headed; so much so that I fear we shall be obliged to come to extremities.’ Percy believed that until Great Britain made the colonists’ ‘committees of correspondence and congresses with the other colonies high treason, and try them for it in England, you must never expect perfect obedience.’ The soldiers’ opinions of the colonists were low indeed; Captain William Evelyn of the 4th Regiment penned, ‘[We] have no apprehensions from the very great number in this province, [for] though upon paper they are the bravest fellows in the world, yet in reality I believe there does not exist so great a set of rascal and poltroons.’ He was of the common belief that the tetchy citizens of Boston deserved ‘the scourge [for] they are a most execratable set of villains.’
Gage’s apparent leniency towards the patriots infuriated Boston’s Tories, who had hoped for a swift crackdown on the rebellious firebrands. Chief Justice Peter Oliver had expected Gage to arrest the Sons of Liberty for high treason and send them to the gallows, putting an end to the patriot cause with a swift crack of many spines. When it became obvious that Gage was letting them roam free, he grumbled that ‘unhappily for the public, the people were disappointed and the traitors felt themselves out of danger.’ Despite Gage’s leniency, patriot newspapers kept an inventory – doubtlessly inflated and even false at points – of the sufferings of the people of Boston. Stories of rape and robbery spread up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Patriots predicted that ‘neither our wives, daughters, nor even grandmothers would be safe.’ A father may very well see ‘a ruffian’s blade breaking from a daughter’s heart, for nobly preserving her virtue.’ The libertine soldiers tempted the Puritan-minded Bostonians to ‘frolic and revel, frequent bawdy houses, race horses, fight cocks on Sunday, drink profane and obscene toasts, [and] damn the sons of Liberty.’ One editorial recounted how a group of drunken British officers ran through Boston’s streets with swords drawn, slaughtering everyone they came across. Reasonable readers could identify such tales as nothing short of imaginative blush, but they survived on the fringes of a nucleus of growing trepidation over what the future held.
Gage strove to keep order against the provocations of patriot presses, and as if this weren’t enough, radical factions in England, determined to oust North’s administration from office, preached against conservative leaders in the House and Commons. Their speeches made their way to the colonies on fast sailors, where they were immediately reprinted in handbills and newspapers. The proclamations and outcries of sympathetic friends in England fueled colonial hatred for the redcoats and their oppressive mission. From Maine to Georgia, private letters – some authentic, others made-up – became public; these ‘flaming missives’ purported to come from Bristol, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and London. Colonial newspapers made it appear as if all England were aflame against the Port Bill and Parliament, but the truth is that most publications took Parliament’s side; only those publications favorable to the colonies were reprinted in America (any printer daring enough to publish more conservative views risked becoming a target for the Sons of Liberty, who loved to smash presses, steal type, break windows, and generally terrorize Tory printers and their families). A particular letter from a London Whig, reprinted on the reverse of a broadsheet deeply edged in mourning and which carried the text of the Boston Port Act, inflamed patriot passions and won many fence-sitters to the patriot cause. Whether the letter was genuine or forged is unknown, but it claimed to have been written in April and confirmed American suspicions that Parliament was actively engaged in a sinister plot to steal American liberties. The anonymous Londoner expressed his ‘most anxious and deep concern… of the bitter things that are mediated against America, and through her, against England itself… A plan of despotism and arbitrary power has incessantly been pursued during the present reign… an absolute, arbitrary government has infinite charms for a multitude of haughty, luxurious parasites and flatterers, that ever surround a throne, and hope to share it in tyrannizing over the people.’ The king and all those around him schemed to gobble up all power. Most members of the Commons were ‘corrupt ministerial tools’ who voted as told, and the Lords were little better. The severe measures contemplated (referring to the debates swirling around the Coercive Acts) would not be restricted to Boston, ‘but depend upon it, if they succeed against Boston, like measures will be extended to every colony in America. They only begin with Boston, hoping the other colonies will not interfere. But you are all to be visited in turn, and devoured one after another… Depend upon it, every colony is to be subdued into slavish obedience to [the] tyrannical impositions of Great Britain. Nothing less will suffice; nothing less is intended.’
Sequestered in Boston, day after day Gage received news of the response of the other colonies to the Coercive Acts. Though it seemed apparent that something like colonial unity was approaching, he refused to believe it possible. He’d served most of his life in the colonies; from the days of the French and Indian War, he’d witnessed firsthand how the colonies bickered among themselves. Despite petitions and resolves up and down the coast, Gage trusted that deep-seeded animosities between the provinces would overwhelm any desire for unification. Even in the summer of 1774, the same colonies that were ‘joining hands’ in support of Boston were squabbling among themselves, and sometimes bloodily. Virginians and Pennsylvanians tore at each other’s throats in Westmoreland County; Lord Dunmore of Virginia was dealing with cantankerous Indians who had overrun Fort Pitt in modern-day Pittsburgh, plunging the area into ‘desolation and distress’ as farm families fled to Lancaster to find sanctuary.[2] New York and New Hampshire wrestled over the ‘Grants,’ lands including the Green Mountains and the rich valleys on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain. Pennsylvania and Connecticut vied over a territory within the boundaries of the former province but claimed by the latter because their charter supposedly entitled them to a belt of land that reached all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Gage knew it was easy for colonial assemblies to pen resolves and voice support for one another, but when push came to shove, he didn’t believe these ever-at-variance colonies could set aside their differences for the interests of all.
Of Parallel Governments
On 6 August - just four days before Massachusetts' delegates to the General Congress in Philadelphia boarded an elegant coach and rode past the Common before the watching eyes of parading redcoats – word of the Massachusetts Government Act arrived with the British warship H.M.S. Scarborough. New ‘mandamus’ councilors beholden to the governor and to Parliament were to be chosen by Gage rather than elected for Massachusetts’ government, and when the chosen few became public knowledge, mobs marched on their homes and ‘persuaded’ them to reject their commissions. Judges were forced to resign their commissions or were prevented from sitting in court, either by threats or (in more extreme cases) physical intervention; one Tory judge had broken glass placed under his horse’s saddle, causing his horse to buck and throw him; another had bullets whistle by his head. Eleven of the chosen councilors immediately declined to serve, and those who were made of hardier stock suffered insults, ostracism, and persecution by the Sons of Liberty until only sixteen of the thirty-six councilors remained in office. These stalwarts couldn’t live outside royal protection for fear of their lives and the lives of their families, so they sought protection in redcoat-controlled Boston. The Massachusetts Government Act served to galvanize the Massachusetts countryside, for while the Port Act singled out Boston, the other acts – including the Administration of Justice Act, dubbed ‘the Murder Bill’ by colonists – affected the province at large. It was denounced as unconstitutional: ‘No power on earth has a right without the consent of this province to alter the minutest title of its charter or abrogate any act whatever made in pursuance of it, and confirmed by the royal assent… We are entitled to life, liberty, and the means of sustenance by the grace of Heaven and without the King’s leave.’ In other words, the colonists’ rights were given to them by God, and what George had to say about it was irrelevant.
The most dramatic show against the Massachusetts Government Act took place in the town of Worcester, where two thousand people – many of them militia – assembled on the Common and sent a message to Judge Timothy Pain ‘requesting’ him to resign his mandamus commission. Paine consented to public pressure and made a public apology for accepting the commission in the first place; he then wrote to Gage and told him what transpired, warning, ‘Thus you see an open opposition has taken place to the Acts of the British Parliament. I dread the consequences of enforcing them by a military power, people’s spirits are so raised they seem determined to risk their lives and everything dear to them in the opposition; and to prevent any person from executing any commission he may receive under the present administration.’ Gage then wrote to Dartmouth, summarizing the growing unrest in the countryside, which included patriots ‘casting ball and providing powder.’ He relayed Paine’s experience and wrote that he intended to ‘march a body of troops into that township and perhaps into others, as occasion happens to preserve the peace.’ Only by force of arms could the courts function.
In early September, while the First Continental Congress was underway at Philadelphia, Gage hammered together a plan for sending troops to Worcester to ensure the functioning of the court; he relented, however, when he received news that 20,000 armed militiamen, some hailing even from Connecticut and New Hampshire, had vowed readiness to march to Worcester if the redcoats sought to interfere. A Worcester Tory wrote Gage, ‘The people are universally determined almost to a man to reassume the old charter, elect a governor, etc…. I really fear, should the General send his troops out of Boston, he will lose them… How to resist such an enraged multitude is not for me to say, or even pretend to guess.’ Gage caved in and kept his redcoats leashed in Boston. When the day for the opening of the fall session of the Court of Common Pleas arrived, around five thousand men assembled in Worcester and lined the streets six deep for a quarter mile leading to the courthouse. Each company, representing a town, named a committee to consult with committees from other companies as to the best way to move forward. The crown-named judges were barred from the court and forced to swear they wouldn’t attempt to carry out their duties; with this accomplished, the committees of correspondence from the gathered towns met in the courthouse and, according to one Tory present, assumed ‘to themselves more power and authority than any body of men ever did.’ They proclaimed government to be at an end and jumped at the task of ‘making rules and orders for the regulation of the people of the county. In truth the people here have taken the government into their own hands.’
Worcester was just the beginning of Gage’s headaches. When a Tory informed him that patriots were distributing stockpiled gunpowder from Charlestown across the province, Gage moved to put an end to their behavior: on the first of September, 260 rank-and-file redcoats boarded thirteen landing barges on Boston’s Long Wharf and were ferried to Charlestown. The redcoats set upon the town, ‘liberating’ 250 gunpowder barrels from the magazine on Quarry Hill and loading them into the barges. Another force of redcoats marched to Cambridge and confiscated a pair of cannon. Both parties returned to Boston with their prizes, and Gage breathed a sigh of relief that there’d been no shots fired, no street brawls, no resistance of any kind – but his relief was cut short when signal fires blossomed on the hills across the bay. News of the redcoats’ activities had spread far and wide, but as the news disseminated, it took on a sinister tone so that people began to believe British warships had bombarded Boston. Express riders carried the erroneous news to Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey; and when the news reached Philadelphia, the delegates who’d gathered for the First Continental Congress were aghast (thankfully cooler heads prevailed, and rather than reacting immediately to the news, they ordered that it be confirmed; besides, they wondered, why would sensible Gage bombard his only foothold in the colonies?). Such ‘cooler heads’ didn’t prevail everywhere, and by dawn the next day, three thousand armed militiamen had gathered on Cambridge’s Common, soon (it was rumored) to be bolstered by ten thousand more militiamen from the Massachusetts hinterland. Some even speculated that the militia would number fifty thousand by the next day, and hotheads began planning how to swarm Boston ‘like locusts and rid the town of every soldier.’ As the militia swelled, those gathered couldn’t keep their nerves under control, and they encircled the home of Peter Oliver, Chief Justice of Massachusetts and the new Lieutenant Governor under Gage. Oliver ordered news of the unrest to be dispatched to Gage posthaste, instructing the rider to implore Gage not to send troops, for to do so would undoubtedly incite bloodshed. Oliver then submitted to the mob and publicly resigned from his place on Gage’s council. Shortly thereafter, selectmen from both Boston and Charlestown arrived, correcting the misinformation about Boston’s bombardment. The militia began to head back home only after the sheriffs promised not to punish them for gathering.
The militia at Cambridge may have been mollified, but the rumors of Boston’s destruction were thick like flies elsewhere. Connecticut was particularly eager to go toe-to-toe with the redcoats. Colonel Israel Putnam rode at the head of fifteen thousand militia, and Gage heard rumors of 100,000 descending upon the town. Gage could only hope the Connecticut militia would do an about-face when they heard the correct reporting of events, but in case that didn’t happen, he had to protect Boston. He began turning the town into a fortress: he fortified the Neck, establishing two 24-pound cannon and eight 9-pounder cannon on the battery so that they could hurl projectiles onto any force advancing up the narrow strip of land; he posted guards on the town militia’s ammunition and gun depots; a regiment was encamped at the Neck to supplement the cannon; and any Tories in the nearby countryside sought sanctuary in the city under the shadow of redcoat arms. Gage ordered the warships to cleave close to the city, and lines were run through their stern ports to the forward anchor cables so that they could be swiftly turned to bear their guns on approaching rebels. He then dispatched a pair of rushed letters, one to the governor of New York, demanding that all the regiments there be shipped to Boston; and another to Sir Guy Carleton in Quebec, ordering him to send two regiments down the St. Lawrence, into the Atlantic, and on to Boston. If conflict broke out, he’d need every man he could get his hands on.
With Boston fortified, the town held its collective breath. When a pair of mounted soldiers of the Connecticut Light Horse strode slowly yet confidently across the Neck to scout the British fortifications, the redcoats could only watch. The two scouts passed unchallenged through the fortifications, riding confidently under the glare of the British guards, and then they rode through town. When it became evident that the town remained in tip-top shape, they rode back out across the Neck and reported the good news to their 500-strong cavalry regiment. The redcoats in Boston waited to see if an attack came, but none materialized: as news spread that Boston was indeed secure and undamaged, the Connecticut militia headed back home. Gage breathed another sigh of relief, but this one was more apprehensive, for the events of the last couple days showed him that the patriot mobs could mobilize in defense of their countrymen. Gage could no longer deny, along with every redcoat in Boston, that the patriots were capable of building an army – but could that army fight? That was the question, and most redcoats had serious doubts they could.
Thus the Massachusetts Government Act backfired: though the charter was rendered null and void and government officially taken out of the hands of the people, the people themselves wouldn’t stomach it, so they erected their own government in its place. From this point forward there were two governments operating in Massachusetts: the official, crown-approved government and the illegal, provincial, democratically-elected government. The official government held sway in Boston, where it could be enforced by redcoats, but the provincial government ruled in the rest of the province, where the people backed it and abided by it. Anyone outside Boston who refused to comply with the provincial government placed his life and property in the hands of the mob. An exasperated Gage wrote to Dartmouth at the end of September that it would take ‘extraordinary measures’ to piece Massachusetts’ fractured government back together. Upon arriving in Boston in May, he’d been shocked to see how feeble the crown government had become. He’d been doing his best to stamp out the flames caused by the Boston Port Act when the Massachusetts Government Act poured combustibles on the flame; that affair had prompted the showdown at Worcester and the resultant ‘provincial governments’ popping up across the province. And just when Gage thought he might be able to get a lid on it, news of the Quebec Act arrived and fanned the blaze. He wrote that the Quebec Act ‘overset the whole and the flame blazed out in all parts at once.’
Of Canadians and Catholics
The volatile response to the Quebec Act in England was not only mirrored but also exponentially multiplied in the thirteen colonies. New England preachers decried the Quebec Act as an evil scheme to shove Popery down American throats. The Pennsylvania Packet wrote, ‘We may live to see our churches converted [into] mass houses, and lands plundered of tithes for the support of the Popish Clergy, the inquisition may erect her standard in Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia may yet experience the carnage of a St. Bartholomew’s Day.’ Though it was absolute nonsense, fanatic anti-papists and fear-mongering Puritans bought into it. Opponents of the Quebec Act saw in the protection of French Catholicism an implicit union between Church and State, which was anathema to many colonists: the Puritans, among others, had fled Europe to escape state-sanctioned religion, and they feared that if Quebec Province adopted the notion, it was only a matter of time before it trickled down into the colonies in one form or another. The nineteen-year-old Alexander Hamilton – who had emigrated to America after he was denied membership in the Anglican Church because he was born out of wedlock – was a student at King’s College and predicted that the Quebec Act would leave the colonies encircled by ‘a nation of papists and slaves.’ A Bostonian took up the cry: ‘[A] superstitious, bigoted Canadian Papist, though ever so profligate, is now esteemed a better subject to our Gracious Sovereign George the Third, than a liberal, enlightened New England Dissenter, though ever so virtuous.’
While much of the rancor about the Quebec Act revolved around Catholicism and state-sanctioned religion, many others had more personal reasons to oppose it. Many Virginian colonists, such as George Washington, had been involved in speculative land schemes in the Ohio Territory. They, along with other colonies, saw in the act – which added the Ohio Territory to the Province of Quebec – a violation of their charter rights to the land. Frontiersmen, who lived off trade with the native Americans in the Ohio, saw the Act as a plot to close off the territory to hunting, trapping, and settlement and to hand those privileges to Canadian entrepreneurs. Many veterans of the French and Indian War had been promised tracts of land in the territory, and these promises seemed farther away from fulfillment than ever before. Thus ‘the colonists saw [the Quebec Act] as a malicious attempt to prevent exploitation of the rich lands west of the Appalachians and to confine them to the Atlantic seaboard.’
More conspiratorial colonists saw an even deeper motivation at work: by appeasing the French Canadians, Great Britain was in effect shoring northern support against the tumultuous colonies. If the situation ever came to blows, Canada could serve as a springboard for campaigns into the northern colonies and as a supply depot for England’s armed forces. Had the Quebec Act never passed, the French Catholics would’ve been more apt to stand alongside the colonists, despite their mutual differences and animosities; with the passage of the Act, however, it would be in the French Catholics’ best interests to side with the tolerant British than with the intolerant colonists. To many, the Quebec Act came across as a behind-the-scenes wrangling in which Parliament was putting its pieces on the board in anticipation for a strike to the colonists’ jugular. These weren’t groundless accusations, for one Parliamentarian had pointed out that if the French Canadians were made favorable to Great Britain, they could serve as a hedge against ‘those fierce fanatic spirits in the Protestant Colonies.’ Some Englishmen believed the Canadians could be used ‘to butcher these “Puritan Dogs.”’ One colonist quipped that had Prime Minister North ‘stopped short of the Quebec Bill there might have been some distant prospect of less general confederacy; but that open, and avowed design of subjugating America, has alarmed the most inattentive and given us but one mind.’
End Notes
[1] More reports of the Boston Tea Party arrived over the coming weeks, and one of these reports came with a postscript of a strip of tarred and feathered flesh that belonged to the customs official John Malcolm. Malcolm had been tarred the first time in Maine; after that experience, he relocated to Boston, where he suffered the same fate: Boston mobs dragged him out of his house near North Square, tarred and feathered him again, and paraded him through the streets in a cart. The cart halted occasionally so that he could be beaten. By the time he was attended by doctors, the doctors reported that ‘his flesh comes off his back in stakes.’ He sent a bit of his hewn flesh to England as proof of his travails for the crown, and he received a much-deserved pension.
[2] The culmination of ‘Lord Dunmore’s War’ against the native Americans – principally the Shawnee – took place on 10 October, in the midst of the First Continental Congress. Virginian forces won victory over the native Americans at the Battle of Point Pleasant. Though some earlier historians consider Point Pleasant to be the first battle of the American Revolution, this is inaccurate.
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