l«|W»***H.
\
TO
MY MOTHER AND FATHER
369963
n/
n^
PREFACE
A greater number of investigations of the American
revolutionary epoch have been made in the last three or
four decades than in all the preceding years. This dili-
gence has been the outgrowth of the modern spirit of
historical research and has been productive of results
which completely discredit the simple formulae by which
the earlier historians explained the colonial revolt. In
the light of these studies it is now almost universally
agreed that the revolutionary movement was the product
of a complexity of forces, governmental and personal,
British and colonial, social, economic, geographical and
rehgious. No definitive history of the American Revol-
ution can be written until it becomes possible to appraise
each one of these factors at its true value.
In the present work attention is focused on the part
which the colonial merchants played — willingly and un-
willingly— in bringing about the separation of the thir-
teen colonies from the mother country. This has ren-
dered necessary some discussion of the evolution of the
radical party, with its shifting program, membership and
methods ; but the latter theme, so fascinating in its pos-
sibilities, is entirely incidental to the main purpose of
the book.
The most distinctive activity undertaken by the mer-
chants was the formation of non-intercourse agreements.
These agreements, because of the peculiar part they
played in the development of revolutionary sentiment,
receive extended consideration in the present work. No
5
)
6 PREFACE
reader will leave these pages without perceiving the
source of inspiration for the Jefifersonian policy of com-
mercial coercion adopted in the early nineteenth century.
If the latter years of the revolutionary movement be
taken for the purpose, the similarity will be seen to be
more than superficial. In each case the non-mercantile
elements holding the reins of power were driving a re-
luctant minority of merchants into a sacrifice of trading
interests for a good desired only by the former.
John Adams once wrote that the great problem of the
revolutionary movement was to get the thirteen clocks
to strike at the same time. M}^ own belief is that in-
stead of thirteen revolutionary movements, as Adams
suggests, there v/ere fundamentally only two, one func-
tioning along characteristic lines in the northern pro-
^^ vinces, and the other developing in a characteristic vvay
in the southern provinces. This view of events has fur-
nished the mode of attack which has been utilized in
dealing with the multitudinous happenings of the indivi-
dual provinces.
This volume appears deep-freighted with my obliga-
tions to many fellow-workers in the field of history. In
particular I am greatly indebted to Professor Herbert L.
Osgood, of Columbia University, who first directed my
attention to the subject of colonial non-intercourse and
whose constructive criticism has improved my work in
content and form. To my colleague. Professor Henry
R. Spencer, I am deeply grateful for many helpful sug-
gestions made in the course of reading the manuscript.
Indirectly I owe much to the example of certain inspiring-
teachers, particularly to that of Dean George Wells
Knight, of Ohio State University, who in my under-
graduate days first awakened in me a scholarly interest
in history. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to
PREFACE y
Mr. John Bennett, of Charleston, S. C, for kindly gath-
ering material for me in the Loyalist Transcripts. I
desire also to say that Professor C. M. Andrews' splendid
essay on " The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importa-
tion Movement" {CoL Soc. Mass. Pubs.y vol. xix) did
not reach my hands in time to be of assistance to me :
but I have availed myself of the opportunity to make
footnote references to it from time to time. I could not
conclude these personal acknowledgments without reg-
istering the deep sense of my obligation to my wife,
Elizabeth Bancroft, who has been of great assistance to
me at every stage of my labors.
Through the generosity of the editors of the Political
Science Quarterly I have been enabled to make free use
of material which appeared in an article entitled " The
Uprising against the East India Company," in vol. xxxii,
no. I. Finally, I take great pleasure in recording my
appreciation of the untiring courtesy and unfailing help-
fulness of the ofiftcers and assistants of the following
libraries : Library of Congress, Massachusetts Historical
Society, Massachusetts State Library, Boston Public
Library, New York Public Library, Columbia University
Library, New York Historical Society, Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, Maryland Historical Society, Charleston
Library Society, Ohio State Archaeological and Histor-
ical Society, Greene County (Ohio) Library Association,
Ohio State University Library, and Ohio State Library,
A. M. S.'
Ohio State University,
October, 1917.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
The Old Order Changeth
PAGE
Effects of British commercial and financial supervision on the colonies ... 15
Economy of commercial provinces 22
Dominance of merchant class in commercial provinces 27
Economy of plantation provinces 3^
Leadership of planting class in plantation provinces 34
Survey of colonial smuggling to 1763 39
CHAPTER II
The First Contest for Commercial Reform (1764-1766)
—♦Restrictive acts of 1764 50
Sectionalization of discontent 54
First stage of industrial depression 5^
Beginning of organized opposition on part of merchants 59,
• Broadening the basis of protest 62
Early movement for retrenchment in commercial provinces 63
•-♦Stamp Act (1765) and its economic burden 65
Popular demonstrations in commercial provinces 7 ^
Contrast with plantation provinces 73
Union of commercial and plantation provinces in Stamp Act Congress ... 75
Organized efforts for economic relief in commercial provinces 76
Remedial legislation of Parliament (1766) 82
CHAPTER III
The Second Movement for Commercial Reform (1767-1770)
-» Position of merchant class early in 1767 91''^
-•Townshend legislation (1767) 93
General modes of oppo ition 9^
Opposition to regulations against smuggling (1767-1770) 97
_# General character of non-importation movement 105
9
lO ^ CONTENTS
PAGE
New England town movement for non-consumption (October, 1767 — Feb-
ruary, 176S) 106
Efforts for a tri-city mercantile league of non-importation (March — June,
1768). . . .' 113
Independent boycott agreements in chief trading towns (August, 176S —
March, 1769) 120
Attempt to extend scope of mercantile agreements (October, 1769) . . . . 131
Non-importation movement in plantation provinces 134
In Virginia 135
In Maryland 13S
In South Carolina 140
In Georgia 147
In North Carolina 148
Boycott agreements in minor northern provinces , 149
In Delaware 149
In New Jersey 150
In Connecticut 150
In Rhode Island 152
In New Hampshire : 155
CHAPTER IV
Enforcement and Breakdown of Non-Importation (1768-1770)
Difficulties of judging execution of non-importation 156
Enforcement at Boston 156
Enforcement at New York 186
Enforcement at Philadelphia 191
Enforcement in other northern provinces , 194
Accession of New Ham.pshire to non-importation . 194
Qncandid course of Rhode Island 195
Enforcement in Delaware, New Jersey and Connecticut 196
CHAPTER V
Enforcement and Breakdown of Non-Importation {^Continued)
C'peration of non-importation in plantation provinces 197
Situation in Virginia 198
Situation in Maryland 199
Enforcement in South Carolina 202
Enforcement in North Carolina 208
Early defection of Georgia 209
General trend toward relaxation of non importation 209
CONTENTS 4 II
PAGE
Movement of great trading towns to terminate non-importation (April —
October, 1770) 217
Collapse of non-importation in plantation provinces (October, 1770 — July,
1771) • 233
Coercive effects of non-importation in England 236
CHAPTER VI
Colonial Prosperity and a New Peril (1770-177 3)
Alienation of merchant class from radicals 240
Return of prosperity ...,,, 241
Widespread acquiescence in tea duty 244
Continuance of smuggling , 246
>f Attempt of radicals to revive agitation (November, 1772 — July, 1773). . . 253
« CausR for renewal of opposition : tea act of 1773 262
\ Analysis of literature of protest 265
CHAPTER VII
The Struggle With the East India Company (1773-1774)
Inauguration of movement of opposition at Philadelphia 279
Development of Boston opposition to tea shipments 281
Course of opposition at Philadelphia 290
Course of opposition at New York 291
Course of opposition at Charleston 294
Effect of Boston Tea Party on colonial opinion 298
CHAPTER VIII
Contest of Merchants and Radicals for Dominance in the Commer-
cial Provinces (March — August, 1774)
Passage of coercive acts of 1774 305
Effect of coercive acts on American opinion • 306
Movement in commercial provinces for non-intercourse 311
In New England 311
In New York 327
In Pennsylvania 341
In New Jersey 356
In Delaware , , 357
12 CONTENTS
PAGB
CHAPTER IX
Contest of Merchants and Radicals for Dominance in the Planta-
tion Provinces (May— October, 1774)
Factors conditioning the non-intercourse movement in plantation provinces . 359
Action of Maryland 360
Measures of Virginia 362
Attitude of North Carolina 370
Course of South Carolina 373
Backwardness of Georgia 379
Indications of rising tide of radicalism in British America 386
Combination of workingmen at Boston and New York against Gage . 386
Destruction of the Peggy Stewart at Annapolis 388
CHAPTER X
The Adoption of the Continental Association
(September — October, 1774)
Genesis of First Continental Congress 393
Factors determining the policy of Congress 396
Proceedings of First Continental Congress , 410
CHAPTER XI
Ratification of the Continental Association
(November, 1774 — ^June, 1775)
Position of moderates after First Continental Congress . 432
Literature of protest 435
Establishment of Association in commercial provinces 440
■: In Massachusetts • • 44°
In New Hampshire 442
In Rhode Island 444
In Connecticut 444
In New York 447
In New Jersey 455
In Pennsylvania 456
In Delaware 460
Establishment of Association in plantation provinces 460
In Maryland 461
In Virginia 461
In North Carolina 462
In South Carolina 464
Failure of Georgia to ratify 469
CONTENTS 13
PAGE
CHAPTER XII
Five Months of the Association in the Commercial Provinces
(December, 1774 — April, 1775)
General conditions affecting operation of Association 473
N Workings of Association in Massachusetts 476
Workings of Association in New Hampshire 483
Workings of Association in Rhode Island 485
Workings of Association in Connecticut 486
Workings of Association in New York 489
Workings of Association in New Jersey 493
Workings of Association in Pennsylvania 495
Workings of Association in Delaware . . • 502
CHAPTER XIII
Five Months of the Association in the Plantation Provinces
General Conclusions
Contrast with commercial provinces 504
Workings of Association in Maryland 504
Workings of Association in Virginia 509
W^orkings of Association in North Carolina 519
Workings of Association in South Carolina 525
Employment of provincial boycott 529 "v'
Regulation of coastwise trade 534
# General conclusions as to non-importation regulation in all provinces ... 535 .
H Effects of Continental Association on Great Britain . . , 536
CHAPTER XIV
Transformation of the Association (April, 1775— July, 1776)
Cause of transformation of Continental Association 541
Widespread adoption of defense associations 542
Belated accession of Georgia to Continental Association 546
Changing functions of committees of observation 552
Early adoption of non-exportation for military purposes 559
Modifications in Continental Association made by Second Continental Con-
gress 563
Advent of non-exportation 570
14 CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER XV
Transformation of the Association {Continued)
Nullification of acts of navigation and trade 576
Relaxation of tea non-consumption 581
Removal of restraint on prices 584
Merchant class and the supreme decision 591
Appendix 607
Bibliography , 614
Index 631
CHAPTER I
The Old Order Changeth
The century closing with the treaty of Paris of 1763
was the Golden Age of commerce for the merchants of
the thirteen continental English colonies. The location
of these colonies in the temperate zone and the relative
newness of some of them had caused the mother country
to accord to them a treatment different from that ex-
tended to the tropical colonies. In particular they had
been enabled to escape most of the injurious restraints
which a thorough application of the mercantilist theory
would have involved — a theory dear to the economic
writers of the times and to the Board of Trade, and one
which would have converted the colonies into mere
sources of supply and markets for the English merchants
and manufacturers. Under these favoring circumstances,
the colonists acquiesced without serious complaint in the
British commercial system, and found the burdens which
it imposed counterbalanced by corresponding benefits/
The foundation stone of the commercial system was
^ The summary of the effects of the British commercial policy, which
follows, is based principally upon the anonymous pamphlet, The In-
terest of the Merchants and Manufacturers of Great Britain in the
Present Contest with the Colonies Stated and Considered (London,
1774); and upon the following monographic studies: Ashley, W. J.,
" The Commercial Legislation of England and the American Colonies,
1660-1760," in Surveys Historic and Economic (New York, 1900), and
Beer, C L., The Commercial Policy of England toward the American
Colonies (Col. U. Studies, vol. iii, no. 2).
IS
l6 THE COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
the navigation act of 1660, which confined the colonial
carrying trade wholly to English and colonial shipping.
Under operation of this monopoly, ship building had
become a lucrative source of wealth for colonial capital-
ists and of employment for colonial artisans and sailors.
T< The most comprehensive regulation affecting the dis-
tribution of goods was the requirement that European
commodities imported into the colonies must be laden and
shipped in England.' The hardship which this restric-
tion imposed on the colonies w^as theoretical rather than
actual. For one thing the Americans generally found
it more profitable to buy British manufactures than for-
eign wares because of the superior quality and lower
price of the former. This position of superiority, en-
joyed by the English merchant and manufacturer inde-
pendent of any legal advantage, made it possible for them
to retain their American market even after the colonies
had established independence. ^. Furthermore, England
^ There were a few exceptions; e. g., wines from Madeira and the
Azores ; salt from any port of Europe for the New England fisheries,
and, at a later time, for Pennsylvania and New York; provisions,
horses and servants from Ireland and Scotland ; and later, linen from
Ireland.
' Lord Sheffield, bj'- comparing the prices of standard British manu-
factures with foreign-made wares, made it apparent that " the pre-
ference formerly given [by the American colonists] was not the effect
of our restrictions . . ." Obserz'ations on the Commerce of the
American States (London, 1783), p. 234. So, also, a London merchant
in the American trade testified before the House of Commons in
1775 that printed calicoes and other colored and striped goods, and
probably also muslins and silk handerchiefs, could be procured on
better terms in England than in Holland. All these were important
articles of American consumption. Stevens, B. P., FarsimUes of Mss.
in European Archives etc. (London, 1889-98), vol. xxiv, no. 2037, p.
16. Madison wrote in 1785 that "our trade was never more compleatly
monopolized by G. B., when it was under the direction of the British
Parliament than it is at this moment." ]Madison, James, Writings,
(Hunt, G., ed.), vol. ii, p. 147.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 17
was, by virtue of her geographical position with refe-
rence to continental Europe, the natural entrepot for
most of the outgoing European trade to the colonies.
In the case of non-English manufactures, usually the
the greater portion of the English import duty was re-
funded, or " drawnback," upon re-shipment of the goods
to America, with the result that certain goods, such as
German linens, sold more cheaply in the colonies than
in the home country/ If the parliamentary regulations %
did sometimes tend to cramp American commercial op-
portunities, the colonists were apt to ignore thefrestric-
tions and, as Lord Sheffield says with a large measure of
truth, " it is well knovv^n that from the first they uni-
formly did evade them whenever they found it to their
interest." ^ <
As for the colonial export commerce, little or no re- y
I straint was imposed on the trade of the northern col-
onies with foreign countries, except in so far as the law-
governing imports compelled the colonial shipmasters
to take their return cargoes back to America by way
of England. They might send their articles of commerce
the world over, wherever a market could be found, with
the exception during the eighteenth century of naval
stores, which, being confined to the English market,
were favored with governmental bounties. Only on their
trade with the mother country were the restrictions on
exports of any apparent importance. By the terms of
the so-called corn laws, English ports were closed,
either absolutely or by heavy duties, to colonial cereals
and meats ; and a discriminatory duty was laid on oil and
blubber imported in colonial vessels. This deprived the
'The drawback amounted to all but one-half of the "Old Subsidy"
of 1660, or about 2^%,. Vide Va. Mag. Hist, and Biog., vol. xi, p. 142.
'0/>. cit., p. 234.
l8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
northern colonists of convenient articles of exchange for
British manufactures and would have proved a serious
restraint had they not been free to seek elsewhere com-
modities that could be marketed in England.
< Like naval stores, the staple of Virginia and Maryland
was an '' enumerated " article, and thus the tobacco of
these colonies could be exported only to the home coun-
try; but careful provision was made that colonial to-
bacco should enjoy a monopoly of the home market even
at the expense of English farmers and foreign importers. A
In the case of South CaroHnia and Georgia, the ex-
portation of rice was early in the eighteenth century
confined to Great Britain where it also was given a
monopoly of the market. After 1730 this staple, upon
payment of one-half of the British duties, was admitted
directly to the southern countries of Europe, whither
nearly one-fourth of the exported crop went. "^North
Carolina was affected by the regulations as to tobacco
and rice and, more largely, by the restraint on the ex-
portation of naval supplies ; but, as has^-beejx-noted, this
last industry was subsidized by the British government,
and without such help it could not have maintained it-
self against the competition of Sweden.^
^Notwithstanding that colonial tobacco and rice could
under most circumstances be sent only to the home
country, these products enjoyed fairly free access to the
continental European market, for on re-exportation from
England the whole or the greater part of the import
duty, as the law at any given time provided, was re-
mitted as a " drawback. 'V Thus, toward the end of the
colonial era four-fifths of the tobacco carried to England
was re-shipped by British merchants to the continent,
and nearly three-fourths of the American rice was re-ex-
ported to the North German and Dutch manufacturing
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH jg
towns. As England was on the direct route between ^
the colonies and the European ports north of Cape Fin-
isterre, the additional freight charge was not high.
Even if colonial vessels had gone directly to the conti-
nental ports and thus deprived the British middlemen of
their profits, they would have found it dif^cult to secure
return cargoes.
So far as the regulations of exports and imports were
concerned, the colonies north of Maryland were not ser-
iously affected ; and the restraints on the southern col-
onies wefeTialanced by governmental subsidies and vested
privileges in the English market. But other features of
the commercial system bore a somewhat closer relation
to the industrial life of the northern colonies. Most
notable in this connection was the Molasses Act of 1733,.
which was designed by means of prohibitive duties to
compel the rum distillers and dealers of New England
and elsewhere to buy molasses, sugar and rum of British,
instead of foreign, colonies in the West Indies. But, as
we shall see, this law, oppressive in intent but not ia
execution, had its chief effect in increasing the volume
of colonial smuggling.
Restraints were also placed upon the exportation of
certain manufactures. If the British merchants and the
Board of Trade could have had their way, these restric-
tions would have been sweeping and effectual ; but as it
was, no earnest effort was made either to prevent manu-
factures generally or to prohibit any manufacturing for pri-
vate consumption within a colony. In 1699 it was enacted
that no woolen manufactures should be exported from
the colonies, transported from one colony to pother or
/from one place to another in the same colonA* In 1732
the exportation of locally-made hats from a colony was
forbidden. In the middle of the century a third law for-
20 THE- COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
bade the erection of any new steel furnaces or slitting-
mills, although country forges where nails and farm im-
plements were wrought were not in any wise ailected.
This last restriction worked some hardship on the col-
onies north of Maryland ; but the ill wind blew favorably
for Virginia and Maryland, for these colonies profited
by the special encouragement which the act granted for
the American production of bar iron and pig iron.
The three laws against manufacturing may, in general,
be considered as having had little eitect, for the reason
that even the northern colonies showed small promise
of developing important m.anufacturing interests. Causes
unconnected with the British commercial system oper-
ated against the establishment of manufacturing, except
for household purposes : the abundance of land in propor-
tion to the population ; the resulting high price of labor ;
and the want of sufficient capital.' The thousands of
British workingmen who migrated to America in the
last quarter-century of the colonial era found it more
profitable and congenial to become farmers or seafarers
than to labor at their old occupations. Colonial capital-
ists found a better investment for their capital in com.m.erce
' Gallatin assigned the same reasons for the natural industrial back-
wardness of the country in 1810 in his ''Report on Manufactures."
Am. St. Papers, Finance, vol. ii, pp. 425-426. Colonists and Englishmen
at home widely appreciated that natural conditions in the colonies
were unfavorable to the development of manufacturing. E. g., zide
" An Essay on the Trade of the Northern Colonies " in Bos. Eve. Post,
Jan. 30, Feb. 6, 1764; article by "A North American," copied into
iV. Y. Merc., June 10, 1765; article in Conn. Cour., Aug. 17, 1767; the
pamphlet, The Int. of Merchants and Mfrs., pp. 20-21 ; reports of
following governors to home government : Moore, of N. Y., N. Y.
Col. Docs., vol. vii, pp. 888-889; Wentworth, of N. H., British Papers
("Sparks Mss."), vol. i, p. 6; Sharpe, of Md., Md. Arch., vol. xiv, pp.
496-497; Franklin, of N. J., i N. J. Arch., vol. x. pp. 3^-32; Macpherson,
D., Annals of Commerce (London, 1805). vol. iii, pp. 186- 191 ; Franklin,
Benj.. Writings (Smyth, A. H., ed.), vol. v, p. 116.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 21
or agriculture, and refused to hazard their resources in
manufacturing enterprises of any size, even in later times
when non-importation agreements were creating an arti-
ficial demand for colonial wares.'
An act of Parliament of 1732 sought to safeguard
British investments in colonial businesses by protecting
creditors at home against discriminatory colonial legis-
lation designed to impede the collection of their debts.
The act was passed upon petition of som.e London mer-
chantsT Tt~provided that the affidavit of a British sub-
ject at home should have the same force as evidence
given in open court in the colonies and that the lands,
tenements and negroes owned by the colonists should
be liable for the payment of debts in much the same
manner as real estate w^as in England. The undoubted
effect of the law was that colonial merchants and planters
of substance were enabled to secure a more generous
credit; the chief hardship of the regulation fell on the
unthrifty and unfortunate in the colonies.
'xA.nother regulation of Parliament, aimed solely at New
England, prohibited the issue of legal-tender paper
money after 1751. Beginning in 1690, Massachusetts
had been beguiled into the use of paper currency through
the heavy expenses entailed by the successive French
and Indian wars. Merchants of substance and the royal
officials in the colony viewed this deluge of paper money
with dismay. Other colonies followed the example of
Massachusetts, with varying degrees of good faith. The
upshot was the act of 1751 directed against the New
England governments where the evil was worst.- This
^"A. Z." in Bos. Gas., Feb. 20, 1769.
^ Davis, A. AIcF., Currency and Banking in Massachusetts Bay (3
Am. Econ. Assn. Pubs.), vol. i, pp. 253-265; Russell, E. B., The Re-
view of American Colonial Legislation by the King in Council (Col.
U. Studies, vol. biiv, no. 2), pp. 120-124.
22 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
law, though failing to meet the need which undoubtedly-
existed for a more abundant circulating medium, insured
a safe currency and stabilized business conditions to the
satisfaction of the men of means and the creditor class
generally in New England.
It would appear, then, that the business men of the col-
onies north of Maryland had little reason to quarrel with
'the British commercial and financial regulations as they
-factually operated prior to the reign of George III. In-
deed, under parliamentary supervision, the colonies had
made such progress in wealth and population as to at-
tract the attention of all Europe. There were besides, as
we shall see presently, other powerful ties of interest
that bound the colonial business and planting class to
the mother country. It was a perception of these facts
that prompted Franklin to say in 1754 of the restrictive
regulations of Parliament: "These kind of secondary
taxes, however, we do not complain of, though we have
no share in the laying or disposing of them;"' and
caused James Otis to declare in 1764: "The act of navi-
gation is a good act, so are all that exclude foreign
manufactures from the plantations, and every honest man
will readily subscribe to them."^
From north to south, the colonial economy revealed
marked contrasts which were destined to have far-reach-
ing consequences. Fundamentally, the provinces fell
into two clearly differentiated groups. ^ North of Mary-
^ Franklin, Writings (Smyth), vol. iii, p. 236.
^ The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston,
1764), pp. 54-55.
^Viewing the matter from a somewhat different angle, Professor
C. M. Andrews has made this luminous remark : " The real dift'erence
between the north and the south in colonial times lay not in politics,
law, rehgion, education, in manners, customs, or mental attitudes. It
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 23
land were the commercial provinces, regions in which /
the economic life centered chiefly in marine activity, as
in New England, or else depended very largely upon
trading, with agriculture as an important local feeder, as
in the Middle Provinces/ In the commercial provinces
the most influential men were merchants or lawyers \A
allied with them, and political life radiated from the
trading centers. South of this group lay tht plantation
provinces, w^here the native economic interests were
almost exclusively agricultural along specialized lines
and the trading relations were managed by merchants
of the mother country or coastwise by northern mer-
chants. Here towns were small and for the most part
unimportant, and political leadership fell to the owners
of the great plantations.
Each group of provinces displayed a wide diversity of
industry and trade within itself." A facetious member
of the South Carolina Assembly was heard to remark
when a proposal for a Stamp Act Congress was under
consideration : " If you agree to the proposition of com-
is to be found in the fact that the southern colonies from the beginning
to the end of the colonial period represented a purely agricultural
form of Ufe without towns, trading communities, variety of industrial
interests and competition, and consequently without that ingenuity and
scientific skill which is essential to the spread of democratic ideas and
the increase of wealth." The Colonial Period (New York, 1912), pp.
105-106.
^ One New England writer said : " 'Tis not difficult to prove clearly,
the whole Product of the Lands to the Northward of Mar3'-land is not
equal in Value to the fourth Part of our Imports from Great Britain."
Bos. Post-Boy, Nov. 28, 1763.
^ The subject of colonial economic conditions had been treated in
innumerable places. For excellent general discussions, vide Ford, W.
C, " Colonial America," Col. Sojc. Mass. Pubs., vol. vi, pp. 340-370 ; ^
and Johnson, E. R., History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of
the United States (Washington, 1915), vol. i, pp. 3-121.
24 THE COLQXIAL MERCHAXTS : 1763-1776
posing a Congress of deputies from the different British
colonies, what sort of a dish will you make. New-Eng-
land will throw in fish and onions. The middle states
flax-seed and flour. Maryland and Virginia will add
tobacco. North-Carolina, pitch, tar and turpentine.
South-Carolina, rice and indigo, and Georgia will sprinkle
the whole composition with saw-dust. Such an absurd
jumble will you make if you attempt to form a union
am^ong such discordant materials as the thirteen British
provinces."' The ingredients of the continental dish
were even more variegated than the South Carolinian
asserted.
Of the commercial provinces, the enterprising mer-
chants of New England developed a network of trade
routes that covered well-nigh half the world. Possess-
ing within themselves no staple with which to make
returns for their vast consumption of English drygoods
and other wares, the main resources of trade of these
provinces were the fisheries, the molasses-rum trade, the
marketing of slaves and the coastwise traffic.^ All these
sources were vigorously exploited in ofder to pile up a
favorable balance of specie to send as remittance to
England.
^ Ramsay, D., History of the Revolution of South Carolina (Trenton,
1785), vol. i, pp. 12-13.
^ This statement of Xew England conditions is based largely upon the
following materials: representation of R. I. Assembly in R. I. Col.
R'ecs., vol. vi, pp. 378-383 ; " Essay on Trade of Northern Colonies," in
Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. 30, Feb. 6, 1764; Postlethwayt, M., The Universal
Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (London, 1751), vol. i, pp. 366-
367; Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, vol. iii, pp. 397-398, 570; Com-
merce of Rhode Island (7 M. H. S. Colls., vols, ix and x) ; Weeden,
W. B., Economic and Social History of New England (Boston, 1890),
and Early Rhode Island (Nev^^ York, 1910) ; statistics of fisheries, i M.
H. S. Colls., vol. viii, pp. 202-203; examination of merchants before
Parliament, 4 American Archives (Force, P., ed.), vol. i, pp. 1638-1652,
1663-1670.
THE OLD ORDER C HAN GET H 2"
In 1764 forty-five thousand tons of shipping and up-
wards of three thousand men were employed in the fish-
eries. After the fish had been caught and cured, the
merchants exported the '' merchantable " variety to
Spain, Portugal and Italy, where it was sold for cash or
bills of exchange, save a sm^all portion which was ex-
changed for salt, lemons and raisins for the return
voyage. Such fish as was unfit for the European market
was exported for slave consumption in the West Indies
in exchange for more cash and for molasses.
j The circuit of trade based upon West Indian molasses
I brought even more generous returns and indeed consti-
tuted the chief source of specie supply. The molasses
^^became marketable when it was distilled into rum, for
throughout British America it had great popularity as a
tipple and as an article in the Indian trade, and it also
played an important part in the African trade. Most of
the output of rum was carried by coasting vessels to
other provinces and" exchanged for products which might
be used as remittances to England or as cargoes to the
West Indies. The remainder — about one-seventh in the
case of Rhode Island — was sent to Africa where it was
sold for slaves or for gold-dust and ivory. The last two
articles served directly as remittances to England ; the
slaves were sold for hard money in the West Indies and
the proceeds used to pay English debts.
Under the stimulus of this ceaseless round of activity,
trading communities sprang up in many parts of New
England, with^qstqn_ and ..HeA^^porL^^
Ship building leaped into prominence as a leading indus-
try, so that New England built annually twice as great
a tonnage of vessels as all the other continental prov-
inces. The rum industry grew apace, being represented
in Rhode Island in 1763 by nearly thirty distilleries
26 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
"erected at vast expense," with hundreds of persons de-
pendent upon them for subsistence, and in Massachusetts
in 1774 by sixty distilleries producing two milHon seven
hundred thousand gallons annually. '^^In short," de-
clared Macpherson, " their earnest application to fisheries
and the carrying trade, together with their unremitting
attention to the most minute article which could be
made to yield a profit, obtained them the appellation of
^ke Dutchmen of America?' Connecticut alone seemed
to stand apart, possessing no first-rate ports, having re-
sources of grain and stock more like the Middle Prov-
inces, and confining its trading activities chiefly to
coasting voyages and West Indian trade. Its trans-
Atlantic trade was for many years handled through
Boston, but after the parliamentary act of 1751 prohibit-
ing the emission of legal-tender money in New England,
the merchants diverted their trade to New York.^
The provinces next to the southward had the advan-
tage of possessing both staples of export and a mercan-
tile population equal to the opportunity.^ The great
ports of New York and Philadelphia possessed a hinter-
land of large and small farms producing a wealth of grain
and livestock. New York was the commercial capital
^ Referring to this dominant position of New York, " A Connecticut
Farmer" expressed the pious wish that "the plumes of that domineer-
ing city may yet feather the nests of those whom they have long
plucked." New London Gaz., Aug. 17, 1770. Vide also Conn. Jouni.,
Jan. 19, 1770.
^ This statement of conditions in the Middle Provinces is based
largely upon the following materials: petition of the New York mer-
chants to House of Commons, in Weyler's A^. Y. Gas., May 4, 1767;
Tryon's report to Board of Trade, A'. Y. Col. Docs., vol. viii, pp. 434-
457; Postlethwayt, Diet, of Com., vol. i, p. 366; Kalm, P., Travels into
North Ameriea (Warrington and London, 1770-1771), vol. i, pp. 31,
49-50, 253-258; reports of Gov. Franklin, i N. J. Arch., vol. ix, pp. 402-
404, 442-444.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
27
of Connecticut and old East Jersey, just as Philadelphia
was the entrepot of West Jersey and the Delaware
Counties. Less dependent than New England on circui-
tous trading for remittances to England, nevertheless
the West Indian trade was essential to the prosperity of
thesQ provinces, also. The wheat, lumber and meat of
the farmers were sent by the merchants to the West
Indies, where they were, in part, bartered for sugar,
cotton and indigo, which served directly as remittances
to Great Britain, and, in part, for rum and molasses.
The last two commodities were converted into cash
through the triangular trade with Africa and the West
Indies, or, by being exchanged for New England fish or
South Carolina rice, served indirectly as a means of draw-
ing coin from Spain, Portugal and Italy. The fur trade
with the Indians produced a commodity acceptable to
English merchants, also. The exportation of colonial
flaxseed to Ireland brought a favorable balance of trade
with respect to that article ; and the carrying to Europe
of logwood obtained from the Bay of Honduras proved
another means of procuring specie.
Throughout New England and the Middle Provinces,
the merchants and their lawyer-allies constituted the
dominant element in colonial society, an ascendency
shaTMlnTliie~C3[re''HTrevrT'ork with the landed gentry.
The chief trading communities of the commercial pro-
vinces v/ere : Philadelphia, which by 1760 with a popu-
lation of almost nineteen thousand had usurped the place
of Boston as the greatest emporium of British Amjcrica;
Boston, which ranked second with more than fifteen
thousand population ; New York, a city somewhat smaller
than Boston but destined to outstrip her in a few years ;
and Newport, the fifth city on the continent with more
^28 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
than seven thousand people/ In each center, wealthy
merchant families had come into existence. \Vho were
better or more favorably known than the Whartons,
Pembertons, Willings and Morrises of Philadelphia; the
Amorys and Faneuiis, the Hancocks and Boylstons of
Boston ; the Livingstons and Lows, Crugers and Wal-
tons of New York ; the Wantons and Lopezes of New-
port, or the Browns, — "Nicky, Josey, John and Mosey,"
— of Providence?
Dependent upon the merchants for a livelihood were
^ great numbers of petty shopkeepers, vendue-masters,
ropemakers, sailm.akers, sailors, coopers, caulkers, smiths,
carpenters and the like. These men '' were that numer-
ous portion of the community in republics, styled the
People ; in monarchies. The Populace, or still more irre-
verently The Rabble, or Canaille," as a contemporary
said ; ^ and they were, for the most part, unenfranchised,
unorganized, and unaware that in their numerical super-
iority they possessed a vast potential power in the com-
munity.
At Philadelphia, the merchant-aristocracy ruled the
city w^th a rod of iron ; their miethods of harrying the
price-cutting vendue-masters and of discouraging coun-
try peddling were similar in kind to those which modern
business integration has rendered famnliar.s The same
was true, in lesser degree perhaps, at New York, Boston
and Newport.
In their business activities, the merchants shov;ed a
capacity for joint undertakings that revealed their kin-
ship with the race that had built up the great East India
^ A Century of Population Growth (Washington, 1909), pp. 11-15.
^ Graydon, A,, Memoirs of LLis Own Time (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 122.
3 Lincoln, C. H., Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania (U. of Pa.
Pubs, in Hist., no. i), pp. 80-89.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 29
Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. The New
York company "for Settling a Fishery in these parts,"
established in 1675, the Free Society of Traders, a Penn-
sylvania corporation founded in 1682, and the Philadelphia
Contributionship for the Insuring- of Houses from Loss
by Fire were a few instances of their aptitude for organiz-
ation/ The New-London Society United for Trade and
Commerce, formed in 1732, was an example of a promis-
ing enterprise that was soon wrecked through the op-
position of a farmer-controlled legislature to its plan to
issue bills of credit.^ Mercantile organizations some-
times crossed provincial boundaries and it is not alto-
gether improbable that the historian of the future will
cite such an enterprise as the spermaceti candle combine
of 1 761-1769 as revealing an interprovincial solidarity of
interest perhaps as great as the more pretentious New
England Confederation of earlier times. ^
Less intent on politics than business, the merchants
as a class did not ordinarily concern themselves with
political questions. But when their interests were jeop-
ardized, they entered politics with a vim, and might be
expected to carry things their own way. Thus, the
merchants of Boston contributed powerfully toward de-
feating the land bank project of 1740, which was being
pushed by the farmers and debtor class generally in the
province.'*
^ Baldwin, S. E., " American Business Corporations before 1789,"
Am. Hist. Assn. Reps. {1902), vol. i, pp. 253-274; Clark, V. S., History
of Manufactures in United States (Washington, 1916), pp. 182-185.
^ Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. v, pp. 96-1 11 ; vol. vi, pp. 6-1 1.
^ R. I. Commerce, vol. i, pp. 88-92, 97-100; Mason, G. C, "The
United Company of Spermaceti Chandlers, 1761," Mag. N. Engl. Hist.,
vol. ii, pp. 165-169; Weeden, Early Rhode Island, pp. 328-329; Hunt's
Merchants' Magazine, vol. xxxii, pp. 386-387.
* Davis, Currency and Banking in Mass. Bay, vol. i, pp. 406-412 ; vol.
ii, pp. 130-235.
20 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
No one understood better than the merchants that the
rock of their prosperity was the maintenance of the
British empire. The system of parliamentary regulations
had yielded benefits without great corresponding disad-
vantages in actual practice. Furthermore, American
commerce had prospered under the protection of the
British flag and British navy/ and colonial merchants
saw their potential world market widening with each
new conquest. These w^ere advantages that the colonial
merchant received in common with his brother at home
and to an extent at the latter's expense. Of great im-
portance, also, were the liberal credits which the English
merchants extended to the colonial merchants. The
Americans could not have secured such favorable terms
from foreign houses ; and without such indulgence they
would have found difficulty in financing their under-
takings."
^ For example, there were the advantages which came to American
merchants from the presents of Great Britain to the Barbary States,
amounting to nearly $300,000 annually. At the outbreak of the War
for Independence, it was estimated that one-sixth of the wheat and
flour exported from British America, and one-fourth of the dried and
pickled fish, and a quantity of rice, found their best market in the ports
of the Mediterranean. In this commerce, there were employed eighty
to one hundred ships. Moore, J. B., American Diplomacy (New York,
1905), p. 65.
^ The slow development of Canada and Grenada before they came
under British control was attributed to the short credits granted by the
merchants in France. The Int. of Merchants and Mfrs., pp. 32-36.
The British merchant usually granted twelve months' credit without
interest and thereafter made an annual charge of 5%. CoUins, Stephen,
Letters (L. C. Mss.), vol. xvii, Feb. 18, 1774; Stevens, Facsimiles, vol.
xxiv, no. 2037, pp. 11-12, 17. As late as 1810, Gallatin spoke of "the
vastly superiour capital of the first mapafacturing nation of Europe
which enables her merchants to give." cry long credits, to sell on small
profits, and to make occasional sa rifices." Am. St. Papers, Finance,
vol. ii, pp. 42S-426.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 3 1
This business entente between the mother country and
the merchant class in the colonies was a centripetal force
of great importance in the last century of colonial history,
making for imperial stability and union when other in-
fluences were tending toward disruption. It was with a
fine appreciation of these impalpable, but sinewy, bonds
that the Committee of Merchants of Philadelphia wrote
to the Committee of Merchants of London at a critical
juncture of the revolutionary movement: ''We consider
the Merchants here and in England as the Links of the
Chain that binds both Countries together. They are
deeply concerned in preserving the Union and Connec-
tion. Whatever tends to alienate the Affections of the
Colonies or to make them averse to the Customs, Fash-
ions and Manufactures of Great Britain, hurts their In-
terests. While some, therefore, from ambitious Views
and sinister Motives, are labouring to widen the Breach,
we whose private Interest is happily connected with the
Union or, which is the same, the Peace and Prosperity
of both Countries, may be allowed to plead for an End
to these unhappy Disputes ... by a Repeal of the offen-
sive Acts . . ."'
On the other hand, the merchants were sensitive and
articulate with regard to their interests as members of
the British empire. They were ever on the alert to
obtain the best terms possible from the home govern-
ment. Thus, the merchants of Boston and Portsmouth
endeavored in 1710 to introduce improvemicnt into the
administration of the bounty on naval stores ; ^ and in
1731 the Philadelphia merchants and many others re-
1 Letter of Nov. 25, 1769, Lon. Chron., Mch. 3, 1770; also Pa. Gaz.,
May 10.
^Lord, E., Industrial Experiments in the British Colonies (J. H. U.
Studies, extra vol., 1898), pp. 69-70.
.<
32 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
monstrated against the passage of the proposed molasses
act.' They also knew the passages to governmental
favor in Great Britain, as Bellomont testified when he
wrote in 1698 that twenty-eight merchants of New York
had contributed one hundred pounds for use in obtain-
ing royal approval for an indemnity bill.^
: To understand rightly the agitation against Parliament
after 1763, it is im.portant to note that a century of ex-
V ceptional opportunities had given to the colonial mer-
chants a sense of power in dealing with Parliament and
\ had developed between the chief trading tow^ns in America
7I a consciousness of a fundamental identity of interests.
^ Therefore, when Parliament in 1764 began to pass legis-
lation injurious to their commerce, the merchants of
Boston, New York and Philadelphia undertook to create
a public opinion favorable to preserving the conditions
that had brought them prosperity. Their object was
reform, not rebellion ; their motives were those of a
group of loyal subjects in any country intent upon
securing remedial legislation.
The plantation provinces, stretching from Maryland
to Georgia, had an industrial and mercantile system in
sharp contrast w^ith that of the northern provinces.
Virginia and Maryland, almost from their first settlement
and under persistent encouragement by Great Britain,
had made tobacco their staple ; and it long continued to
constitute the most valuable export not only of these
1 Channing, E., History of United States (New York, 1909 in prog-
ress), vol. ii, pp. 517-518.
^ Later, Bellomont informed the British authorities that, on the third
reading of a bill before the New York Council, a member declared
that there would be i40,ooo available " to stop the King's approbation in
England." Russell, E. B., Review of American Colonial Legislation by
the King in Council, p. 220.
THE OLD ORDER CHAXGETH 33
provinces but of all the continental colonies as well.*
The exportation of tobacco was confined by law t6 Great
Britain ; and by the middle of the eighteenth century,
two hundred sail of ships were employed in the.,trade,
most of them owned in England. Sweet-scented tobacco
from the region of the York River was highly esteemed
by English epicures, and thus only the inferior varieties,
like the " Oronoac," were re-exported to* 'Holland, Ger-
many and Sweden. The planters invested their capital'
solely in the growing of the weed ; and on man's w^eak-
ness for smoking and snuf!ing was built up a great
agricultural and social system.
In South Carolina and Georgia, almost as great atten-
tion was devoted to the culture of rice, although Georgia,
as a newer settlement, was backward agriculturally as
compared with South Carolina.^ Not of indigenous
growth, the plant nevertheless became the staple of these
provinces in the eighteenth century ; and American rice
^ This statement of conditions in the tobacco provinces is based
largely upon the following materials : Postlethwayt, Diet, of Com., vol.
i, p. 364; Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, p. 569; Burnaby, A^,
Travels through the Middle Settlements in North America (London,
^775), pp. 15-17, 26-30; American Husbandry (London, 1775), vol. i, pp.
225-231, 237-238, 244-245; report of Lt. Gov. Sharpe, Md. Elist. Mag.,
vol. ii, pp. 354-362; article on Md. commerce in Pa. Chron., Feb. 5, i77o;
Morriss, M. S., Colonial Trade of Maryland, 1689-1715 (J. H. U.
Studies, vol. xxxii, no. 3) ; Bruce, P. A., Economic History of Va. in
the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1896) ; report of Gov. Fauquier
of Va., British Papers ("Sparks Mss."), vol. iii, p. 212.
^ This statement of conditions in the rice provinces is based very
largely upon the following materials : Political Magazine (1780), p. 172;
Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, pp. 570-572; table of rice and
indigo exports from Charleston, 1748-1773, S. C. Gas., June 21, 1773;
McCrady, E., 5". C. under the Royal Government (New York, 1901),
pp. i262-27i, 388-398; report of Gov. Wright of Ga.. Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls.,
vol. iii, pp. 164-167; Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss., no. 8133B (L. C. Tran-
scripts), pp. 164-165.
24 THE COLOXIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
•had the reputation of being the best in the world. Al-
though an "enumerated" article, it monopolized the
Dutch, German and Portuguese markets and had gained
a foothold in Spain. Near the middle of the eighteenth
century, another plant was introduced, which quickly
gave promise of pushing rice for pre-eminence. This
was indigo, the production of which was greatly stimu-
lated by parliamentary bounties. Though its exportation
was confined to the mother country, many of the indigo
planters, it was said, were able to double their capital
every three or four years.
North Carolina, by virtue of her midway geographical
position, displayed some characteristics of both adjoining
provinces, growing tobacco in her northerly parts and
indigo and rice in the southern counties.' Her chief
articles of export, however, were the products and by-
products of her forested areas — tar, pitch, turpentine
and many varieties of lumber. In 1767, there were on
the Cape Fear River and its tributaries fifty saw- mills,
cutting annually a total of seven and one-half million
feet of boards.
The most striking feature of the southern economy
was the fact that native capital, in its larger aspects, was
invested almost exclusively in plantation production.
Out of these large landed estates there grew up a great
social and political system, with its aristocracy of birth
and leadership and its vital distinction between slave
labor and gentlemanly leisure. Towns in the plantation
provinces were neither large nor numerous. Charleston,
possessing a population of almost eleven thousand in
1770, was the chief port of the South and the fourth city
in British America. Each province had some place of
^American Husbandry, vol. i, pp. 331-351; report of Gov. Tryon, X.
C. Col. Recs., vol. vii, pp. 429-430.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 35
which it could be said that " trade is more collected here
than in any other place . . . " ; ' thus, Baltimore in
Maryland, Norfolk in Virginia, Wilmington in North
Carolina and Savannah in Georgia.
Native Americans did not ordinarily become merchants,
and commerce was handled in British bottoms in one of
two ways, each of which was uneconomical for the
planter,'' The wealthy planter employed the London or
Bristol or Glasgow merchant as a sort of commission
merchant, to dispose of his tobacco or rice and to lay
out the probable proceeds in goods of one kind or an-
other, to be delivered at the planter's wharf in the fol-
lowing season. This system resulted in careless and
wasteful management on the part of the merchant in
England, high commissions and freight rates, and
chronic overbuying on the part of the colonist.
For ordinary trading purposes, the British merchant
maintained an agent or "factor" in the colonies, who
kept up a stock of merchandise the year round, worked
up business, and acted as financial agent and confidential
adviser of his employer. The factors were almost alto-
gether "foreigners," as the local vernacular termed
them — that is, natives of Scotland. They had the repu-
tation of being shrewd, hard business men, veritable
Shylocks ; and from the point of view of their patrons
they undoubtedly were, for they demanded, from as
wasteful a race of gentlemen-farmers as ever lived,
punctual payment for goods sold or money loaned. ^
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 2,7^-2,7^.
"^ Bassett, J. S., " The Relation between the Virginia Planter and the
London Merchant," Am. Hist. Assn. Reps. (iQOi), vol. i, pp. 551-575;
Schaper, W, A., "Sectionalism in S. C," ibid. {1900), vol. i, pp. 287-
288, 297 ; Sioussat, St. G. L., " Virginia and the EngHsh Commercial
System," ibid. (1905), vol. i, pp. 71-97.
^ For an able defense of the Scotch merchants, vide " A Scotchman "
in Pinkney's Va. Gas., Mch. 23, 1775.
0/5 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Here again, there were large profits for the British
dealers and shipowners, and lavish buying on the part of
the colonist.
The British capitalist advanced money and gave gen-
erous credit to the planter, but this merely served to
com.plicate matters; the planter continually operated on
borrowed capital and found his next crop mortgaged
before it was planted. For more than a quarter of a
century, Colonel Byrd of Virginia, struggled to repay
indebtedness contracted with a London firm for the sake
of enlarging his plantations. In 1736, he was "selling
off land and negroes to stay the stomach " of his hungry
creditors ; and he asserted that they allowed him twenty-
five per cent less for tobacco than they gave to other
people, knowing that they had him for a customer until
the debt was discharged.'
The result of this financial system, in its various ram-
ifications, was the economic bondage of the planting
class to the British merchants. The planter, Thomas
Jefferson, declared that in Virginia " these debts had be-
come hereditary from father to son, for many genera-
tions, so that the planters were a species of property,
annexed to certain mercantile houses in London." ^
When the statute of 1732 was enacted by Parliam.ent to
protect the debts of British creditors in the colonies, the
Virginia Assembly drew up a mem.orial, the " whole aim
and intent" of which, says Professor Sioussat, was "ex-
pressive of a revolt against the domineering and ' graft-
ing' rule of the combination of merchant creditors," in
its various manifestations. From time to time, the
^ Bassett, J. S., IVritwgs of Colonel William Byrd (New York, 1901),
pp. li, Ixxxiv.
'Jefferson, Writings (Ford, P. L., ed.), vol, iv, p. 155. l''ide also "A
Planter" in Dixon & Hunter's Va. Gaz., Apr. 13, 1774.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 37
colonists tried to improve their situation by passing lax
bankruptcy laws and other legislation prejudicial to non-
resident creditors ;' but their efforts were usually blocked
by fhe royal veto/ Toward the close of the colonial era,
their condrtion was becoming v/ell-nigh insupportable.
The situation was especially acute in Virginia/ In
1748, the Virginia Assembly provided that, in actions
for the recovery of sterling debts, the amount adjudged
could be settled in currency at twenty-five per cent ad-
vance, notwithstanding the fact that exchange fluctuated
and was at times as high as forty per cent. Seven years
later, the Assembly was induced to modify the law to
the extent that the Virginia courts should be empowered
to fix the rate of exchange. This law was hardly more
satisfactory to the British merchants than the earlier one ;
and their dissatisfaction was sharpened by the fact that,
about this time, Virginia began to issue legal-tender
paper money. This money depreciated steadily; and, as
a large portion of the debts of the British merchants was
in paper, the action of Virginia had the effect of partial
repudiation.
But the resourcefulness of Virginia was not yet ex-
hausted. In 1758, a law was passed, permitting persons,
who owed tobacco for debts, contracts, fees or salaries,
to discharge their obligations during the following year
in money at the rate of twopence a pound. This " Two-
Penny Act" was passed because of a sharp rise in" the
price of tobacco ; and it aroused the bitter opposition,
^ The plantation provinces displayed much greater activity along these
lines than the commercial provinces. This legislation is conveniently
summarized in Dr. Russell's Review of American Colonial Legislation,
pp. 125-136.
2 Beer, G. L., British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765 (New York, 1907),.
pp. 179-188.
38
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
not only of British creditors, but also of the Mrginia
clergy. In 1759, the merchants of London interested in
Virginia trade presented a memorial against the act,
showing that large quantities of tobacco were owing to
them in Virginia, and that under this law the debts could
be commuted in money at the rate of twopence per
pound notwithstanding that at the time the market price
of tobacco was considerably higher. The act thus had
the effect of annulling contracts that had turned out un-
favorably to the planters; and in August, 1759, an order
in council disallowed it, as well as others of a similar
nature enacted prior to 1758.
The local clergy were in a similar dilemma, since an
earlier law had established their salary at a fixed quantity
of tobacco. They believed that they should reap the
benefit of any advance in the price inasmuch as they had
always suffered by its decline. One of the suits, brought
by the "parsons" to recover the full market price of the
tobacco, gave opportunity for the first grandiose decla-
ration of the rights of the colonists in the matter. The
question of justice had already been decided in favor of
the "parson "-plaintiff, when young Patrick Henry was
called in by the vestry to exhort the jury to scale down
the amount of the verdict which should be assessed.
Arguing vigorously for the natural right of the com-
munity to govern for itself in the matter, he persuaded
the jury to award nominal damages of one penny.'
The peculiar economic situation in the plantation
provinces shaped the developments of the decade 1764-
1774 in fundamental contrast with those of the commer-
cial provinces. Whereas, in the latter, financial power
^ Henry, W. W., Patrick Henry (New York, 1891), vol. i, pp. 30-46;
Maury, A., Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (New York, 1872), pp.
418-423.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 39
and political power were vested in the hands of the same
class in the early years of the decade, in the plantation
provinces financial control and political leadership be-
longed to two classes, dissimilar in nativity, social man-
ners and political sympathy. The important result was
that when the new policy of Parliament adopted in 1764
threatened to inflict serious injury on the merchants of
the North, the planters of the South felt an instinctive
afftnity for their oppressed brethren and were moved to
join them in their demands for remedial legislation and
a larger measure of colonial autonomy. Oliver Wolcott
went so far in later years as to say with reference to
the chief plantation province : '' It is a firmly established
opinion of men well versed in the history of our revolu-
tion, that the whiggism of Virginia was chiefly owing to
the debts of the planters ^^
Thus far it has not been necessary to distinguish be-
tween legal commerce and illicit commerce, for the reason
that the mother country failed to draw sharply the dis-
tinction until the closing years of the colonial era."* The
^British Iniluence on the Affairs of the United States Proved and
Explained (Boston, 1804), quoted by Beard, C. A., Economic Origins
of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1915), pp. 297-298. It will be
recalled that the question of payment of the pre-Revolutionary private
debts toi British merchants occupied the attention of the British and
American governments in the treaties of 1783 and 1794 and in the con-
vention of 1802. The claims presented against the commercial prov-
inces amounted to £218,000; those against the plantation provinces,
£3,869,000. The former figure consisted, in large part, of claims on
behalf of American loyalists for compensation, while this was not true
in the latter case. Ibid.
' This summary of smuggling is based largely upon the following
materials: Postlethwayt, M., Great Britain's Commercial Interest Ex-
plained and Improved (London, i759), vol. i, pp. 485-498; "An Essay
on the Trade of the Northern Colonies," Prov. Gaz., Jan. 14, 21, 1764;
report of commissioners of the customs, Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss., no.
40 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
business of smuggling was made easy and attractive by
several favoring circumstances — the extensive and irreg-
ular coastline, the distance of the colonies from England,
the inefncient system of administration, and, it must be
said, the practice of custom-house officials " of shutting
their eyes or at least of opening them no further than
their own private interest required."' Smuggling was
almost exclusively a practice of merchants of the com-
mercial provinces. " The Saints of New England," wrote
Colonel Byrd of Virginia acridly, "... have a great
dexterity at palliating a perjury so well as to leave no
8133c (L. C. Transcripts), ft. 85-86; Hutchinson, History of Mass. Bay,
vol. iii, pp. 160-163; and other sources noted from time to time. The
conclusions presented do not differ materially from those given in :
Andrews, C. -.1., " Colonial Commerce," Am. Hist. Rev., vol. xx, pp.
61-62; Ashley, W. J., "American Smuggling, 1660-1760," Surveys His-
toric and Economic, pp. 336-^60; Beer, G. L., British Colonial Policy,
1754-^7^5, PP- 235-246, and Commercial Policy of England, pp. 130-143;
McClellan, W. S., Smuggling in the American Colonies (New York,
1912), chap, iii; Root, W. T., Relations of Pennsylvania with the Brit-
ish Government (New York, 1912), pp. 61-76. As to the quantity of
illicit trade, every student will agree with Professor Andrews that " it
is doubtful if satisfactory conclusions can ever be reached . . . owing
both to the lack of evidence and to its unsatisfactory character."
^ " Essay on Trade of Northern Colonies," Prov. Gaz., Jan. 14, 21,
1764. Surveyor General Temple accused Governor Bernard of sharing
in such illegal gain. Quincy, S. L., Mass. Reports, 1761-1772, pp. 423-
424. Hutchinson wrote on Sept. 17, 1763: "The real cause of the
illicit trade in this province has been the indulgence of the officers of
the customs, and we are told that . . . without bribery and corruption
they must starve." Ibid., p. 430. On Feb. 8, 1764, Governor Franklin
of New Jersey reported to the Board of Trade that the custom-house
officers entered " into a Composition with the Merchants and took a
Dollar a Hogshead, or some such small matter, in Lieu of the Duties
imposed by Act of Parhament," and he had no knowledge that they
ever remitted the "Composition Money" to England. 1 N. J. Arch.,
vol. ix, pp. 403-404. It should be noted that by lavv^ the collectors had a
discretionary power to accept partial payment of duties as full payment
(13 and 14 Charles H, c. 11).
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 4I
taste of it in the mouth, nor can any people like them
slip through a penal statute." '
For the most part, colonial smuggling topk_ two
forms. ^ First, there was a direct traffic, back and forth
across the Atlantic, between the British provinces and
foreign countries.' The outgoing commerce was likely
to infringe the regulation which confined certain colonial
exports to Great Britain alone ; and the incoming trade
unavoidably violated the requirement that practically all
products of Europe and Asia should reach the colonies
ma England. The illicit traffic in colonial exports was
apparently very small. Of much larger proportions was
the clandestine importation of foreign commodities and
manuTactures, although its relation to the total volume
of legitimate trade w^as not important. Colonial mer-
chants carrying legal cargoes to Holland, Hamburg and
France sometimes returned with drygoods, tea, v/ines
and gunpowder, which they had not troubled to enter at
a British port.^ Or these wares found a more circuitous
entrance into the colonies by w^ay of the foreign islands
in the West Indies. Or New England merchants, hav-
ing disposed of their fish in Portugal, Spain or Italy and
having, in accordance with the law, loaded all the salt
they wished, completed their cargoes with fruit, oil and
^Letter of July 12, 1736, Am-. Hist. Rev., vol. i, p. 88.
^ One form of smuggling disappeared after the seventeenth century
and is not discussed here. This was the direct exportation of colonial
tobacco to Scotland. The illegal character of this traffic was removed
when the acts of trade were extended to Scotland in 1708. Morriss,
Colonial Trade of Maryland, pp. 1 16-120.
^ E. g., vide reports of Lt. Gov. Colden of New York, Golden, Letter
Books, 1760-177 s (A". ^- Hist. Soc. Colls., vols, ix and x), vol. i, pp.
257-259, 27S-,2>7^', letter of William Bollan, Feb. 26, 1742, Col. Soc. Mass.
Puhs., vol. vi, pp. 299-304. The letter of an Amsterdam commission
house to a Rhode Island merchant, dated Jan. 31, 1764, is interesting
first-hand evidence on this point. R. L Commerce, vol. i, pp. 105-106.
42 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
wine, and made straightway for America. Governor
Bernard of Massachusetts spoke of ''an Indulgence time
out of mind allowed in a trifling but necessary article,
. . . the permitting Lisbon Lemons & wine in small
quantities to pass as Ships Stores";' and, acting upon
the same understanding, Peyton Randolph, attorney
general of Virginia, drew upon himself the withering
wrath of Governor Dinwiddle, for dismissing a case in-
volving this breach — " inconsistant W'ith Justice, the
Sense and Spirit of the Laws that were produc'd on the
Tryal," as Dinwiddle declared.^
By far the greatest mass of contraband trade consisted
in the importation of undutied molasses, sugar and rum
from the foreign West Indies, particularly molasses.
The heavy restrictions of 1733 had been imposed regard-
less of the protests of colonial merchants, the avowed
purpose of Parliament being to give to the British
planters in the West Indies a monopoly of marketing
their molasses in the commercial provinces. The act
had been passed at the behest of the "West India in-
terest" in Parliament; 3 and to colonial merchants, it
appeared a sinister piece of exploitation intended to en-
able " a few pamper'd Creolians " to " roll in their gilded
^ He added : " I have always understood that this was well known in
England, — allowed, as being no object of trade, or if it was, no way-
injurious to that of Great Britain/' Quincy, op. eit., pp. 430-431. Vide
also article in Bos, Eve. Post, Jan. 2, 1764. S. Toovey, clerk to the
customs collector at Salem, described, in convincing detail, how the
customs entries were manipulated for this purpose, in a deposition of
Sept. 27, 1764. Bos. Gas., June 12, 1769.
' Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie (Richmond, 1884), vol. ii, pp.
679-681. Gov. Fauquier of Virginia reported on Nov. 20, 1764, that
ships returning from Lisbon generally brought a small quantity of
fruit and sometimes wine. Brit. Papers {''Sparks Mss'*), vol. ii, p. 43.
^ About forty members were usually so classified. Bos, Eve. Post,
Nov. 21, 1763; Bos. Post-Boy, Aug. 4, 1766.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 43
equipages thro' the streets" of London, at the expense
of two million American subjects/
If any serious attempt had been made to enforce the
statute, the prosperity of the commercial provinces
would have been laid prostrate. It was the West India
trade, more than anything else, which had enabled them
to utilize their fisheries, forests and fertile soil, to build
up their towns and cities, to supply cargoes for their
merchant marine, and to liquidate their indebtedness to
British merchants and manufacturers. The entire mo-
lasses output of the British islands did not equal two-
thirds of the quantity imported into Rhode Island alone,
and was estimated to amount to only about one-eighth
of the quantity consumed annually by all the provinces. "^
Moreover, the prices of the British planters were twenty-
five to forty per cent higher than those asked at the
foreign islands; and the foreign planters were willing to
transact business on a cash basis. ^ That smuggling with
the foreign islands was extensive and important, the
evidence is plentiful and uncontradicted. It is to be
found in such a variety of sources as letters of colonial
^ Bos. Eve. Post, July 8, 1765, quoting an article by "Anti-Smuggler"
in the London Public Ledger. Vide also ibid., Jan. 2, 1764. For the
best explanation of the motives of Parliament in passing this law, vide
Andrews, C. M., " Anglo-French Commercial Rivalry," Am. Hist. Rev.,
vol. XX, pp. 761-780.
^ Of the 14,000 hogsheads of molasses imported into Rhode Island
«ach year, 11,500 hogsheads came from the foreign West Indies, pay-
ing no duty. Representation of R. I. Assembly, in R. L Col. Recs., vol.
vi, pp. 378-383. Of the 15,000 hogsheads imported into Massachusetts
in 1763, all but 500 came from the foreign islands. Bernard', F., Letters
vOM Trade, p. 7; evidence of William Kelly before a committee of Par-
liament, Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss., no. 33030 (L. C. Transcripts) , i. 135
' Postlethwayt, Great Britain's Interest, etc., vol. i, p. 494; letter from
New York in London Chronicle, Oct. 2, 1764. There were also heavy
duties levied on the products of the British sugar plantations at expor-
tation. Channing, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 511.
^ THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
governors and customs officials, newspaper articles and
merchants' letter books, instructions to governors, and
the writings of economists/
Although of decided econom.ic advantage to the com-
mercial provinces, the non-enforcement of the Molasses
Act proved a serious political blunder for the home gov-
ernment. As British statesmanship should have foreseen,
it gave to colonial smuggling every aspect of respecta-
bility. Numbers have becomie "reconciled to it by ex-
am^ple, habit, and custom," declared a contemporary
observer, " and have gradually consented to amuse them-
selves with some very superficial arguments in its favour,
such as, that every man has a natural right to exchange
his property with whom he pleases, and where he can
make the most advantage of it ; that there is no injustice
in the nature of the thing, being no otherwise unlawful
than as the partial restrictions of power have made it ;
arguments which may be . . . adopted in extenuation
of man}^ other disorderly and pernicious practices."^
"There is no error in a comm^ercial nation so fruitful
of mischief," was the keen observation of another writer,
'' as making acts and regulations oppressive to trade [with-
out enforcing them]. This opens a door to corruption.
This introduces a looseness in m.orals. This destroys the
^ E. g., the commissioners of the customs in England reported on
Sept. i6, 1763, that "it appears to Us, from the Smallness of the Sum
Collected from these Duties and from other Evidence, that they have
been for the most part, either wholly evaded or Fraudulently Com-
pounded . . ." Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss., no. 8133c (L. C. Transcripts) .
A writer in the Bos. Eve. Post, Nov. 21, 1763, voiced the current colo-
nial opinion when he averred : " The sugar act has from its first pub-
lication been adjudged so unnatural that hardly any attempts have been
made to carry it into execution."
^"A Tradesman of Philadelphia" in Pa. Joiirn., Aug. 17, 1774. Cf.
Bollan's letter, Col Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. vi, p. 300.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
45
reverence and regard for oaths, on which government so
much depends. This occasions a disregard to those acts
of trade which are calculated for its real benefit. This
entirely destroys the distinction which ought invariably
to be preserved in all trading communities between a
merchant and a smuggler. But the sugar act has thrown
down all distinction : Before this w^as published, a mer-
chant disdain'd to associate with the unfair trader." '
The truth was that the income of many wealthy families
in the North — yea, the prosperity of whole provinces —
depended upon a trade which was approved by a robust
public opinion but forbidden by parliamentary statute. -
The " Sm.uggling Interest" became a factor of great
potential strength in public affairs in the trading towns
of the North."
Colonial smugglers felt the first impact of an opposing
imperial interest during the last intercolonial v>'ar,
when, covetous of large profits, they supplied the French
belligerents in America with foodstuffs, whereby they
were enabled to prolong the war.^ In defiance of pa-
triotic duty, acts of Parliament, and the efforts of the
British and provincial administrations, not only was the
old illicit intercourse wnth the French continued but
many new^ routes were opened up. The early efforts of
the British government to suppress the traffic resulted
in more than doubling the average annual revenue from
the Molasses Act during the war, at a time, however,
^ Bos. Eve. Post, Nov. 21, 1763.
2 Vide the important letters of Richard Oswald to Lord Dartmouth
in Stevens, Facsimiles, vol. xxiv, nos. 2032, 2034, 2037; Sagittarius's
Letters and Political Speculations (Boston, 1775). nos. i and iii, passim.
^ The present account is based largely upon the excellent treatment
in Beer, Brit. Col. Policy, 1754-1765, pp. 72-131, and Root, Rels. of Pa.
with Brit. Govt., pp. 76-84.
46 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
when the volume of smuggling had probably trebled or
quadrupled.' [Fn 1760 and 1761, a vigorous employment
of the navy resulted in disturbing the centers of smug-
gling in the West Indies and in further disminishing its
volume.!
The experience of the British government during the
war sharply revealed the strength, sordidness and energy
of the forces supporting the contraband trade. Prov-
incial governors had been bought out by the smugglers
in one or two instances ; and from Massachusetts to
South Carolina, the Americans managed pretty success-
fully to control the vice-admiralty courts in their favor.
Governor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, reported in 176c
that the most eminent lawyers of that province vvere re-
tained by the smugglers. In New York, Lieutenant
Governor Golden complained in 1762 that his efforts
against illicit trade had failed of the desired effect be-
cause the enforcement of the law rested largely with
persons who had connections with smugglers or who
feared their resentment.^ A prominent Rhode Island
lawyer averred that the courts of vice-admiralty had be-
come "subject to mercantile influence; and the king's
revenue sacrificed to the venality and perfidiousness of
courts and officers." ^
In Massachusetts, the smuggling merchants struggled
^The extent of this partial enforcement is indicated by the aggregate
amount of the revenue derived from the Molasses Act. The total
duties paid on molasses from 1734 to the close of 1755 amounted to
i5,686, or a yearly average of ^259. In the seven years, 1756- 1762,
^4.375 was collected, the yearly average being ^625. For the years 1760
and 1761 the amounts v^^ere £1,170 and £1,189. Beer, op. cit., pp. 115-
116 and f. n.
^Letter Books, vol. i, pp. 195-196.
^ Howard, M., A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax to his Friend
in Rhode Island (Newport, 1765).
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 47
hard to impair the efficiency of the customs collection
by instituting damage suits against customs officials in
unfriendly common-law courts. Toward the end of the
war, the services of James Otis, recently prosecuting
officer for the local vice-admiralty court and the most
eloquent lawyer of the province, were retained by the
merchants of Boston and Salem, in an attack on the leg-
ality of the general search warrants, or ''writs of assist-
ance," which had proved an efrective means of locating
contraband goods. Like Henry in Virginia, Otis made
a perfervid plea for the ''inherent, inalienable, and inde-
feasible " rights of the colonists and particularly for the
privacy of one's home and warehouses from prying
customs officers acting under general search warrants.^
But he lost his case. This failure led the Massachusetts
General Court to pass an act, which, if Governor Bernard
had not vetoed it, would have drawn the teeth from the
writs. This bill, the governor assured the Board of
Trade, was " the last effort of the confederacy against
the custom-house and Laws of Trade."''
The suppression of smuggling had been originally
undertaken by the British government as a war measure ;
but before the war had termiinated, it became apparent
that a strict enforcement of the acts of trade was to be a
permanent peace policy. Pitt's circular dispatch of
August 23, 1760 marked the transition; 3 the year 1763
brought a succession of unqualified steps in this direc-
tion. An act of Parliament of that year authorized the
^For a bibliography of Otis's speech, vide Green, S. A., 2 M. H. S.
Procs., vol. vi, pp. 190-196.
* Palfrey, J. G., Compendious History of New England (Boston,
1884), vol. iv, p. 313.
^ Text in Qnincy, Mass. Reports, p. 407.
48
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
use of the navy against smuggling in the colonies/ The
vicious practice of absenteeism in the customs service
was terminated : all colonial customs officials residing in
England were ordered to repair to their stations in
Amierica.^ In July, special instructions were sent to
colonial governors and naval commanders to suppress
illicit trade, especially the clandestine traffic carried on
directly with continental Europe. ^ In the last days of
the year, strict orders were issued from all the custom
houses in the northern district, requiring masters of
vessels to conform to the old Molasses Act ''in all its
parts." -^ Early in 1764, American newspapers recorded
the arrival of warships at various ports. The frequency
of seizures increased. ^
The publication of the orders to enforce the Molasses
Act " caused a greater alarm in this country than the
taking of Fort William Henry did in 1757," declared
Governor Bernard, of Massachusetts. ° He reported that
it was common talk am.ong Boston merchants that the
trade of the province was at an end, "sacrificed to the
West Indian Planters," and that every prudent man
should resort to farming and homespun. Lieutenant
^3 George III, c. 22.
' Kimball, G. S., ed., Correspondence of the Colonial Governors of
Rhode Island, 1723-1775 (Boston, 1902), vol. ii, p. 355.
^Md. Arch., vol. xiv, pp. 102-103; Erov. Gaz., Sept. 24, 1763, also
Mass. Gaz. and News-Letter, Sept. 29.
* Bos. Fost-Boy, Jan. 2 and 9, 1764, contained such orders, under
date of Dec. 26, 1763, from the custom houses of the ports of Boston,
Salem, Piscataqua and Falmouth; Newport; New London and New
Haven; New^ York; Perth Amboy, Burhngton and Salem, N. J.
^ Hutchinson, Hist, of Mass. Bay, vol. iii, pp. 160-163.
^ Bernard, Letters, p. 9. Commenting on this comparison, John
Adams declared in 1818: "This I fully believe and certainly know to
be true; for I was an eye and an ear witness to both of these alarms."
Works (Adams, C. F., ed.), vol. x, p. 345.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 49
Governor Golden at New York warned the Board of
Trade that the stoppage of trade with the foreign West
Indies would reduce importations from England and
force the people to do their own manufacturing. The
legislature of that province granted a bounty on hemp,
with the hope of providing a staple commodity for ex-
port to England in place of commodities from the foreign
West Indies.' Governor Franklin, of New Jersey, in-
formed the Board of Trade : '' At present there are great
Murmurings among the Merchants, and others, in North-
America, on account of the Stop put to " the trade with
the foreign West Indies.^ ''Trade [is] very dull," wrote
a smuggling merchant of Philadelphia as early as Nov-
ember 12, 1763, after noting the presence of two men-of-
v^ar in the river. '' I suppose the number of Vessells
in this harbour, at this time, exceeds any that ever was
Knowne here & people not knowing v^hat to do with
them." At various times in the next twelvemonth he
lamented the great scarcity of cash and the vigilance of
the warships. They " are so very strict that the smallest
things don't escape their notice," he complained. ^ There
was, beyond question, a gloomy prospect ahead for the
smuggling merchants.
^ Colden, Letter Books, vol. i, pp. 312-313 ; Weyler's A^". F. Gaz., Apr.
2, 1764. " The intercourse between the Dutch &c, & the Colonies (I
mean Dry Goods everywhere) ought to be entirely suppress'd, but the
rigorous execution of the Sugar [Act] is injurious," wrote Jonathan
Watts, a member of the New York council. 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. x,
p. 507.
' / A^ /. Arch., vol. ix, p. 404.
^"Extracts from the Letter-Book of Benjamin Marshall, 1762-17^,"
Pa. Mag., vol. xx, pp. 204-212.
/
CHAPTER II
The First Contest for Commercial Reform
(1 764- 1 766)
Events were shaping themselves in England to accen-
tuate the economic distress which the commercial provinces
had already begun to feel. The Peace of Paris of 1763
marked a turning point in the relations of Great Britain
to her colonies. The mother country faced the complex
Y task of recasting her imperial policy, of safeguarding her
newly-acquired world empire, of readjusting the acts of
trade to meet the new situation and of improving their ad-
ministration.^ The particularistic course of the colonial
legislatures during the recent war had shown that the re-
quisition system could not be depended upon to furnish a
permanent revenue for a colonial military establishment;
and the lawlessness of the colonial merchants had revealed
the need for reforming the machinery of administering the
trade laws. Forced to action by these conditions, Parlia-
ment, under the leadership of George Grenville, proceeded
to adopt an imperial policy which in its main principles
conformed to the views long maintained by the British mer-
cantile interests and their apologist, the Board of Trade.
In the light of subsequent history, the most important
1 " The several changes of territories, which at the last Peace took
place in the Colonies of the European world, have given rise to A
New System of Interests ; have opened a new channel of business;
and brought into operation a new concatenation of powers, both com-
mercial and political." Pownall, T., The Administration of the British
Colonies (London, 1768), vol. i, p. i.
SO
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 51
feature of the legislation of 1764 was the fact that, for the ' ^
first time, Parliament provided specifically for the raising ^
of a revenue in America. But as watchful colonists at the
time viewed the unwonted legislative activity, they were im-
pressed almost solely with the idea that their business inter-
ests were being vitally affected. It goes without saying that
they did not perceive or appreciate the problem of imperial
reorganization with which Parliament was wrestling. They
stood for a Ptolemaic conception of the empire, with Eng-
land as the sun and America the earth about which the sun
revolved; while the statesmen at home justified their course
in the terms of the Copernican theory.^
The program of Parliament, therefore, so far as the ,•
colonists were concerned, had to stand or fall upon its merits
as legislation dealing solely with colonial interests. The
group of enactments thus readily divided itself into two
parts, those provisions favorable to American commerce
and industry, and those detrimental.
The beneficial portions were of minor importance and
affected chiefly the plantation provinces where relief was
not particularly needed. South Carolina and Georgia were
allowed, upon payment of a slight duty, to export rice to
any part of America to the southward of those provinces,
in order that they might continue to dominate the markets
which they had entered during British occupation of certain
West India islands in the recent war.- As a means of en-
couraging the indigo industry, a protective duty was placed
* Vide Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754-1765, pp. 193-251, 274-286,
for an excellent presentation of the imperialistic point of view. Vide
Macphefson, Annals of Commerce, vol. iii, pp. 395-399, for a well-
balanced statement of the colonial view; also Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs.,
vol. xiii, pp. 431-433.
' 4 George III, c. 27. This liberty was extended to North Carolina,
in the following year. 5 George III, c. 45.
/
^2 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
on foreign indigo imported into the provinces.^ On the
other hand, New England fishermen received concessions in
England, by which American whale-fins succeeded in secur-
ing a practical monopoly of the home market;^ and colonial
rum distillers were favored by an absolute prohibition of
the introduction of foreign rum.^
The detrimental features of the acts were far-reaching
and fundamental in their influence upon American pros-
perity.* Resolute measures were taken against smuggling.
Customs officials were granted ampler authority, and the
pTDwers of the admiralty courts were enlarged. In order
to protect customs officials from damage suits in common
law courts, it was provided that, in cases where the court
held there had been a probable cause for making a seizure,
the officers should not be liable for damages. In addition,
the burden of proof was placed on the owner of the seized
goods or vessel; and all claimants of such goods had to
deposit security to cover the costs of the suit. Stricter
registration of vessels was required. Because of the amen-
ability of vice-admiralty courts to local opinion in the vari-
ous provinces, a vice-admiralty court for all America was
authorized, in which an informer or prosecutor might bring
his suit in preference to the local court, if he so chose.
Equally alarming to the commercial provinces was the
plan to make the old Molasses Act really productive through
a reduction of rates. The former duty on molasses im-
* 4 George III, c. 15.
^ 4 George III, c. 29, Instead of employing eighty or ninety sloops
in the whale fishery as prior to this time, New Englanders were em-
ploying one hundred and sixty before 1775. Macpherson, op. cit, vol.
iii, pp. 401, 567-568.
' 4 George III, c. 15.
* 4 George III, c. 15. Only the main provisions are noted here.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 53
ported from the foreign West Indies was reduced from six-
pence per gallon to threepence, with the understanding that
the new rate would be collected. The old duty on raw
sugar was continued ; and an additional duty was levied on
foreign refined sugar.
Other changes were made, which affected colonial mer-
chants only in lesser degree. The purpose of certain of
these was to enlarge the market for British merchandise
in America by enhancing the price of foreign manufactures.
Thus, the amount of the duty withheld in England upon
reshipment of foreign goods to the colonies was doubled.^
Import duties were placed, for the first time, upon certain
varieties of Oriental and French drygoods when they were
landed in America. Wines, which hitherto had been im-r
ported directly from Madeira and the Azores without duty,
were now required to pay a high tariff, while Spanish and
Portuguese wines, which as before were to be imported by
way of Great Britain, were to pay only a low duty.^ Im-
port duties were also imposed on foreign indigo and foreign
coffee brought into the colonies. The list of articles which
could be sent to Great Britain alone was increased by the
addition of iron, whale-fins, hides, raw silk, potashes and
pearlashes. Slight duties were placed on coffee and pimento
when shipped from one colony to another.
The only regulation that directly concerned the planta-
tion provinces in any unfavorable way was the prohibition
of further issues of legal-tender currency in the provinces
outside of New England. This restraint was imposed upon
the complaint of some British merchants engaged in Vir-
1 Prior to this time, the amount had been about 2^ per cent,
^ The colonists had desired to obtain permission to make direct im-
portations of wine, fruit and oil from Spain and Portugal. Pa. Journ.,
June 7, 1764; Bos. Gac, June 11.
/
/
/
54
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ginia trade and was merely an extension of the principle
which had been applied in 1751 to New England/
Dissatisfaction with the acts of 1764 was thus largely
a sectional matter, affecting chiefly the commercial prov-
inces. It is not surprising that the chief polemic efforts of
the colonists came from provinces such as Massachusetts,
Rhode Island and Pennsylvania ; or that, in the one instance,
the author was a lawyer, who time and again had been
employed by smugglers and who sympathized with them
temperamentally ; - in the next instance, a merchant, who
was largely concerned in illicit trade with the West Indies ; ^
in the third, a gentleman-farmer and lawyer, fully cognizant
^4 George III, c. 34; Franklin, Writings (Smyth), vol. v, pp. 85-86,
187-189; Russell, Review of American Colonial Legislation, pp. 120-124.
* Otis, James, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and
Proved (Boston, 1764), This pamphlet, largely speculative, made the
novel assertion that the duties of 1764 were as truly a fiscal measure
as taxes on real estate would be. It should be remembered that Otis
had been retained by the merchants of Boston and Salem to attack the
legality of the writs of assistance in 1761. Otis, wrote Peter Oliver in
1781, " engrafted his self into the Body of Smugglers, and they em-
braced him so close, as a Lawyer and an usefull Pleader for them,
that he soon became incorporated with them." Brit. Mus. Egerton
Mss., no. 2671 (L. C. Transcripts) . Leading merchants of Boston, like
Thomas Hancock and his nephew John, lost no opportunity to recom-
mend Otis as a law3^er to commercial houses in Engknd. Brown, A. E'.,
John Hancock His Book (Boston, 1898), p. 33 et seq. Vide also Hutch-
inson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 201.
Closer to the economic roots of the troubles was the forceful pamph-
let, The Sentiments of a British American (Boston, 1764), written by
Oxenbridge Thacher, who had been Otis' colleague in the writs of
assisfahce case. Thacher died in 1765, before his usefulness to the
anti-parhamentary party had fully developed. For a characterization
of the two men, vide Adams, John, Works, vol. x, pp. 284-292.
^Hopkins. Stephen, Tl:e Rights of the Colonies Examined (Provi-
dence, 1764). Hopkins also had three sons and four nephews, all cap-
tains of vessels. Weeden, Econ. and Soc. Hist, of New Engl., vol. ii,
pp. 584, 656, 658.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 55
of the sources from which the prosperity of his community
arose/
For the most part, this hterature of protest contained a
cogent presentation of the economic springs of mercantile
prosperity. The prevaihng note was sounded by a com-
ment in Thacher's pamphlet on the recent action of Parlia-
ment : "' Does not this," he asked, " resemble the conduct
of the good wife in the fable who killed her hen that every
day laid her a Golden Egg? " The new measures for en-
forcing the acts of trade were roundly denounced, especially
the provisions for protecting customs officers from damage
suits in case of mistaken seizures, and the provisions grant-
ing to the informer or prosecutor the right to choose the
court in which he wished to sue. These regulations were
termed a denial of the common law and of trial by jury.
The new duties on foreign wines were complained of, on the
ground that wines had now to be brought to America by a
roundabout and expensive route. The restricting of iron
exports to Great Britain caused protest, especially in Penn-
sylvania, because cargoes of iron had always found a ready
market in Portuguese ports.
The chorus of denunciation rose loudest on the subject of
the new molasses duties. This appeared to the pamphleteers
a species of economic strangulation by which the colonies
were cut off from the source of their specie supply. " The
duty of 3d. per gallon on foreign molasses is well known
^ Dickinson, John. The Late Regulations respecting the British Colo-
nies . . . considered (Philadelphia, 1765). Though published after the
passage of the Stamp Act, attention was given almost exclusively to
the economic effects of the acts of 1764. Note the striking similarity of
Dickinson's views to Charles Thomson's arguments, urged in a letter
of November, 1765, to a London mercantile house, Thomson. Papers
(N. Y, Hist. So£. Colls., vol, xi), pp. 7-12, Thomson was an importer
and also had interests iir^iron manufacturing and in rum distilling.
Harley, L. R., Life of Charles Thomson (Philadelphia, 19C0), passim.
5^
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
to every man in the least acquainted with it to be much
higher than that article can possibly bear and therefore must
operate as an absolute prohibition," declared Hopkins. If
the merchants and distillers suffered losses, the provincial
farmers would become deeply involved, because their surplus
stock and products had been sent to the foreign islands in
exchange for molasses. If there were no specie in cir-
culation, debts could not be paid to England, importations
must be reduced, and local manufacturing undertaken.
With the volume of money rapidly shrinking, it was charged
that the prohibition of further issues of legal-tender money
was calculated to heighten the distress, since paper money
had generally served a useful purpose as a circulating
medium within provincial boundaries. Finally, some
warmth was displayed in referring to the commercial sys-
tem as a whole, and the question asked whether the dis-
advantages which the colonies suffered under it and the en-
hanced prices which the colonists paid for British importa-
tions loaded with British taxes at home were not equivalent
to a tax directly levied in America.
The assumptions and arguments, urged by the pamph-
leteers, received substantial confirmation from the prostra-
tion of industry which began to be apparent throughout the
.commercial provinces. This period of economic depression
(was not, as they contended, produced entirely by the re-
y'-strictive legislation of 1764. The begiiming of the change
was traceable to the more vigorous enforcement of the old
, Molasses Act in 1763. A more important cause was the
collapse of the artificial war-time prosperity which the pro-
vinces had enjoyed.^ The presence of British forces in
^Franklin, IVritings (Smyth), vol. v, pp. 71-73; speech of P. Cust,
M. P., in Bos. Chron., June 11, 1770; Golden, Letter Books, vol. ii, pp.
77-78; article in Pa. Journ., Mch. 21, 1765; Burke's '' Observations on
the Right Honourable Mr. Grenville's State of the Nation," Bos.
Chron., June 26, 1769; "A Friend to the Colony" in Prov. Gaz., Mch.
26, 1768; "The Citizen" in Pa. Journ., Jan. 26, 1769.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM
57
America had caused a great influx of coin for the paying
and provisioning of the troops; and the high cash prices
paid by the French for foodstuffs added to the supply of
specie. Under such stimulus, prices soared; merchants in-
creased their stocks and undertook speculative risks; farm-
ers enlarged their operations; people generally began to
adopt more luxurious modes of living. The close of the
war and the disbanding of the greatest part of the army
dried up these sources of abundant specie. Merchants and
farmers found themselves deprived of their profitable mar-
kets, with an overplus of supplies on hand. An especially
serious blow was administered to those merchants who had
succeeded during the war in monopolizing the trade of
Havana and the French West Indian islands, after these
colonies had fallen into the possession of England. The
restoration of these islands at the conclusion of peace greatly
diminished this trade. The rice planters of South Carolina
and Georgia would have shared in the distress, had not
Parliament enabled them by the act of 1764 to continue to
export their staple to these new markets.
But the chief cause of the hard times was the restrictive
legislation of 1764. The Boston Post-Boy of June 3, 1765 .^
declared that not one-fifth as many vessels were employed
in the West Indian trade as before the regulations of the
preceding year, and that cash had practically disappeared
from circulation. The mercantile community experienced
*' a most prodigious shock " at the failure of Nathaniel
Wheelwright, John Scollay, Joseph Scott and certain other
Boston merchants of note. John Hancock, whose ow^n
trading connections were with many parts of the world,
wrote that " times are very bad, . . . the times will be
worse here, in short such is the situation of things here that
we do not know who is and who [is] not safe.'
" 1
^ ^/
^ John Hancock His Book, pp. 61-62, He concluded: "The affair of
58
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Conditions were bad at Newport, also/ A statement,
issued by leading citizens of New York, lamented the
dwindling of trade, the extreme scarcity of cash, the pro-
hibition of paper money and the recent restrictions placed
on commerce." >^A^ New York merchant of twenty years'
standing withdrew from trade because he was apprehensive
of the effects of the new regulations. - He testified before
a committee of Parliament that, whereas the price of mo-
lasses at New York had formerly been is. 6d. to is. Qd. per
gallon, the threepenny duty had increased it by one or two-
pence, and the price of the rum distilled from it had ad-
vanced sufficiently to enable Danish rum to undersell the
American on the Guinea coast. The ten or a dozen New
York vessels, formerly engaged in the slave trade, were now
idle.^ In Pennsylvania, it was complained that " Trade is
become dull, oMoney very scarce, Contracts decrease, Law-
Suits increase so as to double the number of Writs issued
in every County within tvro Years past . . ." * The farm-
Wheelwright's failure with such aggravated Circumstances is the great-
est shock to trade that ever happened here." In another letter he
wrote : " Money is l^xtremeh'- Scarce & trade verj^ dull. If we are not
reliev'd at home we must hve upon our own produce & manufactures."
Ibid., pp. 63-64. Hancock had taken over his uncle's business upon the
latter's death in August, 1764; and, according to Thomas Hutchinson,
old Thomas Hancock had amassed great wealth by " importing from
St. Eustatia great quantities of tea in molasses hogsheads, which sold
at a verj' great advance." Mass. Bay, vol. iii, pp. 297-298.
^ Newport Merc, Feb. 25, 1765.
- * Statement of the Society of Arts, Agriculture and Oeconomy, Wey-
ler's A''. Y. Gas., Dec. 10, 1764.
3 Testimony of William Kelly, Feb. 11, 1766. Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss.,
no. 33030 (L. C. Transcripts), ff. 130, I34-I35, I37-
* " The Farmer " in Pa. lourn., Aug. 23, 1764. The Philadelphia
merchant, Benjamin Marshall, wrote on Oct. 22, 1764: "Cash Mon-
strous scarce (I believe we must learn to Barter), as the Men of War
are here so strict that nothing can escape them . . ." Pa. Mag., vol.
XX, p. 208. Vide also the business correspondence of S. Rhoads, Jr., at
this period. Ibid., vol. xiv, pp. 421-426.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 59
ers of the commercial provinces were involved in the gen-
eral distress. "Merchants and Farmers are breaking and
all things going into confusion," wrote a New Englander
despondently/ " What is your City without Trade, and
what the Country without a Market to vend their Com-
modities?" queried a Pennsylvania writer.^
The merchants did not remain idle while their profits y^
evaporated and their debts accumulated. They had been
excited to activity by the first rumors that the old Molasses
Act might again be renewed in 1764. A keen observer de-
clared in retrospect, several years later, that the union among
the colonies had derived " its original source from no Object
of a more Respectable Cast than that of a Successful prac-
tice in Illicit Trade, I say contrived, prompted and pro-
moted by a Confederacy of Smuglers in Boston, Rhode
Island and other Seaport Towns on that Coast." ^ This
gentry were aided and abetted by the rum-distillers, who
were particularly powerful in New England.* John Adams
was franker than most historians when he reflected in his
old age: " I know not why we should l)lush to confess that
•molasses was an essential ingredient in American inde-
pendence." ^
The first move was made by the merchants of Boston,
in April, 1763, when they organized the " Society for
•encouraging Trade and Commerce within the Province
1 N. H. Gas,, Dec. 7, 1764-
2 " The Farmer " in Pa. Jotirn., Aug. 23, 1764.
^ Letter of Richard Oswald, a native American and a Londoner in
the American trade, to Dartmouth, Feb. 9, I775; Stevens, Facsimiles,
vol. xxiv, no. 2032, pp. 3-4.
* In another portion of his letter Osv^ald alluded to " the great Rum
Distillers of Boston who began all this disturbance." Ihid.
^ He added sagely : " Many great events have proceeded from much
smaller causes." Works, vol. x, p. 345.
6o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of Massachusetts Bay." ^ There was to be a standing:
comniittee of fifteen to watch trade affairs and to call
a general meeting of members whenever occasion de-
manded. A memorial was draw^n up for presentation to
the General Court; and accounts of their activities were
sent to the merchants in other provinces. The committee
also corresponded with influential members of Parliament.^
Further action was called for by an article in the
Boston Evening Post, November 21 and 28, 1763. The
writer proposed that, at the instance of the Boston mer-
chants, a provincial committee of merchants representing
the maritime towns should urge the General Court to peti-
tion Parliament for a revision of the acts of trade, par-
ticularly for the removal or substantial reduction of the
duties on foreign molasses and sugar. Perhaps in response
to this suggestion, a sub-committee of the Boston merchants
requested a meeting with committees of the merchants of
Marblehead, Salem and Plymouth; and the result was that
the merchants of these ports also presented memorials to the
General Court.
The merchants of New York w^ere the next to take action.
Of these merchants. Lieutenant Governor Golden said:
" Many of them have rose suddenly from the lowest Rank
of the People to considerable Fortunes, & chiefly by illicit
Trade in the last AVar. They abhor every limitation of
Trade and Duty on it, & therefore gladly go into every
Measure whereby they hope to have Trade free." ^ They
^ M. H. S. Ms., 91 L, pp. 23-25. The rules of organization were
signed by one hundred forty-seven merchants. For a more detailed
account of this organization, vide Andrews, C. M., " The Boston
Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs.,
vol. xix, pp. 161-167.
2 Bos. Gas., Jan. 16, Oct. 29, 1764.
^Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 68. Vide also PayJiamentary History of
England (Cobbett, W., ed.), vol. xvi, p. 125.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 6l
met at Burn's Long Room on January 27, 1764 and took
under consideration the declining state of trade. A com-
mittee was appointed to memorialize the legislature on the
situation and to ask their interposition with Parliament.
The committee later established regular meeting nights,^
A communication in the New York Gazette and Post-Boy
of February 2 commended the rational action of the mer-
chants and declared riotous opposition would be " seditious
and injurious to Government " when redress might be ob-
tained by dutiful petition. At the suggestion of the New
York Committee of Merchants, the merchants of Phila-
delphia became active, and appointed a committee to urge
the Pennsylvania Assembly to solicit Parliament to dis-
continue the molasses duties of 1733.^
In every case the legislatures took the desired step, al-
though little was done until after the new duties of 1764
had become a law.^ Only Rhode Island had been fore-
handed enough to petition for the repeal of the old Molasses
Act prior to the new legislation of Parliament. In June,
the Massachusetts House of Representatives ordered its
agent in London to press for a repeal of the new duties and
also to protest against the Stamp Act, which was on the
government's program for 1765. A committee was ap-
pointed to urge the other legislatures on the continent to
join in the movement. In July the Rhode Island Assembly
appointed a committee for the same purpose; and a com-
mittee of the New York Assembly began a similar pro-
paganda in October.*
1 Weyler's A^. Y. Gas., Jan. 30, 1764; N. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Feb. 2;
N. Y. Merc, Mch. 5, 1764. The memorial was read in the provincial
assembly on Apr. 20, 1764.
' Bos. Post-Boy, Mch. 26, 1764.
' Frothingham, R., The Rise of the Republic of the United States
(Boston, 1881), pp. 173-174.
* The New York committee was instructed to correspond " on the
62 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
;: The problem of the commercial provinces was to enlist
the support of the plantation provinces in their campaign
^ for remedial legislation. In this way, a united front could
be shown to Parliament and the chances for success greatly
increased. The tobacco provinces were readier of response
than any of the others, because of the unsatisfactory condi-
«y_ tion of crops and crop prices and because of the scarcity
W-^of money. "The Courts are filled with Law-Suits, and
many People are obliged to sell their Estates," wrote a Vir-
ginian.^ George Washington, one of the large Virginia
planters, was forced to explain to a creditor that he had
fallen '' so much in arrears " because he had not had '' even
tolerable crops " for three straight years, and when he had
one, it did not sell well.^ But these conditions could not
be attributed to the acts of 1764, and did not seem to pre-
vail in the more southerly provinces.
The position of the commercial provinces was greatly
strengthened strategically by the fact that the Stamp Act
was on the board for American consideration by Parliament
in 1765. A stamp tax w^as clearly a departure from the
ancient custom of the home government. It was more
purely a fiscal measure than was the so-called Sugar Act of
1764, its incidence was more obvious and it fell on people in
all the provinces. Thus, the proposed stamp duty afforded
an opportunity to the mercantile interests to stir up a
Subject Matter of the Act, commonly called the Sugar Act; on the
Act restraining Paper Bills of Credit in the Colonies from being a
legal Tender; and of the several other Acts of Parliament lately passed^
with relation to the Trade of the Northern Colonies : And also on the
Subject of the impending Dangers which threaten the Colonies, of being
taxed by Laws to be passed in Great-Britain." Note the sequence.
Pa. Gaz., Nov. 28, 1764.
^Virginia and Maryland news in Prov. Gaz., Jan. 19, 1765; Bos^
Post-Boy, June 10, July 29.
' Writings (Ford, W. C, ed.), vol. ii, pp. 200-202.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 63
general discontent as well as to increase local dissatisfaction.
Consciously or not, the northern legislatures made the most
of the occasion. In their official utterances, they dovetailed
in with their economic indictment of the Sugar Act a protest
against the proposed Stamp Act as an inexpedient and un-
constitutional measure.^ Their efforts to secure continental
co-operation were successful : petitions and remonstrances
were sent from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
and, with considerable reluctance, from Georgia.'
Meantime, the hard times had been causing people in the
commercial provinces to retrench expenses; and in some
cases this object was accomplished by concerted effort. A
clear-seeing writer in the Providence Gazette, October 6,
1764, proposed a continental agreement to suspend trade
with the British West Indies, in order to strike a body blow
at the West India interest in Parliament; but it was ten
years too soon for such a proposal to win favorable re-
sponse. Fifty merchants of Boston set an example in
August, 1764, by signing an agreement to discard laces and
ruffles, to buy no English cloths but at a fixed price, and
to forego the elaborate and expensive mourning of the
times for the very simplest display.^ The mourning reso^
^ As Oswald observed to Dartmouth in 1775, the disgruntled mer-
chants had had "the art to interweave in their System of Grievances
. . . some others of a political nature and apparently of a more liberal
cast than do[e]s really lye at the bottom of their designs." Stevens,
Facsimiles, vol. xxiv, no. 2032, p. 5.
' Of the commercial group, Connecticut and Pennsylvania now joined
in with the others. The southern legislatures generally included a com-
plaint against certain restrictions placed in 1764 upon the exportation
of lumber, a matter that was satisfactorily adjusted by Parhament in
1765. South Carolina also complained of the Currency Act. Docu-
mentary History of the American Revolution (Gibbes, R. W., ed.), vol.
ii, pp. 1-6. The Virginia Committee of Correspondence expressed
alarm at the duties on Madeira wine but seemed pleased at the Cur-
rency Act. Va. Mag., vol. xii, pp. 6-1 1.
^Newport Merc, Aug. 20, 1764; also iV. Y.Gaz. & Post-Boy, Aug, 30.
64 THE COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
lutions were so well kept by the people generally that it was
reported that there had been only one or two violations after
four months' trial, although almost one hundred funerals
had occurred ; and it was estimated that the savins: would be
more than £10,000 sterling a year/ Burials '' according to
the new mode " were recorded by the newspapers in New
Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York.
In September the tradesmen of Boston followed in the
path of the merchants, by agreeing to wear only leather of
Massachusetts manufacture for their work clothes.^ In
November the students of Yale took unanimous action to
abstain from the use of foreign liquors.^ The people of
New York apparently took no formal action; but five fire
companies of Philadelphia attempted to counteract the high
price of mutton by agreeing to refrain from the purchase of
lamb.* One company added a pledge against the drinking
of imported beer.
The logical counterpart of the efforts for the disuse of
imported superfluities was the encouragement of domestic
manufactures. This movement had greatest vitality in New
York, where a number of prominent men in December, 1764,
organized the " Society for the Promotion of Arts, Agri-
culture and Oeconomy," and proceeded to award premiums
for a great variety of local productions, to print informing
pamphlets, and to promote the formation of similar societies
throughout the province.^ In other provinces, the news-
^ Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. 21, 1765; Bos. Post-Boy, Oct. i, 8, 1764, July I,
1765.
^ Ibid., Oct. I, 1764.
' iV. Y. Gas. & Post-Boy, Nov. 22, 1764.
^ Pa. Gaz., Feb. 28, Mch. 7, 14, May 16, 1765.
^ Files of Weyler's A^". Y. Gaz. and of the A^. F. Merc, from Dec. 3,
1764, to June I, 1767. The notice of Dec. 3. 1764, declared that the
society was formed upon a plan " wholly detached from all Party
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM
65
papers teemed with instructive articles on the methods and
opportunity of American manufactures; and the provinces
north of Maryland showed many instances of increased pro-
duction of linen and woolen homespun. Outside of New
York, greatest progress seems to have been made at Boston,
where the '' Linen Manufactory " produced four hundred
yards of " Bengals, Lillepusias and Broglios " in a period
of three months, and " Lynn Shoes " won a merited popu-
larity/ y
On March 22, 1765, the Stamp Act received the royal as- -^C^
sent, and by its terms was to go into effect on November
the first of that year. The act was an integral part of the
taxation program inaugurated by Grenville in 1764. Stamp j
duties were placed on commercial papers of various kinds,
on deeds, bonds, leases and other legal documents, on pam-
phlets, newspapers and advertisements, and on articles of
apprenticeship, liquor licenses, etc. Heavy fines and for-
feitures were provided for infractions of the law, and these
might be collected through the vice-admiralty courts at the
option of the inform.er or prosecutor." '__J^
In view of the later revolutionary movement, it is not too ]
much to say that the Stamp Act derived its__chief import-
ance from the fact that it lilted the controversy from the
profit-and-loss considerations of the northern colonists and!
furnished a common ground on which the planting provinces
might join with the commercial provinces in protest. The
eighteenth century Anglo-Saxon liked nothing better than
Spirit, personal Interest, political Views or private Motives." The next
week, it was stated that the severe times had caused the formation of
the society.
^ Bos. Post-Boy, Oct. 8, 1764, Jan. 24, 1765. John Hancock's wealthy
uncle had bequeathed i200 to this society on his death on Aug. i, 1764.
Ibid., Aug. 13, 1764.
^ 5 George III, c. 12.
66 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the expansive phrases of the natural rights theory; and the
Stamp Act readily lent itself to protests against *' taxation
___without representation" and "trial without jury." ^
The economic burden of the new law, as in the case of the
duties of 1764, fell very largely on the commercial provinces.
y The merchants, lawyers and printers were the classes par-
ticularly affected ; and these classes, as we shall see, felt im-
pelled to take a leading part in instigating popular demon-
strations against the measure.
. The taxes on commercial documents threatened to
j paralyze such business as had survived the restrictive legis-
lation of the preceding year. " Under this additional
Burthen of the Stamp Act," wrote one of the merchant
princes of Boston, '' I cannot carry it [trade] on to any
profit and we were before Cramp'd in our Trade & suffi-
ciently Burthen'd, that any farther Taxes must Ruin us."
In another letter, Hancock declared that if the act were
carried into execution, it '' will entirely Stagnate Trade
here, for it is universally determined here never to submit
^ Colonel George Mercer, of Virginia, told a committee of Parliament
in Feb., 1766: "I have heard the Complaints of Right and oppression
blended together. But the thinking people don't speak so plainly on
the right as others; they complain of the oppression" ; he apprehended
that " the Idea of Oppression awakened the Idea of Right." Brit. Mus.
Addl Mss., no. 33030 (L. C. Transcripts), ff. 126, 129. A letter from a
New Yorker to an EngHsh friend said: "It is thought the stamp act
would not have met with so violent an opposition if the colonies had
not previously been chagrined at the rigorous execution of the laws
against their trade." Bos. Eve. Post, Feb. 17, 1766. Dean Tucker
wrote in his pamphlet, A Letter from a Merchant in London to his
Nephew in North America (1766) : "What is the Cause of such an
amazing Outcry as you raise at present? Not the Stamp Duty itself;
. . . none can be so ignorant, or so stupid, as not to see that this is a
mere Sham and Pretence. What, then, are the real Grievances . . , ?
Why, some of you are exasperated against the Mother Country on the
Account of the Revival of certain (Restrictions laid upon their Trade.""
Pa. Mag., vol. xxvi, p. 86.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 67
to it, and the principal merchants here will by no means
carry on Business under a Stamp." Early in October, he
told Governor Bernard that he would rather perform the
severest manual labor than continue business under the bur-
den of the pending Stamp Act, and that " I am Determin'd
as soon as I know that they are Resolv'd to insist on this act
to Sell my Stock in Trade & Shut up my Warehouse Doors."
In a letter a few days later, he protested that " there is not
cash enough here to support it." Hancock's commercial
correspondence of this period sounded a genuine note of
despair; and only as an afterthought did he allude, once or
twice, to the unconstitutionality of the act.^
Voicing the apprehensions of the merchants of Pennsyl-
vania, John Dickinson questioned whether, under present
panic conditions, a merchant's commerce could bear " the
payment of all the taxes imposed by the Stamp Act on his
policies, fees with clerks, charter parties, protests, his other
notarial acts, his letters, and even his advertisements." He
showed that hard times were having a cumulative effect.
Money, where any remained, had gone into hiding. When
creditors took out executions, they discovered that the lands
and personal estates could be sold only at a fraction of their
value. The records of the courts attested that the number
of debtors had increased enormously; at the last term, no
less than thirty-five persons from Philadelphia County alone
had sought relief under the insolvency act, although the law
applied only to those who owed no single debt above £150.
This being the situation, said Dickinson, ^' from whence is
the silver to come, with which the taxes imposed by this act,
and the duties imposed by other late acts, are to be paid ? " ^
^ Brown, John Hancock His Book, pp. 83, 87, 88, 90. Vide also pp.
69, 70, 81, 86-90, 103-104, 115.
^The Late Regulations etc., Dickinson, Writings (Ford, L., ed.),
pp. 227-230. Vide also pp. 440-441.
68 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Jonathan Watts, a member of the New York Council,
was writing home in the same strain : " I cannot conceive
there will be silver or gold enough to carry this Act and the
high duties that are laid, through, and what shall people
then do in a new country where property so frequently
changes hands, must everything stagnate, and will not a
universal discontent prevail? ]\Ian is man, and will feel
and will resent, too . . . " ^ The Philadelphia merchant,
Stephen Collins, repeated the plaintive note in many letters
to London creditors, alleging that, owing to the stagnation
of trade, " I have not been able to Forward your Remitances
more timely." "
Benjamin Franklin believed that the new act would fall
" particularly hard on us lav/yers and printers." ^ The
lawyers throughout British America were affected by the
duties imposed on all important legal documents. " It is
well known," commented a writer in the New York Gazette
mid Post-Boy, February 20, 1766, ''that some of the
Lawyers in the several Provinces have been, and still con-
tinue, the principal Writers on the Side of American
Liberty." Indeed, one of the ablest pamphlets against the
Stamp Act was written by Daniel Dulany, the foremost
lawyer of ]\Iaryland, a man who opposed no subsequent tax
of Great Britain and who eventually became a loyalist.^
^ 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. X, p. 576. " N " claimed in the Pa. lourn.,
Sept. 5, 1765, that there was not nearh^ enough money in America to
pay the current debt to British merchants, let alone the new taxes.
"Publicola" calculated in the N. Y. Gas. & Post-Boy, May 30, 1765,
that all the gold and silver would be drained off in two years at most.
'Letter Book, 1760-1773 (L. C. Mss.), May 18, June 24, 1765; Aug.
14, Nov. 10, 1766.
^Writings (Smyth), vol. iv, pp. 361-363-
* Considerations on the Propriety of imposing Taxes in the British
Colonies (October, 1765), reprinted in Md. Hist. Mag., vol. vi, pp. Z7^
406, Dulany was largely responsible for the nulHfication of the Stamp
^
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 6o
Although he based his opposition largely on constitutional
grounds, he did not fail to show that the tax fell on a prov-
ince, '' not in proportion to its wealth, but to the multi-
plicity of juridical forms, the quantity of vacant land, the
frequency of transferring landed property, the extent of
paper negotiations, the scarcity of money, and the number
of debtors," and he argued that '' the principal part of the
revenue will be drawn from the poorest individuals in the
poorest colonies, from mortgagers, obligors, and defend-
ants." Lieutenant Governor Golden of New York had
" the strongest presumption from numerous Circumstances
to believe that the Lawyers of this Place are the Authors,
Promoters & Leaders " of the local opposition to the stamp
duties/
Printers were directly involved in the new act as pub-
lishers of newspapers and pamphlets. The formost printer
of the continent, Benjamin Franklin, wrote to his fellow-
publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette that he believed the
Stamp Act " will affect the Printers more than anybody,,
as a Sterling Halfpenny Stamp on every Half Sheet of a
Newspaper, and Two Shillings Sterling on every Adver-
l:isement, will go near to knock up one Half of both. There
Act in Maryland. Latrobe, J. H., " Daniel Dulany," Pa. Mag., vol. iii,
pp. 4-5. Vide also the views of William Smith, Jr., a New York lawyer
whom Colden characterized as " a violent republican independent " and
an organizer of mobs. 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. x, pp. 570-57I-
* Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 61-62. He continued : " People in general
believe it, and many must with certainty know it. I must add that all
the Judges have given too much Countenance to their Proceedings . . .'*
Vide also ibid., p. 92. The lawyers of New York were discontented
with other matters besides the Stamp Act; and Colden claimed that
they were more powerful there than anywhere else in America. " Noth-
ing is too wicked for them to attempt which serves their purposes —
the Press is to them what the Pulpit was in times of Popery." Ihid..
p. 71.
^O THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
is also Fourpence Sterling on every Almanack." ^ The
thirty-odd newspapers of America carried on a tremend-
ously effective propaganda against the Stamp Act,- and in
no later crisis exhibited such unanimity of protest.
Aside from their influence as directors of popular opposi-
tion, the merchants, lawyers and printers were faced with
the problem of making a living while their business w^as
legally subject to the use of stamps. The merchants re-
fused to use stamps in their business transactions and usu-
ally succeeded in keeping the ports open for commerce, when
it became apparent to the authorities that the sale of stamps
was impracticable or impossible.^ The lawyers, in first
instance, agreed that all legal business should be suspended
until the Stamp Act should be repealed; but when their
purses began to grow lean from lack of clients' fees and the
merchants and creditors clamored for the opportunity to
collect their debts, they generally induced the courts to open
for business without stamps.* " This long interval of in-
dolence and idleness will make a large chasm in my affairs."
wTote the lawyer John Adams in the period before the
courts were re-opened. He added : " I have groped in dark
obscurity, till of late, and had but just known and gained a
small degree of reputation, when this project was set on
foot for my ruin as well as that of America in general, and
'^ JVritings (Smyth), vol. iv, pp. 363-364.
^ E. g., Jonathan Watts, of New York, wrote on Sept. 24, 1765 :
" You will think' the printers all mad, Holt particularly, who has been
cautioned over and over again, and would have been prosecuted, but
people's minds are so inflamed about this stamp act, it would only be
exposing Government to attempt it." 4 M. H. S., vol. x, p. 576. Holt
published the New York Gazette and Post-Boy at this time.
^ E. g., vide Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 141 ; 4 M. H. S., vol.
X, p. 587.
* E. g., vide i N. J. Arch., vol. ix, pp. 540-548; A^ Y. Merc., Dec. 9, 23,
1765; Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 138, 141-142.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 71
of Great Britain." ^ All but a few newspapers continued
publication without stamps; and those few newspapers re-
appeared when it became evident that infractions of the
law would entail no penalty.
The period between the enactment of the Stamp x\ct and
the date of its operation was marked by a series of popular
demonstrations, designed to coerce the colonial stamp
agents into resigning. Distressed by non-employment and
temperamentally inclined to boisterous forms of expression, ^ x^
the rougher elements in the leading seaports responded
readily to the leadership of the classes disaffected by the
legislation of 1764 and 1765.
This appeared clearly in the case of Boston, where the
most serious disturbances occurred." In the first of the
August riots, the stamp office was razed by a mob, and
Hutchinson declared : " It is said that there were fifty gentle-
men actors in this scene, disguised with trousers and jackets
on." ^ In the succeeding riots, the mob, led by a shoe-
maker named Mackintosh, secured a promise of resignation
from Oliver, the stamp collector, and showed its animus
by attacking the houses of the registrar of the admiralty and'
the comptroller of the customs and by destroying the
records of the admiralty court. Lieutenant Governor
Hutchinson's house was also visited and despoiled. Hut-
chinson believed that this last outrage was inspired by cer-
tain smuggling merchants who had just learned of certain
depositions sworn against them before him several months
before. We have it on the word of one merchant writing
to another that Oliver's promise was not deemed decisive
enough, and that therefore the " Loyall Nine " repaired
^ Works, vol. ii, pp. 155-156.
^ Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 120-125 ; Parliamentary History, vol.
xvi, pp. 126-131 ; Palfrey, History of New Engl., vol. iv, pp. 389-394.
^ Letter of Aug. 15, to Halifax; Palfrey, op. cit., vol. iv, p. 391.
72 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
to '' Liberty Hall " and planned a public resignation under
oath, which was duly carried out on December 17. " We
do ever}1:hing," added the merchant a little anxiously, " to
keep this and the first affair Private; and are not a little
pleas'd to hear that Mcintosh has the Credit of the whole
Affair. We Endeavour to keep up the Spirit which I think
is as great as ever." ^ The Sons of Liberty, composed of
Boston workingmen, performed the actual work of vio-
lence. It is perhaps not without significance that their reg-
ular meeting-place was the counting-room of a distillery;
and John Adams records that, when he was invited to attend
one night, he found there two distillers, a ship captain, the
printer of the popular organ and four mechanics.^
^ Henry Bass to Samuel P. Savage, Dec. 19, 1765. M. H. S. Procs.,
vol. xliv, pp. 688-689.
^ Chase and John Avery; Joseph Field; Benjamin Edes, a publisher
of the Boston Gazette; John Smith and Stephen Cleverly, braziers,
Thomas Crafts, painter, and George Trott, jeweler. Works, vol. ii, pp.
178-179.
Hutchinson's own analysis of mob government at this period was as
follows : " It will be some amusement to you to have a more circum-
stantial account of the model of government among us. I will begin
with the lowest branch, partly legislative, partly executive. This con-
sists of the rabble of the town of Boston, headed by one Mackintosh,
who, I imagine, you never heard of. He is a bold fellow, and as likely
for a Masaniello as you can well conceive. When there is occasion to
bum or hang effigies or pull down houses, these are employed ; but
since government has been brought to a system, they are somewhat
controlled by a superior set consisting of the master-masons, and car-
penters, &c., of the town of Boston. . . . When anything of more im-
portance is to be determined, as opening the custom-|iouse on any mat-
ters of trade, these are under the direction of a committee of merchants,
Mr. Rowe at their head, then Molyneux, Solomon Davis, &c. : but all
affairs of a general nature, opening all the courts of law, &c., this is
proper for a general meeting of the inhabitants of Boston, where Otis,
with his mob-high eloquence, prevails in every motion, and the town
first determine what is necessary to be done, and then apply either to
the Governor or Council, or resolve that it is necessary the General
Court correct it ; and it would be a very extraordinary resolve indeed
that is not carried into execution." Quoted by Hosmer, J. K., The Life
of Thomas Hutchinson (Boston, 1896), pp. 103-104.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM
73
Conditions probably were not greatly different at Phila-
delphia. Although the stamp collector there was inclined
to lay the popular outbreak to the machinations of the
" Presbyterians and proprietary minions," it seems rather
more significant that the committee which asked him to re-
sign was composed of five merchants, one attorney and one
printer/ In New York, as we have seen, ^, the la\v}^ers
seemed to be at the bottom of the tumults, aided beyond
a doubt by the merchants and printers.
Popular outbreaks also occurred in the plantation prov-
inces; but, lacking the multiplied resentments accumulated
by two years of hostile legislation, the demonstrations were
neither as frequent nor usually as violent as in the commer-
cial provinces. The planters generally were wedded to the
notion of dignified protests by representative assemblies;
and a compact working-class element w^as non-existent, ex-
cept at Charleston. The agitation of the newspapers aided
in spreading the tumultuous spirit of the northern trading
towns to the South. Governor Bull, of South Carolina,
testified that the people of Charleston were generally dis-
posed to obey the Stamp x\ct, *' but by the artifices of some
busy spirits the minds of men here were sO' universally
poisoned with the principles W'hich were imbibed and propa-
gated from Boston and Rhode Island (from which Towns,
at this time of the year, vessels very frequently arrive) that
after their example the People of this Town resolved to
seize and destroy the Stamp Papers . . ." ^ ' There was in-
deed a shortage of currency, chiefly in Virginia and South
Carolina, which bore hardV on men owing money and which
^ Robert Morris, Charles Thomsan, Archibald McCall, John Cox
and William Richards ; James Tilghman ; and William Bradford, editor
of the Pennsylvania Journal.
' Smith, W. R., South Carolina as a Royal Province, i/ig-i;^y6 (New
York, 1903), p. 351.
74 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the Currency Act of 1764 made it difficult to relieve.
" This private distress which every man feels," wrote Gov-
ernor Fauquier, of Virginia, " encreases the general dis-
satisfaction at the duties l^id by the late Stamp Act, which
breaks out and shews itself on every trifling occasion." ^
However, the inconvenience was not great enough to cause
the people to take part in the efforts to establish domestic
manufacturing or to boycott British goods.
The merchants and factors generally lent the weight of
their influence against popular demonstrations. Henry
Laurens, of Charleston, was a representative of the best that
the class had to offer. \\^ealthy, of an excellent American
family and a disapprover of the Stamp Act, he did all he
could to discourage " those infamous inglorious feats of riot
and dissipation which have been performed to the No'ward
. . ." He believed that " the Act must be executed and . . .
that if a stamp officer were so timid as to resign and a Gov-
ernor so complisant as not to appoint another in his stead —
we should in one fortnight ... go down on our knees and
pray him to give life to that law. \\^hat, else, would become
of our estates, particularly ours who depend upon com-
merce? " The searching of houses by mobs he regarded as
" burglary and robbery " and he saw in the zeal of the rioters
only a desire to postpone the payment of their debts. ^
Laurens's attitude, although consistent with itself, aroused
popular suspicion and brought the mob down on his own ears.
^ Brit. Papers ("Sparks Mss."), vol. ii, p. 44. Other evidence of
money stringency in the various plantation provinces may be found in :
Bos. Post-Boy, Mch. 17, 1766; N. C. Col. Recs., vol. vii, p. 144; Gibbes,
Doc. Hist., vol. ii, pp. 1-6; S. C. Gas., Dec. 17, 1765; Ga. Hist. Soc.
Colls., vol. vi, pp. 44-46.
^Wallace, D. D., Henry Laurens (New York, 1915), pp. 116-122.
Laurens's business was that of factor and, to a lesser extent, inde-
pendent trader, importing and exporting on his own account. He also
had planting interests. Ibid., pp. 16, 21, 44-47, 69, 123-136.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM
75
In Georgia, some of the merchants, whoi at first had
talked against the act, drew off and even endeavored to sup-
press the spirit of opposition by converting the majority of
the shipmasters to their change of view. In the latter part
of December they circulated a petition asking the governor
to appoint a new stamp agent. When the mob got wind of
this and protested to the governor, he declared he would act
as he thought best; and forty merchants, with their clerks,
and several ship captains evinced their approbation by
arming and guarding the governor until danger of violence
subsided.^ Some stamps were actually used in Georgia.
Christopher Gadsden, a Charlestonian possessing large
mercantile and planting interests, represented a different
spirit. A radical by temperament, he was, for years, to be
a contradiction of anything that might be said of the factors
who managed most of the trade of the South. He em-
ployed his talents on the present occasion in instructing the
leaders of the mob, meeting wnth them frequently under
Liberty Tree for that purpose.^
The two groups of provinces met on common ground in
the Stamp Act Congress at New York in October, 1765.
This event, so important in light of the subsequent trend
toward union, received scarcely any contemporary mention
in the newspapers, even at New York. The lower houses
of the various provincial legislatures had been invited by
Massachusetts to send committees to a continental congress
to confer on " the difficulties to which they are and must
be reduced by the operation of the acts of parliam,ent for
levying duties and taxes on the colonies " and to unite on
petition for redress.^ Delegates from nine provinces ap-
peared.
* Letter from Georgia in Newport Merc, Feb. 10, 1766. Vide also
S. C. Gas., Feb. 25.
' Gibbes. op. cit., vol. ii, pp. lo-ii; Wallace, op. cit., p. 120.
' Bos. Eve. Post. Aug. 26. 1765.
76
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
.--it was clearly the design of the Massachusetts House of
Representatitves that the congress should remonstrate
chiefly against the restrictive and revenue measures passed
by the Parliament in the years 1764-1765. When the mem-
bers of congress assembled, they found it necessary to make
certain alterations in their ideas before a common ground
could be reached. In particular, there was much skirmish-
ing as to the form in which the various arguments and views
should be presented. Gadsden, the South Carolina radical,
displayed great political acumen in insisting that all sections
could harmonize in their opposition by urging their views
" on the broad, common ground " of natural rights.^ The
official utterances of the congress show the result of this
plan. A great deal was said about the theoretical rights of
the colonists, and the stamp tax and the laws enabling ad-
miralty courts to try breaches of the trade laws were roundly
denounced as heinous invasions of such rights. Neverthe-^
less, all trace of the spirit of the Massachusetts summons
was not obliterated : each memorial, with varying degrees of
emphasis, set forth the alarming scarcity of hard money
and requested the repeal of the laws restricting trade and en-
larging the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts!, as well as
the act imposing the stamp duty.^
Meantime, in the commercial provinces, the increasing
evidences of economic distress had stimulated the people to
multiply their efforts to retrench expenses. Leading cit-
izens of New York and Boston, as well as of Philadelphia,
signed resolutions not to purchase or eat lamb, and to boy-
cott any butcher who sought to counteract the resolutions.^
^ Frothingham, Rise of Republic, p. 188.
"^Authentic Account of the Proceedings of the Congress held at
Nezv York, in MDCCLXV, On the Subject of the Stamp Act (1767).
The petition to the House of Commons is especially explicit on these
points.
» Weyler's N. Y. Gaz., Feb. 10, 17, I7^; Bos. Post-Boy, Apr. 8, 1765^
Mch. 10, 1766; Pa. Gaz., Feb. 13, 1766.
. FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM yy
I The movement for simpler mourning, so popular farther
> north, now spread to Philadelphia/ Articles in newspapers
advocated the superiority of sage, sassafras and balm to the
enervating beverage of tea." The New York Society for
the Promotion of Arts, Agriculture and Oeconomy now
reached the zenith of its activity, increasing its list of
premiums for local manufactures, establishing spinning
schools, and conducting a fortnightly market for the sale of
New York manufactures. The ser\nce of the society in en-
couraging flax culture and linen manufacture was of more
than temporary importance. In the making of linen, more
than three hundred persons were employed from the middle
of 1765 to the close of 1766.^ Philadelphia took over the
idea of a market, and three times a week linens, shalloons,
flannels, ink-powder and other wares of Pennsylvania fabri-
cation were offered for sale. Nearly two hundred poor
women were employed in spinning flax in the factory.* In
Rhode Island the thrifty maids and matrons improved the
shining hours by gathering in groups and spinning, usually
" from Sunrise to Dark." The maids of Providence and
Bristol displayed the extent of their resolution by bravely
agreeing to admit the addresses of no man who favored the
Stamp Act.^
It did not take the Americans long to perceive that their
: measures of economic self-preservation might be capitdized
/ to good advantage as political arguments for the repeal of
L4he obnoxious laws. In face of the fact that British im-
ports were rapidly diminishing from natural causes, news-
^ Pa. Journ., May 16, Sept. 12, 1765; Pa. Gaz., Jan. 9, 1766.
* Pa. Journ., May 9, 1765; N. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy, May 30.
' iV. Y. Journ., Dec. 17, 31, 1767.
^ Pa. Journ., Nov. 28, 1765, Jan. 23, 1766; The Record of the Cele-
bration of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Franklin (Hays, I. M.,
ed.), vol. ii, p. 57.
^Newport Merc., Apr. 14, May 12, 1766; .Y. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy,
J\pr. 3, 1766; A Prov. Gas., Aug. 24, 1765.
! y% THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
^^^SLpQT writers in New York and Connecticut urged in Sep-
tember, 1765, that the people should abstain from the use
of British manufactures until the trade restrictions and
taxes were removed!^ About the same time, a number of
Bos"ton'merchants, in writing for spring goods, ordered
them to be sent only w^hen the Stamp Act should be re-
pealed.^ But to New York belongs the credit of taking the
first formal action for thelSbycotting of British goods.
Four days before the Stamp Act was to go into operation,
,--— most of the gentlemen of New^ York signed an agree-
^ ' ment to buy no European wares until the Sugar Act should
be altered, trade conditions relieved and the Stamp Act re-
^ pealed. Three days later the merchants held a general meet-
ing and agreed to make all pasland juturejQxders- for British
merchandise contingent upon the repeal of the Stamp Act.
,/ Such merchants as w^efe shipowaiers were to be permitted
to bring their vessels back to port with cargoes of coal,
grindstones or other bulky articles. Two hundred merch-
ants affixed their signatures to the agreement. In order to
protect the merchants from the unrestricted importers of
other provinces, the retail dealers of the city bound them-
, selves to buy no goods whatsoever which should be shipped
/ from Great Britain after January i, 1766, until the repeal
,' of the Stamp Act.^ The merchants of Albany agreed unani-
\ mously to accept the New York resolutions.^
^A^. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Sept. 12, 1765; Conn. Gas., Sept. 13.
2 5^j_ £^^_ po^t^ Sept^ 23, 1765 ; also .V. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Sept. 26.
'iV. Y. Merc, Oct. 28, 31, Nov. 11, 1765; A^. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy,
Nov. 7. A London newspaper of Dec. 17 noted: "We hear that the
merchants upon 'change on Wednesday last received upwards of one
hundred letters from New- York, countermanding their orders for
goods." Newport Merc, Feb. 24, 1766. Colden said of the non-impor-
tation agreement, that " the people in America will pay an extravagant
price for old moth eaten Goods, and such as the Merchants could not
otherwise Sell." Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 78.
* Weyler's A''. Y. Gaz., Jan. 27, 1766.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM
79
The merchants of Philadelphia got under way about a
Veek after New York. With a prefatory statement that
the trading difficulties were due to " the Restrictions, Pro-
hibitions, and ill advised Regulations, made in the several
Acts of the Parliament of Great-Britain, lately passed " and
that they regarded the Stamp Act as the last straw, they
united in an agreement similar to that of the New Yorkers/^
More than four hundred merchants and traders signed the
agreement, and a committee was appointed to observe its ex-
ecution and to report violations to the body of subscribers.
Printed forms for countermanding former orders were^
distributed to every local merchant.' The merchants also
sent a memorial to the merchants and manufacturers of
Great Britain, urging their assistance in the repeal of the
Stamp Act and the removal of commercial restrictions,
particularly the restraints on paper currency, the mo-
lasses duty, the prohibition of the exportation of bar
iiron to foreign ports in Europe, the heavy duties on Ma-
?deira, and the requirement that European wines and fruits
■must be imported by way of Great Britain.^ The retailers
of Philadelphia supported the merchants by refusing to buy
any goods, shipped from Great Britain after January i,'
1766, except those approved by the merchants' committee.
^ Local shipowners were permitted to include in the return cargo of
their vessels from abroad dye-stuffs and utensils for manufacturing, as
well as bulky articles. The agreement was limited to May i, 1766,
when another meeting should consider the advisability of continuing it.
Pa. Jotirn., Nov. 14, 21, 1765; also N. Y. Merc, Nov. 25. The original
copy of the agreement, in the library of the Historical Society of Penn-
sylvania, contains the signatures of all the subscribers.
- For samples of conditional orders of Philadelphia merchants, vide
letters of Benjamin Marshall, Pa. Mag., vol. xx, pp. 209-211, and of
Charles Thomson, N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ix, pp. 6-8.
^ Pub. Rec. Off., C. 0. 5, no. 114 (L. C. Transcripts), pp. 161-169; Pa,
Gaz., Nov. 28, 1765; Pa. Mag., vol. xx, p. 211.
go THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1762-1776
The principal backcountry dealers cheerfully acquiesced
_. in this regulation.
On December 9, 1765, the merchants of Boston drew up a
formal agreement to import no goods from England until
the Stamp Act should be repealed, except utensils for manu-
facturing, certain bulky articles, and articles absolutely
necessary for the fishery. Two hundred and fifty merchants
and traders quickly signed.^ Salem and Marblehead, the
)orts of next importance, came into the same measure, and,
soon after, Plymouth and Newbury. -
Only a few instances of enforcement are recorded in the
case of the several provinces, a fact which indicates lack
of infraction and not an absence of zeal. Money was
tight; business men in Great Britain and America were
retrenching. It has already been suggested that the non-
importation agreements derived their im.portance less as
economic measures than as political protests. Indeed, mort
than three months before the first non-importation agree-
ment had been signed, London houses had begun to notice
a sharp falling-off of American orders, due to the hard times
from which the colonies wxre suffering. Thus, a Londor
concern stated on July 5, 1765 that " so few and so smal
are the orders from America . . . that the ships latel)
sailed thither have not had half their lading." ^ It was
^estimated in England that, for the entire summer, Americar
/' r^^ commissions for English goods were £600,000 less than hac
^ \ . been known for thirty years, and that the fall orders hac
j not been so sm.all " in the memory of man." * Britisl
V — ^ 1 The agreement was limited to May i, 1766, when it might be re
newed. Bos. Post-Boy, Dec. 9, 16, 23, 1765. For orders of Hancock ii
accordance with this agreement, nide Brown, John Hancock His Book
pp. 103, 106, 108, 112, 114, 115, 117.
2 Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, p. 176.
3 Pa. Gas., Sept. 12, 1765. Vide also ih'id., Oct. 24.
^ Paid., Jan. 2, 1766. Jlde also ibid., Feb. 27; Bos. Eve. Post, Feb. i/
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 8 1
merchants in comparing accounts were alarm.ed at the ex-
tent of their debts, and, knowing the precarious state of
c.ljnial commerce, they contracted their credits to the seri-
ous embarrassment of their American correspondents/ In
November, a London house declared that more bills from
America had been protested within six months than in the
preceding six 3-ears.^ On the other hand, the Boston Post-
Boy of December 23, 1765 declared: " A Merchant of the
first Rank in the Town Re-ship'd in one of the last Vessels
for London above £300 Sterling worth of Goods on Ac-
count of Money's being so scarce that they would not vend."
The adoption of non-importation agreements added no new
difficulty to the situation already existing.
The first attempt to introduce forbidden British mer-
chandise occurred at Philadelphia. A Liverpool brig ar-
rived there with goods debarred by the merchants' agree-
ment. The Committee of Merchants took the matter in
hand and ordered that the goods be locked up until news
of the repeal of the Stamp Act should arrive.^ A little
later the Prince George arrived at New York with goods
from Bristol, shipped on account of the British owners.
At the demand of the '' Sons of Liberty," the goods were
delivered into their care, to be returned to Bristol at first
opportunity.*
^ "A Merchant" in Public Ledger, Apr. i, 1765; letter from London,
A^ H. Gas., Nov. 22; Burke in Bos. Chron., June 26, 1769; R. I. Com-
merce, vol, i, pp. 168-169, 172-173. On the basis of statements from the
merchants of London, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester.
Trecothick, a leading London merchant in American trade, told a com-
mittee of Parhament in February, 1766, that the American debts to
those cities amounted to more than £4,450,000. Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss.,
no. 33030 (L. C. Transcripts), ff. 88, 104.
' Pa. Ga3., Feb. 6, 1766. Vide also petition of London merchants to
House of Commons, Jan. 17, 1766. Pari. Debates, vol. xvi, pp. 133-135.
^ Pa. Gas., Apr. 24, 1766.
* iV. Y. Merc, Apr. 28, 1766.
82 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Two Other ports, one of which was not bound by any
formal agreement of non-importation apphed the prin-
ciple of the secondar}^ boycott to ports where the stamp tax
was being paid. The country people at Newburyport at-
tempted to prevent the sailing of a schooner for Halifax ; and
when other means failed, they informed the customs officers
of irregularities in her cargo and occasioned a seizure of
the vessel.^ At Charleston, S. C, the fire company, com-
posed of radicals, agreed that no provision should be shipped
" to that infamous Colony Georgia in particular nor any
other that make use of Stamp Paper," on penalty of death
for the offenders, if they persisted in error, and the burnings
of the vessel. A schooner, laden with rice for Georgia,
attempted to put to sea by night; but the master and the
owner were stopped by a threat that the letter of the reso-
lution would be carried out, and they discharged the cargo."
About the middle of 1766, official news reached the
colonies that Parliament had given heed to the American
situation and had made sweeping alterations in the trade
and revenue laws of 1764- 1765. This had come as the
result of a combination of circumstances, fortuitous and
natural, which had spelled victor}^ for the colonists.^ Lead-
ing among these circumstances were the distress of the
British merchants, manufacturers and workingmen, and the
examination of Dr. Franklin before the House of Commons.
Figures at the London custom house showed that English
exportations to the commercial colonies had declined from
£1,410,372 in 1764 to £1,197,010 in 1765 ; and from £515,-
^ A^ H. Gaz., Jan. 10, 1766.
^Newport Merc, Mch. 17, 31, 1766; S. C. Gaz., Feb. 25; Pa. Journ.,
Mch. 20.
'Hodge, H. H., "Repeal of Stamp Act," Pol. Sci. Quar., vol. xix^
pp. 252-276.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 83
192 to £383,224 to the tobacco colonies — a loss which was
far from being offset by an increase from £324,146 to
£363,874 in the exportations to North Carolina and the
rice colonies/ Dr. Frankhn had laid bare the economic
reasons for the American commotions, declaring them to V,
be " the restraints lately laid on their trade, by which the /
bringing of foreign gold and silver into the Colonies was
prevented; the prohibition of making paper money among
themselves; and then demanding a new and heavy tax by
stamps; taking away, at the same time, trials by jury, and
refusing to receive and hear their humble petitions." ^
Whether or not Franklin's analysis was a complete state-
ment of the case, the remedial legislation of Parliament
:ollowed generally the lines indicated by him. The first f^i
step taken was the total repeal of the Stamp Act, upon an/j '"^^^
understanding, embodied in the accompanying Declaratory
Act, that Parliament, nevertheless, possessed authority tO'
bind the colonies " in all cases whatsoever." ^ When Sec-
retary Conway communicated this news to the colonial gov-
ernors in a letter of March 31, 1766, he assured them that
Parliament would at once undertake to " give to the Trade
& Interests of America every Relief which the true State of
their Circumstances demands or admits." * A second letter
of June 12, signed by the Duke of Richmond as secretary,
announced the accomplishment of this latter object — that
" those Grievances in Trade which seemed to be the first
and chief Object of their Uneasiness have been taken into
the most minute Consideration, & such Regulations have
^ Bos. Chron., Jan. 30, 1769.
2 Writings (Smith), vol. iv, p. 420.
'6 George III, c. 11 and c. 12.
* T N. J. Arch., vol. ix, pp. 550-552. As early as Feb. 14, Henry
Cruger had written with the assurance of one who knew the facts that
the molasses duty would be reduced to one penny. R. I. Commerce,^
vol. i, p. 143.
c;, THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
been established as will, it is hoped, restore the Trade of
America . . ." ^
The new regulations of Parliament did indeed remove
the chief economic objection to the restrictive act of 1764.'
The threepenny duty on foreign molasses was taken off
and in its place a very low duty of one penny a gallon waj
substituted upon all molasses, whether imported from Brit-
ish or foreign possessions. The high duties on foreign sugai
were retained; but the cost of British West Indian sugai
was reduced by removing the long-established export duties
at the islands. It was provided, for the discouragement oi
smuggling, that all sugars exported to Great Britain fron
the continental colonies should be classed as '' French '
and charged with higher duties accordingly.
It was further enacted that all colonial products, whethei
" enumerated " or not, must thereafter be entered at ar
English port, if destined for a European port north of Cap(
Finisterre (other than the Spanish ports in the Bay o:
Biscay). The imposts on foreign textiles that had beer
collected upon importation into America were in the futur<
to be collected at the time of exportation from England
The export duties on British colonial pimento and coffee
were replaced by low duties upon their importation int(
other British colonies.
The new duty on molasses met the wishes of the agent:
of the continental colonies; and it w^ould appear that th(
merchants of Boston, so vitally concerned, had intimatec
1 / A'. /. Arch., vol. ix, pp. 553-554-
2 6 George III, c. 52. The British West Indies had been suffering
hard times also, and Parliament passed special legislation at this timi
with a view of reheving the distress there ; 6 George III, c. 49, for thi
establishment of free ports at Jamaica and Dominica. Vide Edwards
B., The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in thi
West Indies (London, I793), vol. i, pp. 239-243.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 85
in advance their willingness to accept suck a reduction/
It was understood that the rum business of the commercial
provinces could easily support a small tax. Franklin be-
lieved that the new regulations afforded " reasonable relief
... in our Commercial grievances " ^ and the Rhode Island
agent wrote, even more exuberantly, to the governor of
Rhode Island that " every grievance of which you com-
plained is now absolutely and totally removed, — a joyful
and happy event for the late disconsolate inhabitants of
America." ^
If the colonists had been more intent on their theoretical
rights than on immediate business concessions, the keener
minds would have perceived that rejoicing was premature.
Far more ominous to American liberties than the Declara-
tory Act was the fact that the new molasses duty applied
to all molasses imported, British as well as foreign. By no
possible interpretation could it be construed in any other \
light than a tariff for revenue. It was an unvarnished con- t
tradiction of the colonial claim to '' no taxation without '
representation."
However, the remedial legislation of 1766 was received
in America with great popular satisfaction. Measures
^ Beer, British Colonial Policy, 17 54-1765, p. 279; / M. H. S. Colls.,
vol. vi, p. 193 ; Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 261 n. ; Quincy, Mass,
Reports, p. 435 ; Brit. Mus., Egerton Mss., no. 2671 (L. C. Transcripts) ;
Sagittarius's Letters, no. xix, pp. 84-88. Dennys de Berdt, agent of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives, informed Lord Halifax that
a duty of one penny on molasses, " colected with the good will of the
people, will produce more neat money than 3 pence collected by the
dint of Officers." Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. xiii, p. 430. Dickin:on
had said in his powerful arraignment of " the late regulations " that
" we should willingly pay a m.oderate duty upon importations from the
French and Spaniards, without attempting to run them." IVritings
(Ford), vol. i, p. 224.
^ Writings (Smyth), vol. iv, p. 411.
' R. I. Col. Recs., vol. vi, pp. 491-493.
g5 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
against the use and importation of British goods collapsed.
The widespread enthusiasm for local manufacturing greatly
diminished or entirely vanished. The New York Society
for the Promotion of Arts, Agriculture and Oeconomy de-
clined temporarily into a comatose state/ The majority of
the people again bowed to the custom of expensive funerals
and lavish mourning. At a public entertainment in Phila-
delphia, the citizens resolved unanimously to give their
homespun to the poor and on June the fourth, the king's
birthday, to dress in new suits of English fabrication.^
When news of the repeal of the Stamp Act reached Boston,
Hancock wrote : " You may rest assured that the people
in this country will exert themselves to show^ their Loyalty
& attachment to Great Britain " and he promised his " best
Influence & endeavors to that purpose." ^ Charles Thom-
son, of Philadelphia, wrote to Franklin of " a heartfelt joy,
seen in every Eye, read in every Countenance; a Joy not
expressed in triumph but with the warmest sentiments of
Loyalty to our King and a grateful acknowledgment of
the Justice and tenderness of the mother Country." *
The generality of the merchants in the commercial
provinces were not so unreservedly gratified by the action
of Parliament. Important concessions had been made in
response to the American propaganda; indeed, the leading
grievances had been removed. Yet trade had not been re-
stored to the footing which it had enjoyed before the pass-
^ A". Y. Journ., Dec. 17, 24, 1767. During the Townshend Acts, as
we shall see, the society revived its activities, and traces of its proceed-
ings may be found in the Journal as late as Mch. 29, 1770.
^ Pa. Gaz., May 22, 1766; Franklin Bicentennial Celebration, vol. ii,
pp. 58-59. Weyler's N. Y. Gazette, May 26, 1766, suggested that this
action proceeded from the desire of the anti-proprietary party to curry
favor with the king.
^ Brown, John Hancock His Book, pp. 124-12S.
* .V. F. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. xi, p. 16.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 87
age of the laws of 1764 and 1765. To that extent, the
merchants had fallen short of their goal.
In Novemberi, 1766, the New York merchants summed
up their outstanding grievances in a petition to the House
of Commons, containing two hundred and forty signatures.^
In the following January, the merchants of Boston followed
their example.^ These two papers covered substantially
the same ground. The Bostonians seized this early op-
portunity to deny that rum could be profitably distilled from
molasses that bore a duty amounting to practically ten per
cent ad valorem, as did the one-penny duty. They also
protested against the administrative regulations of 1764,
declaring that one part of them made the proper registra-
tion of a vessel an expensive and tedious process, and that
another part granted naval officers autocratic powers of
seizure, together with protection from damage suits. ^ The
^ Weyler's A^. Y. Gas., May 4, 1767; Pitt, Wm., Correspondence
(London, 1838), vol. iii, p. 186. Vide also the statement of "Americus,"
•copied into Weyler's A^. Y. Gaz., Jan, 19, 1767, from a London news-
paper.
' M. H. S, Mss.: gi L, pp. 27, 31 ; Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. xiii, pp.
451-452.
* The New Englanders had a special grievance, which was of first
importance while it lasted. In 1765 Governor Palliser, of Newfound-
land, had prevented American fishermen from taking cod off Labrador
and in the Strait of Belle Isle. His action was based upon a narrow
interpretation of the statutes relating to the Newfoundland fisheries,
and upon a belief that a smuggling trade was being carried on with the
French of Miquelon and St. Pierre. A petition of the Massachusetts
House of Representatives, presented about this time, asked for an act
of Parliament to prevent such restraints in the future. The ministry
would not concede this ; but in March, 1767, they agreed to revise Pal-
liser's instructions so as to preclude any further interruption of the
legitimate fishing-trade. This action apparently settled the matter
satisfactorily. Ihid., pp. 447-448, 451-452; 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, pp.
347-348; 5 M. H. S. Colls., vol. ix, pp. 219-220; Andrews, " Boston Mer-
chants and Non-Importation Movement," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol.
xix, pp. 173-174.
gg THE CGLGXIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
New Yorkers, on the other hand, stood alone in their conten-
tion that the exclusion of foreign rum from the colonies
was a hardship, averring that it was a necessary article of
exchange at the Danish West Indies particularly.
On most points the two petitions were in essential agree-
ment. The high duty on foreign sugar was said to elim-
inate it as an article of trade, although it was a commodity
frequently used to fill out a return cargo. This excessive
duty, said the New York merchants, '' had induced the
Fair Trader to decline that Branch of Business, while it
presents an irresistable Incentive to Smuggling to People
less scrupulous." The requirement that all sugars exported
to Great Britain from the continental colonies should be
classed as '' French " was said to prevent a valuable return
to Great Britain for her manufactures. The high duty
on Madeira wine was objected to as a discouragement to its
importation into America and, therefore, to the exportation
of American foodstuffs and lumber to the Wine Islands.
The requirement as to the importation of fruit and wine from
Spain and Portugal was again held up as a grievance.^ The
new regulation, which required all outgoing commodities to
be entered at a British port before going on to European
ports north of Finisterre, was said to increase the cost of
voyages unduly and preclude the competition of colonial
merchants in European markets. The exportation of for-
eign logwood and of colonial lumber, provisions and flax-
seed was especially affected by this restriction.
Of the grievances here enumerated, the regulations
against smuggling had already begun to prove less irksome
^ In 1767, Townshend desired to remove this grievance, but was un-
successful. It was urged that a direct trade between Portugal and
America would be a hazardous relaxation of the acts of trade. 5 M.
H. S., vol. ix. pp. 231, 236; Pa. Gaz., July 16, 1767.
FIRST CONTEST FOR REFORM 89
in practice than they appeared on paper/ Thus, in 1764,
y'the Rhode Island legislature had forbidden the governor toi
jl administer the oaths to British customs officials, and the
latter had been forced to suspend operations. In 1765, a
customs collector in Maryland had been violently assaulted ;
and in Massachusetts and New York, the officials were
afraid to execute the laws after the Stamp Act riots. For
the future, the necessity for smuggling seemed somewhat
lessened by the radical reduction of the niiolasses duty.
One grievance had not been included by the petitioners —
the failure of Parliament tO' provide relief for the currency
situation. The colonial merchants had probably placed
reliance upon the assurance of the London merchants, com-
miunicated the preceding June, that the government, after
much deliberation, had concluded to postf>one a regulation
' of colonial paper money until the colonies could be consulted
upon a scheme for a general paper currency upon an inter-
colonial basis. ^ Unfortunately, however, nothing was to
*- come of this plan f and the money stringency, though some-
*Beer, British Colonial Policy, 17 54-1765, pp. 301-302; Arnold, S. G.,
History of Rhode Island (New York, i860), vol. ii, pp. 257-259; Col-
den, Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 124.
2 Pa. Gas., Aug-. 21, 1766, also Weyler's N. Y. Gaz., Aug. 25; New-
port Merc, Sept. i ; Bos. Post-Boy, Sept. i ; A^. H. Gas., Sept. 4.
Franklin had confidently expected action from Parliament on this sub-
ject while revision of the trade laws was being undertaken. Writings
(Smyth), vol. iv, p. 411.
'The dilatory course of the British government in this matter seems
scarcely excusable. The British merchants in the Am.erican trade, with
the backing of the colonial agents, worked for the repeal of the Cur-
rency Act of 1764, and proposed a plan by which colonial bills of credit
should be legal tender for everything except sterling debts payable in
Great Britain. The ministry refused in 1767 to listen to this plan,
partly because of irritation over New York's cavalier treatment of the
Quartering Act. Pa. Gas., Apr. 9, 1767; Pa. Joitrn., Apr. 22, July 30.
In the same year Grenville proposed in Parliament a plan for a gen-
eral paper currency which was intended as a means of increasing the
QO THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
what relieved by the reopening of trade with the foreign
West Indies, was to become increasingly distressing in the
next three or four years as the redemption periods of the
outstanding paper money arrived and the volume of legal
tender thereby became greatly contracted. Thus, the real
trial in New York began with the redemption of its paper
money in November, 1768.^ In these later years, com-
plaints of the scarcity of money came chiefly from the prov-
inces outside of New England, and were voiced by govern-
ors, newspaper writers and legislative petitions.^ Many
sagacious men of the time believed that the British govern-
ment was guilty of grave injustice, particularly in the case
of those provinces where the power to issue legal-tender
money had never been abused.*
American revenue. This did not receive serious consideration. 5 M.
H. S. Colls., vol. ix, p. 231. New York was given relief from the severe
money stringency by a special act of 1770: 10 George III, c. 35. Fin-
ally, an act of 1773 (13 George III, c. 57) permitted colonial paper
money to be received as a legal tender for payment of colonial duties,
taxes, etc. Vide infra, pp. 243-244.
^ Becker, C. L., The History of Political Parties in the Province of
New York, 1760-17/6 (Univ. Wis. Bull, no, 286), pp. 65-71, 77-79, 88,
95, and references.
2 E. g,, N. Y. Col Docs., vol. viii, pp. 175-176; i N. J. Arch., vol. xvlii,
p. 46; "Mercator" in Pa. Journ., Sept. 14, 1769; Brit. Papers C Sparks
MssJ'), vol. ii, pp. 184-186, 220-225, 263-267. Vide also Franklin, Writ-
ings (Sm3rth), vol. V, pp. 71-73-
' For a statement of the case of New York, vide 4 M. H. S. Colls.,
vol. X, pp. 520-521; of Pennsylvania, Franklin, Writings (Smyth), vol.
V, pp. 1-14.
CHAPTER III
The Second Movement for Commercial Reform
(1767- I 770)
Although the colonial merchants had won their chief de-
mands in their contest with Parliament, they had yet fallen
short, in several respects, of attaining their ultimate goal,
i. e. a restoration of the commercial system as it existed in
the days before 1764. This purpose was the objective of
the mercantile provinces in the subsequent years, and was
relinquished by them only when it became apparent that
their agitation for commercial redress was unloosing social
forces more destructive to business interests than the mis-
guided acts of Parliament. The typical merchant cared little
about academic controversies over theoretical right ; but he
was vitally concerned in securing every practicable conces-
sion he could without endangering the stability of the
empire. Paul Wentworth, in writing his " Minutes re-
specting political Parties in America " in 1778, took care to
differentiate the merchant class from all other groups of
malcontents in the period leading tO' the Revolutionary War.
After showing their purpose, he made it clear that their
influence controlled a very large majority of the people
throughout the provinces at the outset.^ The ultimate
success of the merchants depended upon their ability to
retain this position of leadership, to control public opinion
in America, and to direct the course of oppO'sition.
The experience of the years 1764- 1766 gave the merchant
class food for sober reflection. Intent on making out a
1 Stevens, Facsimiles, vol, v, no. 487.
91
02 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
complete case for themselves, they had, in their zeal, over-
reached themselves in calling to their aid the unruly elements
of the population. These unprivileged classes had never
before been awakened to a sense of their muscular influence
in community affairs; and, under the name oif '^ Sons of
Liberty," they had instinctively stretched out for alliance
with their brethren in other cities/ Dimly the merchants
began to perceive the danger of an awakened self-conscious
group of the radical elements; well might they be apprehen-
sive, as Golden recorded, '' whether the Men who excited
this seditious Spirit in the People have it in their power to
'suppress it." ^ Men of large propertied interests were un-
doubtedly more sensitive to the danger than were the smaller
merchants ; some of the f onmer had exhorted the people of
New York city against " mob government " whixc- the Stamp^
Act riots were still under way.^
- The violence of the colonial propaganda had alienated
from the mercantile side such influential men; as Governor
Bernard and Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson, of Massa-
chusetts,* and had cooled the ardor of such important fig-
ures as Dulany, of Maryland, and Joseph Galloway, of
* Ramifications of the Sons of Liberty were to be found in New
York, Albany and other New York towns, in Philadelphia, Boston,
Providence, Portsmouth, several towns of Connecticut and New Jersey,
and in Baltimore and Annapolis. Becker, N. Y. Parties, pp. 46-48.
' Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 99. Vide also p. iii. Even Charles Thom-
son, the Philadelphia merchant, hoped that the whole people would not
be credited with the " acts of some individuals provoked to madness
and actuated by despair." A^, Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. xi, p. 16. The
merchants of Brunswick, N. J., apologized to the Committee of Mer-
chants of London for the "riots or tumults" as being "the follies of
less considerate men " than themselves, i N. J. Arch., vol. xxv, pp.
23S-237.
^ Becker, vY. Y. Parties, chap. ii.
4 An excellent modern example of the same type of mind may be
found by reading Peabody, A. P.. " Boston Mobs before the Revolu-
tion," Atl. Monthly, vol. Ixii, pp. 321-333-
COMMERCIAL REFORM
93
Pennsylvania/ For the future, the merchants as a class
^vere resolved to rely upon orderly methods of protest —
memorials and the boycott. A first step had been taken by
the merchants of New York and Boston, in accordance with
this new policy, by the sending of petitions to Parliament
for trade redress in the winter of 1 766- 1767."
Such was the situation when Parliament made its next
attempt to reorganize British imperial policy. The new
plan found its justification in the fact that colonial theorists
had, as yet, discovered nothing " unconstitutional " or
" tyrannical " in revenue duties collected at American ports.
The recent molasses duty was the best, but not the only, ex-
ample of the willingness of Americans to pay an " external
tax " without protest.^ Charles Townshend was, thus, act-
ing within the best traditions of British practical statesman-
ship, whcxi he proposed to build a revenue act based upon
the colonists' own views, of the powers of Parliament.
Townshend's policy, enacted as the will of Parliament
about the middle of 1767, not only dealt with taxation, but
,also proposed to strengthen the customs service where re-
cent experience had shown it to be inadequate. A third
measure, designed to meet a temporary emergency, was the
suspension of the legislative functions of the New York
Assembly until that body should comply with all the pro-
visions of the Quartering Act."^
^ Galloway's biographer analyzes the character of his propertied in-
terests and then adds : " He feared the tyranny of mob rule more than
the tyranny of ParHament." Baldwin, E? H., " Joseph Galloway," Pa.
Mag., vol. xxvi, pp. 163-164, 289-294.
- Vide supra, pp. 87-88.
^ The colonists also paid revenue duties on enumerated goods im-
ported from another British colony (25 Charles II. c, 7), on coffee
and pimento imported from British possessions (6 George III, c. 52),
and on imported wines (4 George III, c. 15).
* It is not necessary to recount here this famihar episode. The mer-
C,4 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
, The revenue feature of Townshend's policy was accom-
plished by adding a list of po ft duties to those already in
force. The following articles were to be taxed at the time
of their landing in America: five varieties of glass, red and
white lead, painters' colors, sixty-seven grades of paper, and
tea/ All these articles were British manufactures, except
tea, w^hich was handled by the greatest British monopoly of
./the times, the East India Company. The imposition of
/ -the three-penny tea tax in America was accompanied by the
, remission of the duty paid at the time that the tea was im-
ported into Great Britain, the object being to enable dutied
tea to undersell any tea that was smuggled into the colonies.-
One portion of the revenue act was designed " for more
effectually preventing the clandestine running of goods. . /'
With this purpose in view, it was provided that the revenue
' produced by the duties should be used to free the judges and
civil officers in such colonies as *' it shall be found neces-
sary " from financial dependence on the local legislatures.
More immediately to the point, express legalization was
given to the hitherto questionable practice of the colonial
supreme courts in issuing writs of assistance to customs
officials. By means of these writs, customs officers were to
receive power to search for contraband goods in any house
or shop, and, in case of resistance, to break open doors,
chests, etc., and seize the goods in question.
Other regulations were designed to strengthen the ad-
ministrative side of the customs service.^ These made
. chant class were not interested in this act of Parliament; and in the
various non-importation agreements adopted later, this law was not
once named for repeal.
^ 7 George III, c. 46.
' 7 George III, c. 56. The East India Company was required to make
good any deficiency in the revenues which might result from the dis-
continuance of certain tea duties. Farrand, Max, " Taxation of Tea.,
i767-iy72>" Am. Hist. Rev., vol. iii, pp. 266-269.
' 7 George III, c. 41.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 9^
possible the establishment of a board of commissioners of
the customs at Boston, with entire charge of the collection of
customs throughout the continent as well as at Bermuda and
the Bahamas. The commissioners were given power to
place the customs service on a basis of comparative effic-
iency. Disputes, which had hitherto been carried to the
Commissioners of the Customs at London for settlement,
were to be determined by this new American board with
much less trouble, delay and expense to the parties con-
cerned.
Certain changes in the interest of greater efficiency were "
also made in the system of colonial courts of vice-admiralty.^
In addition to the courts already existing in the several ^
provinces, vice-admiralty courts of large powers were es-
tablished at Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston with orig-
inal jurisdiction over the capture of vessels in their respec-
tive districts and with appellate jurisdiction over the
subordina^te vice-admiralty courts.
The situation in which the merchants of the commercial
provinces found themselves in the latter months of 1767
was not unlike their situation in the latter part of 1764,
save that on this later occasion Philadelphia did not seem to
be as greatly affected as the other ports. Again, the mer-
chants were confronted with trade restrictions — some of
them hanging over from 1764 — which reduced business
profits. Again, they faced new and rigorous regulations y
against smuggling, regulations which betokened a serious-
ness of purpose on the part of the government which was
not open to misconstruction. And again, they perceived
that the burden of seeking redress must fall upon; their own
shoulders, the planters of the South being involved less
directly and less obviously in the new legislation.
^8 George III, c. 22. Vide also N. C. Col. Recs., vol. vii, pp. 459-460.
C)6 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The determination of the merchants to conduct their
campaign for redress along legal and peaceable lines was
at once made manifest. On November 20, 1767, the day
the Townshend acts became effective, James Otis, the lawyer
of the Boston merchants, presided over a town meeting;
and after telling the people that relief should be sought
'' in a legal and constitutional way," he roundly denounced
mob riots, even to the extent of declaring that " no possi-
ble circumstances, though ever so oppressive, could be sup-
posed sufficient to justify private tumults and disorders
. . ." The selectmen, most of whom were merchants by
trade, appealed to the people a few days later, in an article
over their signatures, to avoid '' all outrage or lawless pro-
ceeding " and stand firm " in a prudent conduct and cautious
behaviour." ^ In a similar spirit, John Dickinson, the
wealthy Pennsylvania lawyer, in his " Letters from a
Farmer in Pennsylvania," published serially during the sub-
sequent three months, took frequent and emphatic occasion
to condemn '' turbulence and tumult " and to laud '' con-
stitutional modes of obtaining relief."^ This was the spirit
in which the second contest for commercial reform got
under way. Had the conflict been of shorter duration,
the desires of the leaders might have been realized. But the
length of the contest, with the increasing restlessness and
self-confidence of the radical elements, made the introduc-
tion of mob methods inevitable.
The course of opposition pursued by the merchants par-
^ l^lde Bos. Post-Boy, Nov. 30, 1767, and Frothingham, Rise of Re-
public, pp. 206-20S, for these and other instances. Vide also Hutchin-
son, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, pp. 180-181.
2 The twelve articles appeared originally in issues of the Pa. Chronicle
from Dec. 2, 1767 to Feb. 15, 1768. For Dickinson's views on " hot,
rash, disorderly proceedings," vide in particular Letter III; Writings
(Ford), vol. i, pp. 322-328.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 07
took of a double character. On the one hand, there were
the activities of the smuggHng merchants, protected by
popular opinion and bent upon the pursuit of gain in de-
fiance of parliamentary restrictions. On the other hand,
there stood the whole merchant class, confident of their
power to coerce the nation of shopkeepers into concessions
through exercise of the boycott, and prepared to develop
this instrument beyond anything dreamed of during Stamp
Act times.
Smuggling proved to be the first channel through which
violence was injected into the struggle. There occurred
the usual vicious sequence: evasion of the law leading to
defiance of the law, and defiance of the law breeding vio-
lence. After the revision of the trade laws in 1766 and the
passage of ITTelfew acts of 1767, the character of colonial
contraband trade changed greatly. The running of mo-
lasses, which had formerly formed the great bulk of illicit
traffic, had been rendered considerably less profitable by
the reduction of the duty.^ The Townshend duties, with
a single exception, fell on articles manufactured in Great
Britain; and inst^d of encouraging smuggling in these
articles, served as a stimulus to their production in the
colonies.
The exception noted, the duty on tea, was so ingeniously
^ Since the duty has been reduced, " the whole, tho' grievous, has
been regularly paid." Observations of the Merchants at Boston upon
Several Acts of Parliament, etc. (1770), pp. 29-30. It should further
be noted that, beginning with the year 1768, a succession of temporary
acts removed the prohibition from the exportation of American meats
and butter to Great Britain, and sometimes from cereals and raw hides
as well. E. g., vide 8 George III, c. 9; 9 George III, c. 39; 10 George
III, c. I, c. 2; II George III, c. 8; 13 George III, c. i, c. 2, c. 3, c. 4,
c. 5 ; 15 George III, c. 7. The passage of these acts made it less neces-
sary for colonial merchants to seek in foreign markets commodities
which might serve as remittances to England and thus reduce the
temptation to smuggling.
V'--'
q8 the COLOXIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
contrived as to have the immediate effect of lowering the
price of customed tea in America below that of any that
could be smuggled from Holland or elsewhere/ This con-
dition lasted until 1769 when the East India Company,
hard pressed by creditors and seeking to recoup some of its
losses, advanced the upset price of tea at the public auctions
in Great Britain. This caused the exporting merchant, who
bid in the tea, to raise the price to the American merchant,,
and the American merchant to raise the price to the colonial
retailer. So that the colonial consumer thereafter found
it advantageous to drink Dutch tea; and tea smuggling be-
gan to thrive.-
Until that time, it would appear that the chief concern
of the smugglers was the running of wine from Madeira
and the Azores, a traffic vastly stimulated by the high duty
demanded for legal importation.^ In view of the com-
motions that resulted, one might add in supplementation
of John Adams' remark concerning molasses that wine w^as
another essential ingredient of American independence.
The importation of Dutch, French and German manu-
factures without stoppage at Great Britain, as required by
^ Tea imported from Great Britain became ninepence cheaper per
pound. Bos. Gas., Aug. 15, 1768; Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Dec. 19, 1774,
^ Hutchinson to Hillsborough, Aug. 25, 1771, Bos. Gaz., Nov. 27, 1775.
Vide infra, p. 250.
'This duty was no less than seven pounds per tun under the act of
1764. As Kelly, the New York merchant, told a committee of Parlia-
ment, " wherever there is a great difference of Price, there will be a
Daring Spirit to attempt [smuggling] notwithstanding all Preventions."
Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss., no. 33030 (L. C. Transcripts), f. 136. For ex-
ample, an official report, made evidently for the Customs Board, stated
that thirty vessels, entering at New York from Madeira and the Azores,
had not entered sufficient goods to load one vessel. Ibid., no. 15484, f. 6.
Colden said that few New York merchants were not engaged in con-
traband trade and that " Whole Cargoes from Holland and Ship Loads
of Wine " had been brought in without the payment of duties. Letter
Books, vol. ii, pp. 133-134.
COMMERCIAL REFORM C)^
law, probably continued much as before; and there may-
have been a slight increase in the volume of the illicit export
trade, due to the fact that after 1766 all American com-
modities, shipped for European ports north of Cape Finis-
terre, must first be entered at a British port.
The continuance of smuggling after 1767 should not be
made to argue the total failure of Townshend's endeavor
to reform the customs administration. The Board of Cus-
toms Commissioners at Boston performed a vastly creditable
service in reducing peculation and laziness on the part of
officials and in establishing a stricter system of coast con-
trol. The number of customs employees was greatly in-
creased— in the case of Philadelphia, trebled in the years
1767-1770.^ Writs of assistance were more generally and
more effectively used than at any earlier period. Revenue
cutters were stationed at leading ports ; and smaller vessels,
belonging to the navy and acting under deputation of the
commissioners, searched out suspected ships in the numer-
ous rivers and inlets. A representation of the Boston mer-
chants, made in 1 770, declared that the Customs Board had
employed upward* of twenty vessels that year, and that
some of the captains had purchased small boats of their
own to search in shallow waters." Undoubtedly the total
volume of illicit trade was smaller after 1767 than at any
period subsequent to the enactment of the Molasses Act in
17335 ^ 3.nd this was due, in some degree, to the activities
of the Customs Board.*
^ Channing-, History of United States, vol. iii, pp. 88-89.
^ Observations of the Merchants at Boston, etc., pp. 24-25.
' On the other hand. Golden claimed, in November, 1767, and re-
peatedly in the following months, that at New York " a greater quan-
tity of Goods has been Run without paying Duties since the Repeal of
the Stamp Act than had been done in ten years before." Letter Books,
vol. ii, pp. 133-134, 138' 148, 153, 163, 172.
* Note the table of penalties and seizures, quoted by Professor Chan-
lOO ^^£ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Two conditions militated against the success of the Cus-
toms Board in wiping out smugghng. One was the extent
of the coastUne to be watched. The other was the active
sympath}^ which the populace extended to the smugglers.
The importance of this latter factor was shown by the
peremptory treatment of those who were reckless enough
to reveal to a customs officer the secret of their neighbors'
prosperity. Thus, an informer cowered before a gathering
of merchants and inhabitants of New Haven in September,
1769, and humbly acknowledged his iniquity in attempting
to inform against Mr. Timothy Jones, Jr., for " running
of goods." ^ During the following month an informer at
Boston was tarred and feathered and paraded through the
principal streets ; ^ and three others of his kind in New
York received similar treatment — " to the great Satisfac-
tion of all the good Inhabitants of this City, and to the
great Terror of evil doers," as one loyal New Yorker
averred.^
Popular sympathy also produced collisions with the cus-
toms officials. While in discharge of his duty, Jesse Saville,
a tide waiter of the custom house at Providence, was viol-
ning. op. cit., vol. iii, p. 89 n. Eloquent evidence of the prevalence of
smuggling as late as 1770 is shown in a survey of the customs districts
and ports, made, it would appear, for the Customs Board. This report
is entitled, " Ports of North America." It shows clearly that wide
stretches of coast were free from proper customs supervision and
makes detailed recommendations for stricter oversight. Considerable
smugghng is also alleged in the plantation provinces at this period
Brit. Mus. Addl. Mss., no. 15484 (L. C. Transcripts).
^ New London Gaz., Sept. 29, 1769; also Mass. Gaz. & News Letter,
Oct. 5.
"^ Ibid., Nov. 2, 9. 1769; Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, pp. 259-260.
3 Mass. Gas. & News Letter, Oct. 12, 1769. Colden wrote in January,
1768, to Grenville: "No man dare inform, so that whole cargoes have
been run without entry in the Custom House." Letter Books, vol. ii,
p. 153.
COMMERCIAL REFORM lOi
ently assaulted and then tarred and feathered, in 1769. A
reward of fifty pounds sterHng for the perpetrators of this
act was vainly offered by the Customs Board/ In July
of the same year, a mob at Newport dismantled and burnt
the revenue sloop Liberty, which had just brought into the
harbor two vessels suspected of smuggling.^ " Both vessels
that were seized have since proceeded on their respective
voyages," noted the Newport Mercury laconically on July
22. At Philadelphia, the revenue officials attempted in
April, 1769, to get possession of about fifty pipes of Ma-
deira wine that had been imported without payment of
duties. Their efforts stirred up a mob which stole away the
booty from under their very noses and maltreated some
of the officers. Later, the merchants offered to restore
the wine; and, after some delay, they returned "not near
the Quantity that was taken " and, instead of Madeira,
"no better than mean Fyall [Fayal]." A revenue em-
ployee who had been active in this affair went to Boston
to recuperate from his injuries, because, as he earnestly
avowed, " I could not think of tarrying among a sett of
People under my present circumstances whose greatest
pleasure would be to have an oppo[rtunity] of burying
me." ^
Even from the plantation provinces came echoes of in-
dignation against the officiousness of customs officers and
the new powers of the vice-admiralty courts. Infringe-
ments of the acts of trade were comparatively rare in that
portion of British America; and it was the boast of the.
^ Arnold, Rhode Island, vol. ii, p. 294.
"^ R. I. Col. Re£S., vol. vi, pp. 593-596; Gammel, W., Samuel Ward {2
Lihr. Am. Biog., vol. ix), pp. 288-290. For instances of forcible im-
portation in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, vide Weeden, Ec. and
Sac. Hist, of New Engl., vol. ii, p. 762.
^ 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. X, pp. 611-617.
102
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
wealthy Charleston merchant and factor, Henry Laurens,
that he had never intentionally violated them. Yet, in spite
of the efforts of the Customs Board to secure higher admin-
istrative efficiency, the customs officers at Charleston were
unprincipled and corrupt; and the merchants of that port
were subjected to petty tyrannies, from which the local
vice-admiralty court afforded no relief. Laurens himself
was put to great expense through the seizure on technical
charges in 1767 and 1768, of three of his vessels, two of
which were eventually released. A conservative from
temperamental as well as business reasons, his emotions
were, for the first time, deeply stirred to the defense of
so-called x\merican liberties, and in 1769 he produced an
able controversial pamphlet setting forth his new views
under the title, So7ne General Observations on American
custom house officers and Courts of Vice- Admiralty.
Thoroughly academic and unemotional as he had been in
his objections to the Stamp Act, he could write in 1769 to
a London friend that " the enormous created powers vested
in an American Court of Vice-Admiralty threatens future
generations in America with a curse tenfold worse than
the Stamp Act." '
The most important work performed by the Customs
Board was the breaking of the power of the smugglers at
Boston. This was accomplished only through a resort to
extreme measures. In the years immediately following
1766, there were a number of cases at Boston of forcible
landing of contraband goods, of rescue of lawful seizures,
and of mobbing of revenue officers." John Robinson, one
of the Customs Board, in his testimony before the Privy
^ For this incident, vide Wallace, Henry Laurens, pp. 137-149. Vide
also Prov. Gas., Oct. 3, 1/67, July 23, 1768.
'^ Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, vol. v, no. 155. Vide also
Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 188.
J
/
COMMERCIAL REFORM IO3
Council in 1770, stated that he hesitated to say that ''the
Disturbances may be properly called Riots, as the Rioters
appear to be under Discipline."
Feeling unable to cope with the situation, the Customs
Board, in February, 1768, asked Commodore Hood at
Halifax for a public vessel to protect them in the discharge
of their functions. " We have every reason," they shid,
'' to expect that we shall find it impracticable to enforce
the execution of the revenue laws, until the hand of gov-
ernment is properly strengthened. At present, there is not
a ship-of-war in the province, nor a company of soldiers
nearer than New York." ^ In answer to repeated requests,
the man-of-war Roniney was stationed at Boston a few
months later. The board now pressed for additional ships
and for the presence of troops, but their requests failed of
effect.
Affairs came to a crisis a few months later, when John
Hancock's sloop Liberty arrived in port from Madeira with
a quantity of wine. A tidesman went on board and ob-
jected to the landing of any wine until entry was made at
the custom house; whereupon the fellow was heaved into
the cabin and kept there while the cargo was expeditiously
removed. On June 10, about a month later, the vessel was
seized by order of the Customs Board. A crowd assembled
and, in great uneasiness, watched the removal of the vessel
to within gun-range of the Romney. Soon they lost their
restraint; and, in the rioting that ensued, the custom-house
officers were assaulted and the houses of several of them
pelted, and other damage done."
^ Bancroft, G., History of United States (Boston, 1876), vol. Iv, p. 75.
"^ The Liberty was condemned by the vice-admiralty court. Bos.
Chron., June 13, 1768; Sears, L., John Hancock (Boston, 1912), pp. iio-
114; Brown, John Hancock His Book, p. 156; Hutchinson, Mass. Bay,
104 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Alleging helplessness, the Customs Board retired to Castle
William and again renewed their demand for troops. This
time they had made good their case ; two regiments arrived
on the scene about four months after the riot, and the
customs commissioners resumed their headquarters at
Boston. From this time forward Boston lost its importance
as a smuggling port; and the great centers of contraband
trade became New York and Philadelphia, with Newport
as a center of minor importance.^
However justfiable the action may have appeared from
an administrative point of view, the British government
made a bad tactical error in sending soldiers to Boston.
The statesmanlike policy of maintaining a standing army
to protect the empire from foreign enemies had degenerated
into an employment of the troops as a military police to
enforce hated laws on the people themselves. The worst
fears of the radicals were vindicated. Their efforts and
those of the merchants were used for the next two years
to procure the removal of the troops. Sporadic outbreaks
of resistance to customs officials continued to occur."
Of greater interest and significance in the controversy
vol. iii, pp. 189-194. For Hancock's letters ordering the wine, vide
Brown, op. cit., pp. 149-150.
After referring to the Liberty affair, John Adams writes in his
diary: "Mr. Hancock was prosecuted upon a great number of libels,
for penalties upon acts of Parliament, amounting to ninety or an hun-
dred thousand pounds sterling. He thought fit to engage me as his
counsel and advocate, and a painful drudgery I had of his cause. There
were few days through the whole winter, when I was not summoned
to attend the Court of Admiralty. . . . this odious cause was sus-
pended at last only by the battle of Lexington, which put an end, for-
ever, to all such prosecutions." Works, vol. ii, pp. 215-216.
^Letters of Thomas Hutchinson; Hosmer, Hutchinson, p. 432; Mass.
Arch., vol. xxvii, p. 317. Vide also infra, chap. vi.
^ E. g., vide 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 26.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 105
with Parliament was the endeavor of the merchants to con-
trol the economic life of their communities and by use of
the boycott to starve Great Britain into a surrender of her
trade restrictions. This movement of a class-conscious
group within the leading provinces constituted the one tre-
mendous fact of the revolutionary movement prior to the
assembling of the First Continental Congress. Striving for
reform, not rebellion, the merchants, nevertheless, through
the effect of their agitation and organized activity upon
the non-mercantile population, found themselves, when
they wished to terminate their propaganda, confronted
with forces too powerful for them to control.
The efforts at combination from 1767 to 1770 suffered
from all the disadvantages which inhered in an attempt to
bind together thirteen disparate communities. The story
of these endeavors is a long and devious one, bringing to
light many instances of discord and harmony, of good
faith and broken pledges, which should go far toward
revealing the secret springs of human action.
The trading communities of New England and New
York took the lead in the movement, Philadelphia hanging
back at first ; and it was not until 1 769 that the co-operation
of the plantation provinces was secured. In the trading
centers of the commercial provinces several stages were
clearly apparent in the development of organized efforts
for boycott against Great Britain : the initial movement | ^*
promoted by town meetings in Xew England for the pur-
pose of effecting a non-consumption of certain imports
from Britain; second, the efforts, futile in their outcome,
for a non-importation league of the merchants of the great
northern seaports ; third, the period in which the merchants
of the great towns entered into non-importation agree-
ments independently of each other; fourth, the renewal,
but without success, of efforts for a non-importation league
To5 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of merchants along more comprehensive Hnes; fifth, the
accession of the minor northern provinces to non-importa-
tion.
The first phase of the movement originated in the fall
of 1767 in New England where evidences of hard times
; had at once become apparent, and had for its primary ob-
ject a reduction of the cost of living/ The efforts took
j the form of agreements not to purchase a stated list of
imported wares, and to lend all encouragement to domestic
manufactures. In contrast to Stamp Act times, these
agreements were not in first instance drawn up by import-
ing merchants, but were adopted by town meetings and
circulated among the people for general signing. It is
clear that the framers of the agreements were not greatly
concerned with the abstract question of the parliamentary
right of taxation, since no town meeting placed more than
one or two dutied articles on the blacklist. Indeed, the
great merchant, John Hancock, ordered a consignment of
dutied glass for his personal use as late as December 17,
1767, apparently without compunction."
The movement received its first impulse from the action
1 References to hard times were plentiful in New England after
the passage of the Townshend Acts. The Newport merchant, George
Rome, wrote to England in December, 1767, that creditors at home
would lose £50,000 in Rhode Island, owing to " deluges of bankrupt-
cies." Bos. Eve. Post, June 28, 1773. " A Friend to the Colony," writ-
ing in the Prov. Gas., Mch. 26, 1768, painted a doleful picture of the
trade situation of Rhode Island. The Mass. Post-Boy of Oct. 26, 1767
spoke of " the present alarming Scarcity of Money and consequent
Stagnation of Trade" and "the almost universally increasing Com-
plaints of Debt & Poverty." It later adopted the popular slogan.
" Save your ]\Ioney and Save your Country." The A'. H. Gaz., in its
issue of Nov. 13, 1767, referred to "this time of great distress and
grievous complaining among tradesmen about the dullness of trade
and uncommon scarcity of money."
2 Brown, John Hancock His Book, p. 151.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 107
of a Boston town meeting on October 28, 1767. A form
of subscription was adopted, which attributed the prevail-
ing commercial depression to the high war taxes, the loss
of trade in late years and the many burdensome trade re-
strictions, the money stringency and the unfavorable
balance of trade with England. The agreement pledged
all who should sign it to the patronage of colonial manu-
factures, especially those of Massachusetts, and to the ob-
servance of frugal regulations about mourning; further,
it bound all subscribers not to purchase, after December
31, 1767, a long list of imported articles/ In view of the
Townshend duties, it was agreed that the colonial manu-
facture of glass and paper should receive particular en-
couragement. Considerable enthusiasm was aroused when
townsmen present exhibited samples of starch, glue and
hair powder, and of snuff equal to Kippen's best, all of
which had been made in Boston. A committee was ap-
pointed to consider the feasibility of reviving the manu-
facture of linen in order tO' employ the poor of the town.
Copies of the Boston agreement were ordered to be sent to
every tow^n in the province and to the chief towns of the
other provinces. At Boston, the subscription rolls filled
rapidly.
^ Bos. Post-Boy, Oct. 26, Nov. 2, 23, 1767; also Boston Town Records,
I758-I76g, pp. 220-225. This list was typical of a great many others,
and was as follows : " Loaf Sugar, Cordage, Anchors, Coaches, Chaises
and Carriages of all Sorts, Horse Furniture, Men and Womens Hatts,
Mens and Womens Apparel ready made. Household Furniture, Gloves,
Mens and Womens Shoes, Sole Leather, Sheathing and Deck Nails,
Gold and Silver and Thread Lace of all Sorts, Gold and Silver But-
tons, Wrought Plate of all Sorts, Diamond, Stone and Paste Ware,
Snuff, Mustard, Clocks and Watches, Silversmiths and Jewellers Ware,
Broad Cloaths that cost above los. per Yard, Muffs Furrs and Tippets,
and all Sorts of Millenary Ware, Starch, Womens and Childrens Stays,
Fire Engines, China Ware, Silk and Cotton Velvets, Gauze, Pewterers
hollow Ware Linseed Oyl, Glue, Lawns, Cambricks, Silks of all Kinds
for Garments, Malt Liquors & Cheese."
I08 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The Boston agreement faithfully reflected the general
opinion of the community in favor of a retrenchment of
expenses. Nevertheless, it did not escape without criticism.
There were those who objected to the boycott of only cer-
tain enumerated articles and declared that all British im-
ports should be included; furthermore, they urged that all
persons who failed to sign the agreement should be boy-
cotted. Others felt that at least all the dutied articles
should have been placed on the blacklist.^ The chief ob-
jection was the failure of the agreement to provide against
the drinking of tea, one of the dutied articles.
Efforts were at once made to remedy this oversight.
The newspapers teemed with articles urging the ladies,
in spite of the silence of the agreement, to abandon the use
of '* the most luxurious and enervating article of Bohea
Tea, in which so large a sum is spent annually by the
American colonists." ^ A clever bit of verse, which went
the rounds of the press of the commercial provinces, con-
cluded with this appeal to the ladies :
Throw aside your Bohea and your Green Hyson Tea,
^\nd all things with a new fashion duty;
Procure a good store of the choice Labradore,
For there'll soon be enough here to suit ye;
These do without fear, and to all you'll appear
Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever;
Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish.
And love you much stronger than ever.^
'' A Countryman " wrote piteously that in recent years he
had found the expenses of living higher than ever before;
1 " Pelopidas " and " A Friend to Britain and her Colonies," quoted
by A^ 7. Journ., Nov. 19, Dec. 3, 1767.
' Bos. Post-Boy, Nov. 16, 1767. Vide quotations from the Boston
press in the N. Y. Journ., Nov. 12, 26, Dec. 10.
^ Bos. Post-Boy, Nov. 16, 1767; N. Y. Gas. & Post-Boy, Nov. 26;.
Pa. Journ., Dec. 3.
COMMERCIAL REFORM lOo
for '' there is my daughters Jemima and Keziah, two hearty
trollups as any in town, forenoon and afternoon eat almost
a peck of toast and butter with their Tea; and they have
learned me and their mother to join thenii." On the auth-
ority of his doctor he held tea responsible for many modern
complaints; '' for you never used to hear so much of such
strange disorders as people have now a days!, tremblings,
appoplexies, consumptions and I don't know what all." ^ ^
Early in December, 1767, a large number of the ladies
agreed that they would use no foreign teas for a year
beginning on the tenth of that month. ^ One tart dissent
was entered to these proceedings. The fair writer expati-
ated on the depravity resulting from " hard drinking," and
then asked " where the Reformation ought to begin, whether
among the Gentlemen at Taverns & Coffee Houses where
they drink scarcely any Thing but Wine and Punch; or
among the Ladies at those useful Boards of Trade called
Tea Tables, where it don't cost half so much tO' entertain
half a dozen Ladies a whole Afternoon, as it does to entertain
one Gentlemen only one Evening at a Tavern." ^
The committee appointed by the town to propose meas-
ures for employing the poor reported in due time in favor
of the establishment of the manufacture of duck (or sail):
cloth, hitherto imported from Russia. This material could
be made from either flax or hemp and thus held an advan-
tage over linen. The committee proposed that the project
be financed by public subscriptioai ; and they were author-
ized by the town to go ahead. Four months later, they had
succeeded in collecting less than one-half of the amount
^ Bos. Gas., Aug. 29, 1768. " Trahlur " in Bos. Post-Boy, Nov. 30,
1767, held the same view of modern ailments.
^ N. Y. Journ., Dec. 14, 1767.
^ Bos. Eve. Post, Dec. 28, 1767; also Netvport Merc, Dec. 14.
no THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
that was necessary for making a beginning. Further efforts
were unproductive; and the project was given up/
Reports filled the newspapers with reference to the in-
crease and perfection of local manufactures. From grind-
stones and precious stones to shoes and shalloons, the gamut
of praise was run. The man who made the paper which the
Boston Gazette was printed on stated that the people of the
province were so intent on saving rags for his mills that he
now received more tons than he formerly did hundreds.^
The theses of the graduates at Harvard were printed " on
_ fine white Demy Paper manufactured at Milton " and the
/ men received their degrees garbed in homespun.^ By 1770
l_ a leading newspaper of the town declared that: " The ex-
traordinary and ver)^ impoverishing custom of wearing
deep jMourning at Funerals is now almost entirely laid
aside in the Province." ^
The Boston plan spread rapidly to other towns of the
province. By the middle of January, 1768, the names of
twenty-four towns had been published, which had voted to
conform to the Boston agreement.^ Salem alone was re-
corded as having refused to co-operate.^ At a town meet-
ing on December 22, 1767, Boston had unanimously voted
instructions to her representatives in the General Court,
recommending bounties for the establishment of domestic
^ Bos. Town Recs. {17 58-1769), pp. 226-227, 230-232, 239-240, 249-250.
"^ Bos. Post-Boy, Jan. 18, 1768; Bos. Gaz., Jan. 25.
^ N. Y. Joiirn., Aug. 4, 1768.
* Bos. Gaz., May 7, 1770.
^ Abington, Ashbuniham, Bolton, Braintree, Brookfield, Charlestown,
Dartmouth, Dedham, Eastham, Grafton, Harwich, HoUeston, Kingston,
Leicester, Lexington, Middleborough, Milton, Mendon, Newton, Ply-
mouth, Roxbury, Sandwich, Spencer, Truro. Bos. Post-Boy, Nov. 23,
Dec. 14, 1767; Bos. Gaz., Jan. 11, Mch. 28, 1768; iV. Y. Journ., Dec. 3,
24, 1767, Jan. 28, 1768; Prov. Gaz., Dec. 26, 1767.
^ Bos. Eve. Post, Dec. 21, 1767.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 1 1 1
manufactures, and suggesting a petition to Parliament for
the repeal of the recent duties/ On February ii, 1768, the
Hous€ of Representatives adopted the famous circular letter \
to the other assemblies on the continent, suggesting concerted i
opposition in the way of constitutional discussions and peti- [
tions. In the latter days of the month, other resolutions ^
were passed, reciting the decay of trade and pledging the
support of all the members against the use of foreign super-
fluities and in favor of Massachusetts manufactures.^ The
House also sent resolutions of protest against the Town-
shend Acts to the king.
Two other New England provinces followed in the wake
of Boston. The letter of the Boston selectmen, announcing
the non-consumption agreement and suggesting like meas- ^
ures, convinced towns outside of Massachusetts of the \vis-
dom of pursuing a similar course. The people of Rhode
Island were in particularly hard straits, due to the dimin-
ished profits of rum production and the falling-off of the
carrying trade. ^ Providence, the second port of Rhode
Island, was the first town to act. At a town meeting on
December 2, 1767, largely attended by merchants and per-
sons of wealth, a more stringent agreement was adopted
than that of Boston. In place of a resolution of mere non- ^'
consumption, it was agreed not to import, after January i,
1768. a list of articles which exceeded the Boston list byX
twelve items. The agreement contained a pledge against 1
the use of any teas, chinaware or spices, a resolution against /
expensive mourning, and one favorable to wool and flax/
production. The compact was to be enforced by a dis-
^ Bos. Post-Boy, Dec. 28. 1767; also Bos. Town Recs. {1758-1769), pp.
227-2^.
^ These resolutions passed by a vote of eighty-one to one. Bos. Gas.,
Feb. 29, 1768; also N. Y. Journ., Mch. 10.
^ E. g., vide " A Friend to this Colony," Prov. Gaz., Nov. 14, 1767.
112 THE COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
countenancing, " in the most effectual but decent and lawful
Manner," of any person who failed to sign or conform to
these regulations. A few weeks later, the subscription rolls
were reported to be filling rapidly/
Tw^o days after the action of Providence, a town meeting
at Newport adopted an agreement of non-consumption,
modeled ver}' closely on that of Boston, save that it was to
become effective one month later. Mourning resolutions
were also adopted.- In the following two months, the
Newport agreement was concurred in by other Rhode Island
towns, including Middletown, Little Compton and Tiverton.^
'' Liber Nov-Anglus," writing in the Connecticut Joiir-
nul, December 25, 1767, was one of the first to urge the
Boston agreement on the people of Connecticut. The
larger towns soon began to take action, Norwich leading
the way. In the subsequent weeks, non-consumption agree-
ments, patterned more or less after the Boston plan, were
adopted by town meetings at New London, \^^indham.
]\Iansfield and New Haven.* In both Rhode Island and
Connecticut, the newspapers gave abundant evidence of the
wide drinking of *' Labradore or Hyperion tea," and of
increased activity in the production of homespun.^ The
Newport Mercury inserted, free of charge, all advertisements
of Rhode Island textiles.
Owing perhaps to the fact that the movement in New
England was engineered by town meetings, it did not spread
^ Prov. Gas., Nov. 14, 28, Dec. 5, 12, 1767; Newport Merc, Dec. 14.
"^Newport Mcr£., Nov. 30, Dec. 7, 1767; Prov. Gas., Dec. 12.
^ Newport Merc., Jan. 25, Feb. 29, 1768.
* Prov. Gas., Dec. 26, 1767; A^ Y. Journ., Feb. 11, Mch. 17, 1768;
Bos. Gas., Feb. 15, Mch. 28; Nezvport Merc, Feb. 15.
^Newport Merc, Dec. 7, 1767, Jan. 11, 18. 25, 1768; Nezu London
Gas., Dec. 18, 1767; A^ H. Gas., i\Ich. 11, 1768; A'. Y. Journ., Jan. 28,
Feb. 18.
COMMERCIAL REFORM I j 3
m its present form to any of the other commercial provinces,
where those potent agencies of local opinion did not exist.
The interest of the people at New York and Philadelphia
was aroused, however. " A Tradesman," writing in the
A/>ze; York Journal^ December 17, 1767, asked pertinently
why the example of Boston had not been followed by New
York. '' Are our Circumstances altered?" he asked. '' Is
Money grown more plenty? Have our Tradesmen full
Employment? Are we more Frugal? Is Grain cheaper?
xA.re our Importations less?" On December 29, 1767, a
public meeting was held, and a committee was appointed to
report on a plan for retrenching expenses and for employing
local tradesmen and the deserving poor. At a meeting on
February 2. 1768, the report of the committee was approved,
and instructions were given for carrying it into execution.^
Contemporary records do not reveal the nature of the New
York plan; but it is probable that it did not include an
agreement of non-consumption. A public meeting, held at
Philadelphia to discuss the action of Boston, did not ven-
ture further than to vote an expression of sympathy for that
city.'
By the beginning of spring, 1768, it was apparent to all
interested that the sumptuary regulations of the New Eng-
land tow^ns would fail to secure relief from the hard times.
The non-mercantile elements of the population were not, as
yet, sufficiently co-ordinated or self-coaiscious to secure
obedience tO' their mandates; and the merchants hesitated
to lend their support until they had assurance that their
^ iV. Y. Journ., Jan. 23, 28, Feb. 4, 1768.
'Dickinson, Writings (Ford), vol. i, pp. 409-410.
' " Few of the trading part have subscribed," wrote Andrew Eliot,
of Boston, with reference to the agreement on Dec. 10, 1767. 4 M. H. S.
114 '^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Without such an understanding, they felt that their own
self-denial would have no other result than to deliver up
their customers to their competitors at New York and
Philadelphia. Meantime, importations continued as before,
though in somewhat lessened degree.
The basis for an appeal for a non-importation plan of a
wider geographical scope was supplied by " The Letters-
^^from a Farmer in Pennsylvania," which were published
serially in the newspapers of the various provinces during
December, 1767, and through the first two months of
1768.^ The author, in language more legalistic than bucolic,
reminded the Americans of the success of the legislative
petitions and non-importation agreements in effect-mg* the
repeal of the Stamp Act, and exhorted them to revive those-
agencies of protest. These articles were read everywhere
I and helped to prepare the public mind for the mercantile
? opposition of the next few years.
The Boston merchants now took active steps to bring
about a non-importation league of the leading ports. The
body of the merchants were moved by the necessity of com-
mercial reform; but individuals were not unmindful of the
fact that a suspension of trade would enable them to clean
out their old stock at monopoly prices.^ At the instigation
of Captain Daniel Malcom, a notorious smuggler, and a few
others, the merchants and traders gathered at the British
Coffee-House on the evening of March i, 1768 " to consult
on proper Measures relative to our Trade under its present
Embarrassments." ^ At this and several subsequent meet-
Co//,?., vol. iv, p. 418. The leaders of the non-consumption movement
consist "chiefly of persons who have no property to lose," declared "A
Trader " in the Bos. Eve. Post, Oct. 12, 1767.
^ The text has been reprinted in Dickinson, Writings (Ford), vol. i,
pp. 305-406.
^Bos. Post-Boy, Sept. 28, 1767.
^ Bos. Gas., Feb. 29, 1768. "This may be said to be the first Move-
COMMERCIAL REFORM ; Hg J
ings, an agreement was drawn up and adopted, which
pledged all merchants who should sign it, to refrain for
one year from importing merchandise from Great Britain
(save such as was absolutely necessary for the fisheries) in
case the merchants at New York and Philadelphia should
take like action. This conditional agreement was circulated
about Boston and was almost universally signed by the
merchants. The merchants of Salem, Marblehead and
Gloucester concurred in the same measure.^
Events now awaited the action of the merchants at New
York and Philadelphia. At the former port several meet-
ings of the merchants and traders were held early in April'
to consider the matter. About the middle of the month,
an agreement was adopted to import no goods shipped f ram*" "
Great Britain after October i, 1768 until the Townshend.
duties should be repealed, provided that Boston should
continue and Philadelphia adopt similar measures by the-,
second Tuesday of June.^
ment of the Merchants against the Acts of Parliament," Governor Ber-
nard told Hillsborough in a letter of Mch. 21, 1768. Bos. Eve. Post,
Aug. 21, 1769.
^ The chief facts concerning this agreement of Boston and the other
towns may be found in : 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, pp. 350-351 ; M. H.
S. Mss., 91 L, p. 2>7, 70-74; Bos. Gas., Feb. 29, Mch. 7, 1768; Bernard
to Hillsborough, Bos. Eve. Post, Aug. 21, 1769. The merchants of
Portsmouth, N. H., refused to accede to this agreement. Brit. Papers
("Sparks Mss."), vol. i, pp. 7-8.
2 .V. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Apr. 18, 1768; A^. Y. Journ., June 28, 1770. The
terms of this agreement had not been formulated without considerable
difference of opinion. Some of the more radical merchants wished to
include the Quartering Act with the Townshend duties as the object
of the non-importation. But this proposal was rejected by the major-
ity. Others insisted that the Boston plan of immediate non-importation
should be followed, for the six months' interval would enable unscru-
pulous men to enlarge their orders and defeat the purpose of the
agreement. This again met with little favor. Article by "G" in ibid.,
Apr. 21, 1768.
lib
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The agreement was signed by every merchant and trader
in New York, save tvv'O or three unimportant ones, w^itnin
less than two days. Another outcome of the conferences
of the merchants was the formation of the New York
Chamber of Commerce, with the avowed purpose of en-
couraging commerce and industry and of procuring better
trade laws/ The Committee of Merchants at Boston were
informed of the New York agreement; and an answer was
returned that, although the Boston merchants considered the
New Yorkers mistaken in not stopping trade immediately,
nevertheless, for the sake of unanimity, they would accept
their proposal.^
In Philadelphia, the movement for co-operation with
Boston and New York was devoid of any real vitality, not-
withstanding that the great proponent of non-importation,
John Dickinson, was an influential citizen of that place.
The merchants as a whole did not yet suffer from the trade
embarrassments, which the sea ports farther north were
experiencing or which they themselves had experienced
during the critical years 1764-1766.^ "A. B." represented
the merchants' point of view in a set of queries in the
Pennsylvania Chronicle, July 25, 1768. The anonymous
author, probably Joseph Galloway, questioned the wisdom
of severing commercial connections with England except in
^ Bos. News-Letter, Jan. 5, 1769; Memorial History of the City of
New York (Wilson, J. G., ed.), vol. iv, p. 516.
^ Letter of N. Y. Merchants' Committee to Philadelphia Committee,
N. Y. Jonrn., June 28, 1770. The Boston meeting to consider the New
York proposal was probably held on May 2. Bos. Gas., May 2, 1768.
^ Dickinson's " Farmer's Letters," in contrast to his pamphlet against
"The Late Regulations" of 1764-1765, made no claim to severe times;
and only a few articles in the newspapers spoke of business stagnation
and currency stringency or advocated local manufactures, thus " Philo-
Patriae " in Pa. Chron., Dec. 2, 1767; "Lover of Pennsylvania" in
ibid., Jan. 4, 11, 1768; "Freeborn American" and "Monitor" in Pa.
Gas., Feb. 9, Apr. 14, 1768.
COMMERCIAL REFORM
117
cases of dire necessity, for he declared that all the wool in
North America would not supply the colonists with hats and
stockings alone. Among his queries were these: Had the
merchants in their letters to England done all they could to
induce the mercantile houses there to agitate for repeal?
If the merchants should take action, ought not non-impor-
tation to be restricted to dutied imports alone? Was the
provincial legislature not the proper body tO' take cognizance
of the situation, and would anarchy not ensue from the
adoptio'n of other measures? Even if it were prudent for
New England merchants to resort to non-importation, might
it not be imprudent for Pennsylvania and other provinces
where the circumstances differed widely? Was it consis-
tent with the rights of mankind for one province to insist
that another should adopt its measures, more especially for
a people who called themselves " Sons of Liberty " ?
" A Chester County Farmer " claimed that the farmers
would be slow to be inveigled into local manufacturing
again after their experience during Stamp Act days, for
the '* ill-timed Resolution," made at the time of the repeal,
to cast aside all homespun, had dealt a staggering blow
to the people who had invested their capital in pastures,
sheep, looms, spinners, etc.'^ The situation was further
complicated by the long-standing local controversy over
the desirability of continuing the proprietary government."
A meeting of the merchants and traders of Philadelphia
was held on March 26, 1768, to act upon the proposal of
the Boston merchants. The Boston letter was not favor-
^ Pa. Gas., June 16, 1768. It should be noted that the pseudonym was
another one of Joseph Galloway's, according to Ford in his edition of
Dickinson's Writings, vol. i, p. 435.
^ " A. L." in Pa. Chron., May 30, 1768. In this controversy Galloway
and Dickinson were the local leaders of the royal and proprietary par-
ties respectively.
Il8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ably received and, after a heated debate, the meeting ad-
journed without taking action.^
On April 25, John Dickinson addressed a merchants'
meeting in order to induce favorable action. He first dwelt
eloquently on the effort of Great Britain to check the in-
dustrial and commercial development of the colonies. He
cited the prohibition of steel furnaces and slitting mills,
the acts against the exportation of hats and woolens, the
requirement of exporting logwood by way of England,
and the heavy restraints on the v/ine trade. He maintained
that the acts of trade compelled the colonists to pay twenty
to forty per cent higher for goods from England than they
could be gotten from other countries. He then reviewed
the Quartering Act and the Townshend Acts and showed
that their tendency was to diminish the control of the people
over their provincial governments, i. e. their " Liberty."
"As Liberty is the great and only Security of Property;
as the Security of Property is the chief Spur to Industry,"
he urged the merchants to join with Boston and New York,
to forego a present advantage, and to stop importation
from Britain until the unconstitutional acts were repealed."^
Remaining unconvinced by these appeals to an alleged
self-interest, the merchants were fiercely assailed from
another angle. Under the signature of "A Freeborn
American," Charles Thomson, himself not disinterested in
his cause as an iron manufacturer and distiller, quoted the
[^ '^ Dickinson, Writings (Ford), vol. i, p. 410; Pci- Gaz., Mch. 31, 1768.
^ Pa. Joiirn., Apr. 28, 1768; also Dickinson, Writings (Ford), vol. i,
pp. 411-417. On the same day as Dickinson's speech, the Pennsylvania
Chronicle contained an able article entitled, "Causes of the American
Discontents before 1768," written by Benjamin Franklin under the
signature " F. and S." This was a trenchant analysis covering many
of the same points, and had been published originally for English con-
sumption in the London Chronicle, Jan. 7, 1768. Franklin, Writings
(Smyth), vol. V, pp. 78-89.
COMMERCIAL REFORM I in
words of the " Pennsylvania Farmer " to the effect that :
" A people is travelling fast to destruction, when indi-
viduals consider their interests as distinct from those of
the public." The merchants were told that the eyes of
their customers, as well as of God, had been on them ex-
pectantly for a long time; and that eagerness for a few
pence or pounds should not deter them from joining
strength with Boston and New York.^ A contributor in
the Pennsylvania Gazette of June 2 urged that the people
of the city take affairs into their own hands and agree
to buy only American manufactures. A few days later,
the merchants received a letter from the Committee of
Merchants at New York, reminding them that, unless they
adopted non-importation by June 14, the merchants of
New York and Boston would be absolved from their agree-
ments.^ The Philadelphia merchants remained unmoved;
the appointed day arrived and passed; and the project of
a non-importation league of the great trading towns
collapsed.
The delinquency of the merchants occasioned a most
virulent attack on their motives by John Dickinson in the
form of a broadside, entitled " A Copy of a Letter from
a Gentleman of Virginia to a Merchant in Philadelphia."
The manuscript copy, which the printer used in getting
up the broadside, was in the handwriting of a third person,
making it evident, so the editor of Dickinson's Writings
thinks, that Dickinson desired to conceal his connection
with it. The writer did not mince words in charging that
the merchants were actuated b}^ self-interest. During the
Stamp Act, when their " Patriotism and private Interests "
^ Pa. Gas., May 12, 1768. Ford, op. cit., vol. i, p. 435, ascribes the
pseudonym to Thomson.
^ Letter of Jmie 6, 1768; A^. Y. Journ., June 28, 1770.
120 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
were intimately connected, the merchants had entered into a
non-importation agreement, he said. But they had been able
to shift the burden of the Townshend taxes on their cus-
tomers, and the abstract question of right did not concern
them. The principle involved they considered of slight
importance as compared with their personal comfort and
profit/
The failure to bring about a non-importation union placed
the Boston merchants in the dilemma of either resigning
themselves nervelessly to business depression or pursuing
a vigorous course independently of the other great ports.
After one or two meetings for discussion, the merchants
chose the latter alternative in an agreement drawn up Au-
gust I, 1768.^ The preamble attributed the commercial
distress to money stringency — a condition growing daily
more severe because of '' the large Sums collected by the
Officers of the Customs for Duties on Goods imported,"
to restrictions on trade laid by the recent acts of Parlia-
ment, to the heavy war taxes, and to bad success in the
cod and whale fisheries. All subscribers of the agreement
pledged themselves to send no further orders for fall goods,
to discontinue all importations from Great Britain for
one year beginning January i, 1769,^ except coal, wool-
cards, duck, cardwire, shot, and four or five articles neces-
sary for carrying on the fisheries, and to cease the im-
portation of tea, glass, paper and painters' colors until the
duties on them should be removed. Several days later,
^ Writings, vol. i, pp. 435-445.
^ Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Nov. 17, 1769; Bos. Gas., July 25, Aug.
I, 8, 15, 1768; Bos. Post-Boy, May 8, 1769; Bos. Eve. Post, May 8, 1769;
Hosmer, Hutchinson, p. 432; Brown, John Hancock His Book, p. 163.
^ At a meeting on Oct. 17, 1769, the merchants removed the one-year
limitation and made the period of operation contingent upon the repeal
of the Townshend duties. Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Nov. 9, 17, 1769.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 12 1
Hutchinson informed an English friend that all the mer-
chants in town, save only sixteen, had signed the agreement.
The example of the Boston merchants stimulated the
other trading towns of the province to emulation. Within
the next few^ months, agreements were signed by the mer- /
chants of Salem, Plymouth, Cape Ann and Nantucket. '^
Marblehead, somewhat belated, joined in October of the
following year.^ New vigor was also injected into the
movement for the non-consumption of tea. The Boston
Gazette reported " from the best Authority " that fifteen
hundred families of Boston had relinquished the use of
tea, and that most of the inhabitants of Charlestown, Lex-
ington, Dedham, Weymouth and Hingham, as well as the
students at Harvard, had done likewise.^ The Boston
town meeting revived its efforts to provide work for the
poor of the town, ** whose Numbers and distresses are
dayly increasing by the loss of its Trade & Commerce."
Rejecting the earlier plan of a popular subscription, the
town, on March 13, 1769, voted a subsidy out of town funds
for a free spinning school, and placed it under charge of
William Molineux. The venture proved sufficiently suc-
cessful for the town meeting, three years later, to vote
thanks to the manager for the faithful performance of his
duties.^ ---
Within a year of the date of the merchants' agreement,
news reached Boston that the ministry was prepared to
yield up all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea ; * !
and the merchants were forced to consider whether it was
^ Essex Gaz., Sept. 6, 1768; N. Y. Journ., June 22, 1769; Mass. Gas.
& News-Letter, Nov. 2, 1769.
' Issues of Oct. 24, 1768; Mch. 27, 1769.
^ Bos. Town Recs. {17 58-1769), pp. 273-277 ', ibid. (i770-i777), P- 73-
* Hillsborough's circular letter of May 13, 1769. iV. Y. Col. Docs.,
vol. viii, pp. 164-165.
i
122 THE COLOXIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
worth while to continue the controversy under the cir-
cumstances. On July 26, 1769, they voted unanimously
that such a partial repeal would by no means relieve the
\ trade situation and was designed to prevent the establish-
ment of colonial manufactures. At this meeting and a
succeeding one of August 11, they materially strengthened
/>-the enforcement feature of the non-importation agree-
/ ment by providing for a boycott of all.;v£5sels and all m.er-
j chants dealing in merchandise proscribed by the agree-
j mehC At the same time, the list of articles which might
Ibe imported v/as somewhat extended.^ They agreed,
further, on October 17. that, if any British merchandise
should be consigned to them on commission, they would
either refuse to receive it or ship it back at the first oppor-
tunity.- A paper was also circulated among the inhabi-
tants of Boston, pledging them to buy no goods imported
contrary to the merchants' agreement, and to support the
merchants in any further efforts to render the measures
effectual."
Meantime, domestic manufacturing entered a new stage :
spinning was taken up by women's circles in churches all
over New England and thus popularized as a social diver-
sion. The atrabilious Peter Oliver declared : " The female
spinners kept on spinning six Days of the \\'eek ; and on the
seventh, the Parsons took their turns and spun out their
pra}'ers and sermons to a long thread of Politics." * From
.^ Mass. Gas., July 31, 1769; Bos. Gas., Aug. 14. In a meeting on
April 27, the merchants had already resolved to buy of no one articles
which were imported, contrary to the agreement, from Great Britain or
an}^ province. Ihid., May i.
^Mass. Gas. & News Letter, Nov. 9, 17, 1769.
'Jlf. H. S. Ms.: 151, I, 15. With a similar purpose in view, the
vendue-masters and brokers signed an agreement not to handle any
goods debarred by the merchants' agreement. Bos. Gas., Aug. 21. 1769.
* Brit. Mus., Egerton Mss., no. 2671 (L. C. Transcripts).
COMMERCIAL REFORM 123
January to September, 1769, twenty-eight spinning bees
were noted in the newspapers ; and this probably represented
a fraction of the entire number held. Many instances of in-
dividual industry were cited ; and the little town of Middle-
town, Mass., established a record of weaving 20,522 yards
of cloth in the year 1769, an average of more than forty
yards for every adult and child in the population.^ Money
prizes were occasionally offered for the making of textiles ;
and efforts were even made to foster silk culture in this way."
All this pother resulted in some progress toward a greater
independence of imported textiles.^
Nevertheless, it is clear that the people were interested
jOnly in tiding over a difficult period and not in laying the
! foundations of permanent industries. It was an exceptional
case when men, like Upham and his associates at Brookfield,
Mass., " erected a Building 50 Feet in Length and two
Stories high, for a Manufactory House," and installed
looms and collected workmen for the weaving of woolens.*
Manufacturing enterprises, which would, in all probability,
collapse the moment trade w^ith England was renewed,
did not appeal as attractive investments to men of capital ;
and as a class they refused to lend support.^ The news-
^ Mass. Gas. & Posf-Boy, Mch. 12, 1770.
2 Bos. Gas., Apr. 10, Oct. 16, 1769; May i, 1770.
^ Note, for example, the articles offered for sale by John Gore, Jr., in
the Boston Gazette, June 12, 1769: "North-American Manufactures,
viz Blue, black, claret coloured and mix'd Cloths, Whilton mix'd Cotton
and Linnen, masqueraded ditto, superfine mix'd double Camblet for
Mens Summer or Womens Winter Ware, half-yard and 3 qr Diaper,
fine 7-8th Nutfield Linnen, fine Hatfield Thread, Mens ribb'd worsted
Hose, white cotton and linnen Tow-cloth, Lynn Shoes, Pole Combs,
Cards, &c. N. B. All sorts of Mens and Womens Ware manufactured
in New England, taken in Exchange for EngHsh Goods."
* Bos. Gaz., Oct. 3, 1768. For a similar enterprise, vide the advertise-
ment of Thomas Mewse in Bos. Post-Boy, Sept. 11, 1769.
^ E. g., vide article by " A. Z." and an advertisement of Charles Mil-
ler in Bos. Gas., Feb. 20, 1769.
124 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
papers of New England and elsewhere made a great fuss;
over local manufactures ; and it was no doubt the propagan-
dist character of such notices that caused many Americans-
to refer to them as '' great puffs " and " new^spaper manu-
Not many days elapsed after the first merchants' agree-
ment of Boston before the New York merchants decided
to take a similar stand. On August 27, 1768, an agreement
was signed by nearly all the merchants and traders, which,
was more stringent in its terms than the Boston agreement.
The subscribers were obligated to countermand all orders
sent to England after August 15 and to cease the importation
of goods shipped from Great Britain after November i,
until the Tow^nshend duties should be repealed.^ Some
concession was made to the criticism that the project w^as
promoted chiefly by smuggling merchants, by providing that
no goods should be imported from Hamburg and Holland,
directly or indirectly, other than had already been ordered,
except tiles and bricks/ Any goods sent over contrar}' to
the agreement were to be stored in a public warehouse until
the Townshend duties were repealed. Finally, it was pro-
vided that any subscribers who violated the agreement
should be deemed " Enemies to their Country."
A few days later, the tradesmen of the city signed an
agreement to withhold patronage from all merchants, who
refused to sign or to obey the merchants' agreement, and
^ Franklin, Writings (Smyth), vol. v, p. 116; "True Patriot" in Bos.
Ez-e. Post, Nov. 23, 1767.
^ N. Y. Gas. & Merc, Mch. 13, 1769; also A'. Y. Journ., Sept. 8, 170S..
Excepted from this general prohibition were : coal, salt, sail cloth,
woolcards, card-wire, grindstones, chalk, lead, tin, sheet-copper and
German steel.
^ This list of exceptions was later extended to include corn-fans, rr.ill-
stones, and all those articles which were permitted to be imported from
Great Britain.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 1 25
frcm any European mercantile houses that imported con-
trary to the agreement/ The importers at Albany con-
curred in the New York merchants' agreement, not, how-
ever, without protest frcm some of the merchants on the
score that the importation of goods for the Indian trade
should be continued.^ Some of the small inland towns re-
solved to buy no British or Scotch goods/ On April 10,
1769, the provincial House of Representatives, on motion
of Philip Livingston, an eminent merchant of the city,
passed a vote of thanks to the merchants of the city and
province for their patriotic conduct in decHning importation
from Great Britain/ Andrew Oliver, of Boston, wrote
from New York on August 12, 1769, that, although his
business there led him to associate with the best citizens,
they universally approved of the non-importation combina-
tion, an attitude which appeared to him " little less than as-
suming a negative on all acts of parliament which they do
not like." '
On September i, 1768, the Committee of Merchants of
New York sent a copy of their agreement to the Philadel-
phia merchants, explaining that it was " widely different "
from the Boston plan, then in operation, in that its bind-
ing force extended to the repeal of the Townshend duties,
-and trusting that they would now feel free to enter into a
-similar compact/ Newspaper contributors at Philadelphia
1 A'". Y. Jonrn., Sept. 15, 1768. This agreement was dated September 5.
^ A^. Y. Gas. & Merc, Aug. 14, 1769.
3 A^ Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy, July 31, 1769.
* A^ Y. Col. Docs., vol. viii, pp. 194-195.
^ N. Y. Journ., July 29, 1773.
^ Ms. in Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The original Boston
.agreement was to last for one year beginning January i, 1769. This
•clause was changed to correspond with the New York provision on
October 17, 1769.
126 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
were again fired by the example of the trading towns to the
north; and 'Tradesman," ''Agricola" and others lent their
persuasive pens to pleas for non-importation and non-con-
sumption regulations.^ Letters from correspondents in
London urged these steps, also.^
The great Quaker merchants dominated the situation;
and they were determined not to resort to trade suspension
until all ordinary means of obtaining redress had been ex-
hausted. In accord with their wishes, the Pennsylvania As-
sembly, on September 22, 1768, sent petitions to the king
and to the houses of Parliament, praying for a repeal of
the Townshend Acts. They based their plea on their claim
to constitutional exemption from parliamentary taxation;
it was not deemed necessary to include arguments against
the economic expediency of the British measures.
The merchants continued to betray no outward signs of
activity. Their apparent callousness provoked a bitter
article in the New York Journal, October 10, 1768, signed
by " A North American," charging a few drygoods mer-
chants of Philadelphia with preventing an agreement there.
Shall a few selfish, dastardly merchants, it was asked, be
permitted to defy the desires of the vast majority of the
people and defeat a great public purpose? Under sting of
this attack, the merchants began to grow restive. An in-
spired contributor, '' Philadelphus," disclosed to the public
the true condition of affairs.^ As soon as they had been
informed of the Boston agreement, the Philadelphia mer-
chants had appointed a committee to canvass a similar pro-
posal. The committee labored in vain to obtain a general
concurrence, and then concentrated its efforts on enlisting
^ Pa. Chron., Oct. 10, Nov. 28, 1768; Pa. Journ., Jan. 26, 1769.
^ Pa. Journ., Jan. 26, Apr. 6, 13, 1769.
3 Pa. Gas., Oct. 20, 1768.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 12/
the support of eight or ten mercantile firms, whose backing
would give prestige to the project. None of these firms
would go further than to recommend a non-importation of
dutied articles and certain luxuries; and this proposal was
rejected by the committee as unsatisfactory. On September
22, the committee had called a general meeting of merchants
and traders; but, as not one-fourth of the drygoods mer-
chants attended, this was deemed conclusive that the ma-
jority disapproved of a general non-importation.
The disposition of the merchants and of conservative-
thinking people generally was to await the result of the
legislative petitions.^ But, within two weeks after " Phila-
delphus " spoke, the merchants were moved to send a
memorial of their own to the merchants and manufacturers
of Great Britain, representing the deplorable situation of
trade. The idea was to prod the British business interests
to bring pressure to bear upon Parliament. The memorial
was sent on November i, 1768; it was conservative in tone.
The British merchants and manufacturers were asked to
solicit a repeal of the statutes imposing the anti-commercial
and unconstitutional Townshend duties and to obtain
" further relief from the other Burthens which the Ameri-
can trade has long laboured under." It was affirmed as
^' a Solemn Truth " that, if the various discouragements
to trade continued unabated, the Americans must, " from
necessity if not from Motives of Interest," establish their
own manufactures and curtail importations. The memorial
further stated that many of the present trade restrictions
had been complained of by the Philadelphia merchants in
their petition of November, 1765. The chief grievances,
other than the Townshend duties, were declared to be : the
^ Letter of Philadelphia Merchants' Committee to London Merchants*
Committee, London Chron., June 10, 1769; also Pa. Mag., vol. xxvii,
pp. 84-87.
128 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
prohibition of paper money as a legal tender; the heavy
duty on ]^*Iadeira wine which barred it as an article of ex-
change with England; the unnecessary trouble and expense
incurred by the roundabout shipment of Portuguese wines
and fruit to America through England; the prohibition
against exporting American bar iron to continental Europe;
and the regulation which classified all sugars imported from
the American continent into England as foreign and thus
deprived the colonists of an advantageous remittance/
The transmission of the memorial w^as followed by a
lull in public interest in the non-importation question, for
the signers of the memorial pledged themselves to adopt
non-importation in the spring, provided their appeal met
with no success.- Early in February, 1769, various fire
companies in the city adopted resolutions to abstain from
buying mutton, as a measure to aid the woolen manufac-
tures ; and a number of citizens asserted their independence
of English fashions by agreeing to w^r leather jackets
thereafter.^ CX
- Events now forced the commercial class to take more
decisive action. Several merchants were planning to send
orders for fall goods by a vessel which departed for England
in the middle of February. As no information had yet
been received of remedial micasures by Parliament, the body
of merchants apprehended that these orders might seriously
complicate the non-importation agreement, to which they
were conditionally pledged for the spring. Meeting to-
gether on February 6, they resolved that all orders, already
sent for fall goods, should be cancelled unless the goods be
^ Pub. Rec. Office: C. O. 5, no. 114 (L. C. Transcripts), pp. 161-169.
^Papers of the Merchants of Philadelphia {"Sparks Mss." vol. Ixii,
sub-vol. vii), pp. 1-2.
^ Pa. Joiirn., Feb. 9, 16, Mch. 16, 1769; Pa. Chron., Feb. 20.
COMMERCIAL REFORM I2q
shipped before April i, and that no further orders be sent'
before March lo, by which time they expected to learn
definitely of the outcome of their memorial/ News soon
arrived that the hopes of the petitioners had been misplaced.
The London merchants professed to be willing to use their
influence for repeal; but, on the advice of Burke and other
of their friends in Parliament, they had been convinced that
it v/as an unpropitious time to press the matter. They re-
gretfully informed the Philadelphia merchants of their
determination.^
March the tenth arrived and the merchants took the final
step. Justifying their action as a consequence of heavy ^
debts and the ruinous effects of the revenue acts, and as "
the only means of stimulating their British creditors to
activity for repeal, they adopted an agreement to import no' — "']
^oods shipped after April i from Great Britain, until the ;
Townshend duties should be repealed, except twenty-two /
articles useful for local manufacturing, ship-ballast and < t
medicinal and educational purposes. With the apparent--'^
purpose of denying special advantages to smugglers, these
conditions were extended to include imports from the rest
of Europe, except linens and provisions directly from Ire-
land. The subscribers of the agreement were pledged to
buy no goods imported contrary to the agreement, and to
discountenance " by all lawful and prudent measures " any
person who defied the agreement. The agreement was to
continue until the repeal of the Townshend duties or until
^ Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 1-2. For a countermanding order
of Stephen Collins under this agreement, mde his Letter-Book 1760-1773
(L. C. Mss.) under date of February 6.
"^Col. Sac. Mass. Pubs., vol. xiii, pp. 355-356; Papers of Phila. Mer-
chants, p. 7. For an explanation of their failure to urge the petition
in the subsequent m.onths, vide Franklin Papers, Misc. (L. C. Mss.),
vol. i, no. 71 ; and Pa. Joiirn., May 4, 1769.
130 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a general meeting of the subscribers should determine other-
wise.^ The paper was circulated among the merchants
and traders of the city and " a very great majority " signed
in the course of the next few weeks. At a later meeting,
it was determined that goods arriving at Philadelphia con-
:rary to the agreement should not be stored but be sent back.
The principle of the boycott was further extended : any
person violating the word or spirit of the agreement should
be stigmatized " an Enemy of the Liberties of America/'
and it was held proper that his name should be published
in the newspapers.^
No conspicuous activity in local manufacturing was dis-
played until the high price of imported goods, produced by
the non-importation regulation, caused people to turn their
energies in that direction.^ Even then their activity was
not comparable with that of the provinces farther north. A
report to the American Philosophical Society showed that,
in the little town of Lancaster, fifty looms and seven hundred
spinning-wheels were in constant use. In the twelvemonth
beginning May i, 1769, the net output was close to thirty-
five thousand yards.* An effort was made to foster the
production of domestic silks. In 1769 sixty-four families
raised silkworms, many of them raising from ten to twenty
thousand: but little benefit came of the venture because of
the inexpertness of the people in reeling the silk. To over-
come this obstacle, a number of citizens subscribed £250, in
March. 1770, for the erection of a filature. Some of the
^Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 2-5, 19-21. For orders for all kinds
of goods, to be shipped when the revenue acts were repealed, vide
Stephen Collins's Letter-Book 1760-177 3, under the dates Mch. 12, 15,
Sept. 23, Oct. 14, Nov. 6, 25, Dec. 11, 12, 1769; Apr. 7, 1770.
' August 2, 1769. Pa. Gas., Aug. 3, 1769.
' Pa. Chrofi., July 24, 1769. Article by "A Merchant."
* Pa. Gaz., June 14, 1770; also Gentleman's Magazine (1770), p. 348.
COMMERCIAL REFORM I31
leading merchants of the city were chosen on the board of
managers; and by November, 1771, one hundred and fifty-
five pounds of raw silk had been exported to England. The
Society for the Promotion of Silk Culture offered annual
premiums for silk production until the outbreak of the war/
By the spring of 1769, the three great ports had finally Ij'-V
united in non-importation measures against the mother '
country, Philadelphia acting tardily about six months later
than the merchants of Boston and New York. This con-
summation soon prompted the progressive merchants of
Boston to urge on their brethren more radical measures for
trade redemption. The Townshend revenue acts, against
which all the existing agreements were directed, represented
only one source of mercantile distress. The wine duties
and the revised duty on molasses drew from them con-
siderably more cash than the imposts of 1767," and violated
as seriously the new American notion of the unconstitu-
tional character of revenue tariffs. The New Englanders
realized that the mere repeal of the Townshend duties would
not restore their prosperity; and, despite the fact that they
had failed to denominate the earlier taxes as unconstitutional
. in their petition of January, 1767, they now decided to take
I an advanced stand in conformity with the recent develop-
'' ments in colonial theory. In a letter of September 2, 1769,
they pressed the merchants of Philadelphia to extend their
agreement to comprehend the repeal of all revenue acts,
^ Pa. Gas., Mch. 15, 22, 1770, and passim to 1775; Franklin Bicenten-
nial Celebration, vol. ii, p. 126; Pa. Mag., vol. xxvi, pp. 304-305.
- For all the colonies, the Townshend duties on tea, etc., amounted to
£17,912 in the period from September 8, 1767 to January 3, 1770. In
the same length of time, the wine duties (6 George II and 4 George
III) amounted to £20,130, and the molasses duty (6 George III) to
£22,652. Channing, History of U. S., vol. iii, p. 90 n.
..^^
lyj THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
including the molasses and wine duties; and they revised
their own agreement on October 17 to incorporate the new
demands/ A letter of October 25 carried the news of the
new agreement to Philadelphia, with an urgent plea for
similar action there. It was probably not a coincidence that
John Hancock was in Philadelphia at this time for the ex-
press purpose of visiting the author of the " Farmer's Let-
ters," who was also the great advocate of non-importation
in that city.' If his visit had a political motive, his mission
was a failure.
In reply to the Boston letters, the Committee of T^Ierchants
at Philadelphia admitted " that the acts of the 4th and 6th
George 3rd, being expressly for the purpose of raising a
revenue and containing many grievous and unreasonable
burdens upon trade, are ... as exceptionable as " the
Townshend duties ; and they agreed " that the design of the
Merchants through the continent was not only to procure a
repeal of any Single Act but to give weight to the petitions
... of their representatives in Assembly met against the
Parliament's claim to tax the Colonies and to prevent apy
future attempts of like Nature, that a precedent admitted
will operate against us, and that an acquiescence under the
acts of the 4th and 6th, even though that of the 7th of
George 3d should be repealed, will be establishing a pre-
cedent." Nevertheless, they declared that, as this con-
sideration " has unfortunately been so long neglected, our
Merchants are extremely averse to making it now an object
of their non-importation agreement." They refused,
furthermore, to prohibit all incoming trade from Great
Britain, for the reason that this restriction would simply
^ Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Nov. 9, 17, 1769. This revised agree-
ment was widely signed, only ten or twelve importers declining.
2 Letter of William Palfrey; M. H. S. Procs., vol. 47, pp. 211-212.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 1 33
divert the trade to laxer ports. They did promise, how-
ever, that if Parhament failed to remove all the revenue
acts, they would then be ready to unite with the other
colonies *' in any measure that may be thought prudent and
practicable for obtaining a full redress of all grievances." ^
The Boston proposal met with the same sort of treatment
at the hands of the New York merchants; ^ and, at a meet-
ing on December 4, the Boston merchants reluctantly yielded
up their project upon a plea of the necessity for uniformity
among the chief trading towns. ^
The tangible outcome of this episode was the publication,
in the same month, by the merchants of Boston, of a pamph-
let, entitled Observations on several Acts of Parliament
passed in the 4th, 6th and yth years of his present Majesty's-
Reign; and also on the Conduct of the Oncers of the Ctis-
toms since those Acts were passed, and the Board of Com-
missioners appointed to reside in America^ This pamphlet^
was the clearest and strongest statement ever formulated of
the position of the American merchant class, particularly
that of New England. In the compass of some thirty pages
^ These quotations are from letters of Sept. 21 and Nov, 11, 1769.
Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 27-28, 37-42. In their next letter to
the London Committee of Merchants, the Philadelphia Committee
wrote : Though the merchants have confined their agreements to the
repeal of the Townshend duties, " yet nothing less than a Repeal of alt
the Revenue Acts and putting Things on the same Footing they were
before the late Innovations, can or will satisfy the Minds of the
People." London Chron., Mch. 3, 1770; also Pa. Gas., May 10.
^ Colden, Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 193.
^ Mass. Arch., vol. xxvi, pp. 411, 413; Am. Hist. Rez'., vol. viii, pp.
313-314.
* Mss. iy4S-iyyo (in M. H. S.), p. 15, contain the letter of the Com-
mittee of Merchants to Dennys de Berdt, explaining the inception of
the pamphlet. The committee, which was appointed to draft the
pamphlet, was composed of Arnold Welles, Henderson Inches, William
Dennie, WiHiam Molineux and Isaac Smith. Mass. Gas., July 31, 1769,.
134 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a well-reasoned argument, buttressed with evidence, was pre-
sented for a restoration of American trade to the footing it '
had enjoyed before the passage of the old Molasses Act of
1733. This step, it was asserted, would unite Great Britain
and the colonies on a lasting foundation and eliminate all
clandestine trade. The repeal of the recent Townshend
duties would not suffice; for the colonies must again enjoy
the free importation of molasses, sugars and Madeira wine,
and must obtain the right of a free and direct importation
of fruit, wine and oil from Spain and Portugal. The acts
of Parliament prior to 1764 had been intended merely as
regulations of trade and, in one instance, a duty had been
placed on foreign molasses in order to encourage the British
West Indies; but the present statute could not be so con-
strued, for it imposed duties en all molasses and expressly
for the purpose of raising a revenue. According to the
figures cited in the pamphlet, the various restraints on
trade with the foreign West Indies, Africa, Madeira and
Southern Europe had rendered unprofitable the employment
of four hundred vessels in the fisheries, and of one hun-
dred and eighty vessels in the lumber and provisions trade
to the West Indies, not to mention the decrease in the
coasting-trade and other channels of commerce. The ship-
building industry had also been seriously affected, only one
hundred vessels being built annually instead of three hun-
dred as before the late restrictions on trade. In closing,
a representation was made of the embarrassments to com-
merce, due to the unlimited amount of red tape required
for trading voyages, and to the excessive power, officious-
ness and unlawful conduct of the customs officers and the
Customs Board.
The non-importation movement ran a different course in
the plantation provinces from that in the commercial prov-
COMMERCIAL REFORM 135
inces, due to the characteristic methods of doing business
in each section. The marketing of the staples of the South
was largely in the hands of English and Scotch merchants
and factors, whose business had been very little affected by
the parliamentary duties of 1766 and 1767. The planters
constituted the chief discontented class, because of their
losing struggle to pay the debts they owed to their mercan-
tile creditors. Animated by a desire to curtail living ex-/
penses and to strike at their creditors, the planters assumed
the initiative in promoting non-importation associations, /
while the southern trading class stood aloof or were ac-
tively hostile. These circumstances caused the non-impor-
tation movement to assume many of the characteristics of
the non-consumption movement that had been promoted by
New England town meetings in late 1767 and early 1768.
As one contemporary said, the associations of the planta-
tion provinces, besides being less restrictive than the north-
ern agreements, " excluded a great number of articles which
are mere luxuries, confin'd their importations from Britain
to the necessaries of life, and thereby answered the purpose
of a sumptuary law." ^
George Washington, of Virginia, spoke of the peculiari-
ties of the local trading situation when he transmitted a copy
of the Philadelphia non-importation agreement, in a letter
of April 5, 1769, to his neighbor, George Mason. He ex-
pressed approval of a non-importation plan for Virginia;
but he pointed out that it could be made successful only by
going over the heads of the factors and inducing the people
throughout the province to buy no imported articles, except
certain enumerated ones. He proposed the meeting of the
Assembly in Alay as the best time for launching the project
with any prospect of uniform action by the several counties.^
^Bos. Gaz., Jan. 29, 1770; also Pa. Journ., Feb. 15.
^ Writings (Ford), vol. ii, pp. 263-267.
fi
136
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 17 63-177 6
Mason agreed cordially with Washington's vicAvs, and yet
made it clear that no plan could be enforced in the tobacco
provinces unless it should be considerably more liberal in the
number of importations permitted. Mason seemed to be
aware of the lack of support for the measure in a well-
fertilized public opinion, as in the North ; and, like a good
propagandist, he urged the necessity of publishing " some-
thing preparatory to it in our gazettes, to warn the people
of the impending danger and to induce them the more
readily and cheerfully to concur in the proper measures to
avert it." He proposed also that the association should
provide for the non-exportation of tobacco/
The House of Burgesses convened at Williamsburg in
May. Washington found ready backing for a non-importa-
tion measure among such men as Peyton Randolph, Richard
Bland, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and Thomas
Jefferson. But the house proceeded first to declare, in a set
of resolutions, its official opinion that the sole right of
taxing Virginians lay with that body and to state its ob-
jections to certain recent acts of the British administration;
whereupon Governor Botetourt peremptorily dissolved the
body. The members, though now divested of their legal
character, met at a private house in town and, electing
Peyton Randolph their chairman, promulgated a plan of
non-importation.^
The association bore the date May 18, 1769. In the pre-
1 Washington, Writings (Ford), pp. 267-268 n.
"^Pa. Journ., June i, 1769; also S. C. Gaz., July 20. This plan of
association was presented by Washington ; and in its essentials fol-
lowed a draft, made several weeks before, by George Mason. One pro-
posal of Mason's was rejected, however, viz., if the other measures
proved ineffectual, a non-exportation of tobacco and naval supplies
should go into effect. Washington, Writings (Ford), vol. ii, pp. 268-
269 n. ; Rowland, K. M., Life of George Mason (New York, 1892), vol.,
h pp. 392-393.
COMMERCIAL REFORM i^y
amble, it was declared that the debt for British merchandise
was very great and that the means of paying were becoming
more and more precarious because of the restrictive legis-
lation of Parliament, particularly the Townshend Acta. ^
The subscribers pledged themselves never thereafter to im-
port any goods, which were then or should thereafter be
subject to a revenue duty, save paper not exceeding eight j
shillings per ream. They agreed, further, not to import ^~
thereafter a long list of luxuries and fineries from Great
Britain or any part of Europe, this abstention to continue
while the duties continued or until a general meeting of
subscribers decided otherwise/ In all cases, orders already
sent for goods might be received ; and the subscribers were
not restricted from buying such goods in local trade until
September i. They further agreed to buy no slaves im-
ported after November i. There were also resolutions to
encourage frugality and to prevent the killing of lambs.
Copies of the association were carried back to the coun-
ties by the gentlemen who attended the Williamsburg meet-
ing. One month later Washington was able to report from
^ Certain Irish wares imported from Ireland were excluded. This
blacklist was typical of similar lists in other of the plantation provinces
and is here given in full : '* Spirits, Wines, Cyder, Perry, Beer, Ale,
Malt, Barley, Pease, Beef, Pork, Fish, Butter, Cheese, Tallow, Candles,
Oil, Fruit, Sugar, Pickles, Confectionary, Pewter, Hoes, Axes, Watches,
Clocks, Tables, Chairs, Looking Glasses, Carriages, Joiners and Cab-
inet Work of all Sorts, Upholstery of all Sorts, Trinkets and Jewellery,
Plate and Gold, and Silversmith's Work of all Sorts, Ribbons and
Millinery of all Sorts, Lace of all Sorts; India Goods of all Sorts, ex-
cept Spices ; Silks of all Sorts except Sewing Silk ; Cambrick, Lawn,
Muslin; Gauze except Boulting Cloths; CalHco or Cotton Stuffs of
more then 2s. per Yard; Linens of more than 2s. per Yard; Woollens,
Worsted Stuffs of all Sorts of more than is. 6d. per Yard; Broad
Cloths of all Kinds at more than 8s. per Yard; Narrow Cloths of all
Kinds at more than 3s. per Yard; Hats; Stockings (Plaid and Irish
Hose excepted) ; Shoes and Boots, Saddles and all Manufactures of
Leather and Skins of all Kinds."
138 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Fairfax county that " the association in this and in the two
neighboring counties of Prince WilHam and Loudoun is
compleat, or near it." ^ In Dinwiddie county nearly one
thousand people signed. Its reception generally was favor-
able, the merchants being the only class to hold aloof .^ As
we shall see, after a year's experience under the association
it was found necessary to adopt a new plan, which the mer-
chants evinced a willingness to support.
Meantime, a similar movement had been going forward
in Maryland. In the middle of March, 1769, the Mer-
chants' Committee of Philadelphia had transmitted their
asfreement to the merchants of Baltimore and Chester with
the admonition that, " though the i^Ierchants and traders
here have entered into this agreement without any condition,
yet many will be very uneasy under it if you do not come
into the Like." ^ The result was that, on March 30, the
merchants of Baltimore adopted an agreement.
Outside of this chief commercial center, there was total
apathy among the traders and factors. ''Atticus " came
forward in the Maryland Gazette, May 11, 1769, with a plea
to the inhabitants of the province not to wait on the factors
to act — for they were powerless because of their English
connections — but to take measures for themselves against
the use of British fineries. The principal inhabitants of
Annapolis and Anne Arundel county led the way on May
23 with an association for a limited importation. Soon
similar associations had been entered into by most of the
MVashington, Writings (Ford), vol. ii, p. 269 n.
^A^ Y. Jonrn., Aug. 10, 1769; S. C. Gaz., Sept. 12.
' Papers of PJiila. Merchants, pp. 5-6. A letter of April 17 from
Bristol, England, to Philadelphia affirmed : " Some People here are
evading the Resolution of your Merchants. Large Quantities of Goods
now are shipping for Maryland which are intended for your Place and
New York." A'. Y. Journ., June 29, 1769.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 1 39
counties of the province/ The promoters of the original
AnnapoHs association now invited representatives from each
county to meet at AnnapoHs and draw up a uniform associa-
tion for the whole province. '' Merchants, Traders, Free-
holders, Mechanics and other Inhabitants " were represented
at the meeting on June 22.
The association adopted closely resembled the Virginia
agreement in its preamble of justification, its pledges against
lamb consumption, and its resolutions against the importa-
tion of dutied articles and of foreign luxuries, save that in
the latter case the Maryland list was more than twice as
long. In providing machinery of enforcement, the Mary-
land association went beyond any plan yet formulated in any
province. The subscribers, whether merchants, tradesmen
or manufacturers, agreed not to take advantage of the pros-
pective scarcity of goods but to maintain the prices usual,
during the last three years. Business relations were to be
severed with any persons acting contrary to the spirit of
the association; they were to be considered '' Enemies to
the Liberties of America " and treated '' on all Occasions
with the Contempt they deserve." The subscribers further
pledged themselves not to purchase from any other province
the articles that were debarred ¥yrthe agreement. The
association was" to cohtifiue in force until the Townshend
revenue act was repealed or until a general meeting of county
representatives should decide otherwise. Twelve copies of
the paper were sent to each county to be signed by the
people.-
^ Md. Hist. Mag., vol. iii, p. 144.
^ Ibid., pp. 144-149; also Md. Gas., June 29, 1769. Again on December
21, a numerous meeting assembled at Annapolis, including many mem-
bers of the county committees, and resolved unanimously that the asso-
ciation be " most strictly adhered to and preserved inviolate." Ibid.,
Dec. 21, 1769; also Pa. Gas., Jan. 4, 1770.
J
I^o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The mercantile influence in South CaroHna politics was
stronger than in any of the other plantation provinces, al-
though, of course, it was very different in character from
that in the commercial provinces. Charleston w^as the most
important trading town of the South ; and its citizens domin-
ated the politics of the province. The movement for non-
importation was supported by the workingmen of Charles-
ton, who, for some years, had been developing a degree of
group consciousness, and by the planters of the province
In the election of the new lower house of the Assembly in
October, 1768, the mechanics of the two town parishes ven-
tured to make up a slate and succeeded in securing the
election of three of their men, or one-half of their ticket.^
In the same election, the planting representation in the
legislature was vastly increased, because of the admission
of four thousand freeholders to the electorate through the
establishment of parish boundaries in the interior.'
The chief leader of the forces for non-importation was
Christopher Gadsden, a native-born merchant who had
learned business methods in the commercial provinces and
who possessed large planting interests, also. His indomit-
able spirit was illustrated by his conduct upon the death of
his wife in January, 1769, when he appeared in a suit of
blue homespun at the funeral rather than wear imported
black cloth. ^ His chief lieutenant among the mechanic
class was Peter Timothy, printer of the South Carolina
Gazette and correspondent of the Massachusetts Adamses.
The members of the new Assembly lent moral support to
the cause. The standing order for the wearing of wigs
1 S. C. Gas., Oct. 3, 10, 1768.
^ Brit. Papers ("Sparks MssJ'), vol. ii, pp. I93-I95-
■' " The whole expense of her funeral, of the manufacture of England,
did not amount to m.ore than 3I. los. our currency." Bos. News-Letter,
Mch. 9, 1769.
COMMERCIAL REFORM
141
and stockings was altered so as to permit members to
transact committee business in caps and long trousers. If
the Assembly had occasion to send a committee to greet a
newly-arrived governor, wrote a shocked contemporary,
" he would probably from their dress take them for so
many unhappy persons ready for execution who had come
to petition him for a pardon." ^
In September, 1768, a letter arrived from the Boston
Committee of Merchants, urging the Charleston merchants
to adopt regulations of non-importation. The letter was
handed about among several of the principal merchants but
received no favor ; and the body of merchants were not even
called together to confer upon it.^ Governor Bull wrote
home approvingly of this "silent neglect;" but a great
many people began to feel differently, especially when re-
ports of the widespread adoption of agreements in the
North continued to pour in and hope of relief from Parlia-
ment grew smaller. The South Carolina Gazette of Febru-
ary 2, 1769 published a form of agreement for the non-
consumption of imports, which all people were advised to
adopt unless news of the repeal of the Townshend duties
should come speedily. A few days later, "A Planter "
wrote in favor of an association to buy no newly-imported
slaves until American rights should be restored.^ In the
latter part of May, another " Planter " urged his brethren
to foster local manufacturing and to patronize non-importers
only. '' You cannot expect the merchants will begin this
matter themselves," he wrote. ". . . Oblige them to it, by
declaring you will deal with none that do import extra
articles," and, by this method, you will bring about " a
^ S. C. Gas., Nov. 2, 1769.
"^ S.C. & Am. Gen. Gas., July 10, 1769; Brit. Papers {"Sparks Mss"),
vol. ii, p. 195.
^ S. C. Gas. &• Country Journ., Feb. 7, 1769.
1^2 ^^^^ COLOXIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
happy Coalition of our Interest and that of ^\Ierchants into-
one immediate self-interest:' ^ These various pleas brought;
no satisfactory results.^
Evidently the time had arrived to force the issue on the
merchants. Gadsden opened the hostilities on June 22 by
writing an article, under the pseudonym, '* Pro Grege et
Rege," addressed to the " Planters, ]Mechanicks and Free-
holders ... no ways concerned in the importation of
British manufactures." ^ The importers of European goods
were stigmatized as strangers in the province, many of
them of a very few years' residence. To listen to any
more assurances that the revenue acts would be repealed if
the people remained quiet, was declared to be folly. Had
the people had enough real friends among the merchants to
obtain even one meeting to consult what they could do to
aid the general good, though every newspaper informed
them of the generous actions of the merchants to the north-
ward? On the contrary, had not the people been "af-
fronted with numberless zceak and groundless reasons . . .
in order to frighten and deter " them from acting as they
ought ? Could it be prudent to entrust the public good to a
body ''whose private interest is glaringly against us?"
Let the freeholders and fixed settlers resolve upon non-
consumption, and the merchants would immediately decide
not to import. A suggested form of agreement was ap-
pended to the article.
^ S. C. Gaz., June i, 1769.
' It was claimed that a number of people in different parts of the
province did come into the association, proposed on February 2, b}' a
show of hands; but the evidence of this is not very satisfactory. Ibid.,
June 8, 1769.
^ S. C. Gac. June 22, 1769. Rephes were made by "The Merchants
of Charles-Town," S. C. & Am. Gen. Gaz., July 10, and by " Pro
Libertate et Lege," 5^. C. Gaz., July 13; but Gadsden's views were not
effectively refuted.
COMMERCIAL REFORM I^^
The following week, the South Carolina Gazette pub-
lished a non-importation agreement, which was being pushed
by Gadsden and Peter Timothy and which had already been
subscribed by a number of people, including twenty-five
members of the Assembly. This form was recommended
as one suitable for workingmen and planters; and it was
announced that the present measure would supersede any
earlier forms that might have been accepted. Necessity for
this measure was attributed to the heavy and unconstitu-
tional burden of the Townshend revenue acts and the failure
of petitions to secure relief. The agreement was to be oper-
ative until the acts were repealed. By its provisions, the
subscribers agreed to stop all importation from Great
Britain thereafter, and to countermand all orders, wherever
possible, except for negro cloth, osnaburgs and duffel
blankets, workmen's tools, nails, woolcards, cardwire, can-
vas, ammunition, books, salt and coal. They agreed that
prices should not advance; and that they would promote
American manufactures and discard the use of mourning.
The inhabitants were given notice to sign the subscription
within one month, on pain of being boycotted.^
The mechanics of Charleston met under Liberty Tree on
July 3 and 4 to act upon the agreement; and after inserting
two new articles, the amended agreement was quickly signed
by two hundred and thirty people. The added parts pro-
vided that no goods, usually imported from Britain, should
be purchased from transient traders ; and that no negroes
should be bought who were brought into the province after
January i, 1770. A few days later, some of the mechanics
began to make a list of the merchants who signed the agree-
ment with the avowed purpose of trading only with such.^
The great body of the merchants would have nothing
* 5". C. Gac, June 20. 1769. ^ ^^^'c?., July 6, 13. 1769.
144 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
to do with these proceedings, objecting' bitterly to the
non-representative character of the meetings which had
formed the agreement, and denouncing the measure as
" an unjust attempt of one part of the community ... to
throw a burthen on the rest, more grievous than ever was
conceived by the most arbitrary minister of the most des-
potic King." They charged that the agreement was so
framed as to enable the planters and mechanics to import
the articles that they deemed indispensable, while the mer-
chants received no special favors ; and thc}^ considered that
their interests were assailed by the mourning agreement,
since their stores were well stocked with mourning ma-
terials.^ The merchants held their first meeting to con-
sider the situation on Friday afternoon, June 30, and, after
appointing a committee to draw up a report, adjourned to
July 7, when final action was taken. Nearly eighty mer-
chants were present at the adjourned meeting. The non-
importation regulations, which the meeting adopted, were
much less rigorous than those of the other inhabitants.
The agreement was limited to January i, 1771, unless the
revenue acts should be repealed sooner; and a larger and
different list of articles was permitted to be imported. All
the other terms of the rival agreement were taken over by
the merchants, except the pledges for prom.oting local
manufacturing and for casting aside mourning apparel. In
addition, it was specified that, because of the heavy duty,
no wine should be imported or marketed during the year
1770.'
Affairs were now in a bad state of confusion. Two
forms of agreement were being actively circulated for signa-
tures ; and the feeling of animosity between the classes w^as
^"The Merchants of Charles-Town/' S. C. & Am, Gen. Gas., July
13, 1769.
2 6^. C. Gas., July 6, 13, 1769.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 14^
growing each day more acute, "A Mechanic " demanded
of the pubHc how the planters and mechanics could be ex-
pected to subscribe to an agreement which did not contain
one syllable in favor of American manufactures or any
provision against the use of mourning.^ The intolerable
situation was brought to an end by overtures from the
merchants for a joint committee to draft a uniform agree-
ment containing the essentials of the two forms. The
joint committee completed its work on Wednesday, July 19.
On the following day, the merchants unanimously accepted
the plan that had been agreed upon, and appointed a com-
mittee of thirteen to act as an executive body for doing
** whatever might be farther necessary to give Force to the
new Association." ^ On Saturday, the twenty-second, a
great meeting was held, under Liberty Tree, of the me-
chanics and such planters as happened to be in town.
Christopher Gadsden read the new form, paragraph by
paragraph, so that objections might be offered, but the whole
was immediately voted satisfactory.^ The association
was quickly signed by two hundred and sixty-eight people,
headed by the members of the House of Representatives
who were in town. A committee of thirteen planters and
of as many mechanics was appointed to serve with the
merchants' committee as one General Committee of thirt}^-
nine, for the purpose of supervising the enforcement of
the association.* By the following Thursday, one hundred
and forty-two merchants had signed the new resolutions.
^ S. C. Gas., July 13, 1769.
^ Ihid., July 27, 1769; also Bos. News-Letter, Aug. 17.
'6". C. Gas., July 27, 1769; Bos. Gas., Aug. 14, The names of the
members of the General Committee may be found in MoCrady, S. C.
under Royal Govt., p. 651 n.
* Among the planters named were some who had mercantile interests
as well. Before the vote was taken, Gadsden withdrew his own name,
and induced the meeting to strike out of the planters' list all others
who were similarly situated.
1^6
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
.yf
The new association represented a victory for the non-
j mercantile classes, in most respects, although it contained
most of the provisions of both earlier associations. In one
.respect, it was the most comprehensive agreement on the
/ -continent, for it was to remain in operation until the various
regulatory acts of Parliament, including the establishment
of the Customs Board and the extension of vice-admiralty
jurisdiction, were repealed. The subscribers contracted to
import no European or East Indian goods from Great
Britain or elsewhere, except such orders as it was too late
to countermand and excluding a list of articles which com-
prehended all those of the earlier agreements. They en-
gaged to maintain the usual prices; to foster provincial
r^^ manufactures ; to dispense with mourning apparel ; to trade
with no transient vessels for any goods after November i,
save salt and coal; to import no negroes from Africa dur-
ing the year 1770 nor to import any wine after January i,
1 770. Finally a boycott was declared a^ainst^eyery resident
of the province, who failed to sign within one month ; and
any subscriber who became delinquent was to be treated with
" the utmost' contempt." Later in the year, the General
t Committee amended the association so as to include a non-
exportation of tanned leather until the revenue acts w^ere
repealed, since saddlery and shoes were no longer to be im-
ported from abroad.^
Effects of the mourning regulation wxre soon manifest;
and by October the use of scarves and gloves at funerals
was totally discarded at Charleston.^ The practice of the
wealthier families of educating their sons in Great Britain
was, in a number of cases, given up, " now that the Mother
Country seems unfriendly to us." Thus, in August, 1769,
^ S. C. Gaz.. Oct. 26, i7(
""Ibid., Oct. 5, 1769.
COMMERCIAL REFORM 1 47
seven youths sailed on the same vessel to Philadelphia to
enter the college there/ Some sporadic interest was shown
in manufacturing.
The situation in Georgia revealed the same discord be-
tween the merchants and the other inhabitants that existed
elsewhere in the plantation provinces. Spurred on by a
letter from the General Committee of South Carolina, a
radical group, known as the " Amicable Society," met at
Liberty Hall in Savannah, and issued a call for a meeting
of all inhabitants on Tuesday, September 12, to consider
methods of obtaining relief from the Townshend Acts,,
Notwithstanding the claim that " Merchants, Planters,
Tradesmen and others " attended the public gathering, it is
evident that the merchants, if any were present, formed an
ineffective minority. A committee was appointed to submit,
a form of agreement to the inhabitants a week later. ^
The merchants of Savannah now determined to head ofiF
the popular movement ; and three days before the appointed
time they assembled at a private house and adopted an agree-
ment against the importation of dutied articles alone. In
the preamble, the recent acts of Parliament were declared
unconstitutional; and the particular grievance of Georgia
was asserted to be the requirement that the duties should
be paid in specie, this in face of the fact that the stoppage
of the Spanish trade, some years before, had plugged the
source of specie supply.^
Their efforts proved unavailing. The mass meeting of
September 19 adopted a comprehensive agreement, pat-
terned after that of South Carolina of July 20 and 22. The
terms of the agreement were to expire with the repeal of the
1 vS". C. Gaz., Aug. 24, 1769.
2 Ga. Gaz., Sept. 6, 13, 1769.
^ Ibid., Sept. 20, 1769; also White, Ga. Hist. Colls., p. 42.
148
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Townshend duties. The subscribers engaged to import no
European or East Indian goods, save thirty-seven varieties
and such former orders as it was too late to countermand.
They pledged themselves to sell goods at the customary
rates; to promote provincial manufactures, and to discard
mourning; to import no negroes from Africa after June i,
1770 nor to import any wine after I\Iarch i of the same
year. All trade should be severed with inhabitants of the
province and with transient traders who neglected to sign
the agreement within five weeks ; and every violator should
be deemed '' no Friend to his Country." ^ This agreement
adopted, it remained for the future to reveal whether the
merchants would deem themselves bound by an ordinance
not of their own making.
All the southern provinces but North Carolina had now
taken action. The excellent example of the neighboring prov-
inces seemed to make little impression on North Carolina.
Here, as elsewhere in the South, the merchants of the chief
trading community used their influence to retard the move-
ment.^ Finally, on September 30, 1769, under the leader-
ship of Cornelius Harnett, the " Sons of Liberty " of Wil-
mington and Brunswick adopted resolutions of non-im-
portation.^ The next step was the adoption of a provincial
association ; and this was accomplished under circumstances
closely parallel to those in Virginia six months earlier. It
was the verhatim adoption of the defiant resolutions of Vir-
ginia that caused Governor Try on to dissolve the North
Carolina Assembly. The members, in their private capaci-
ties, then held a meeting in the courthouse at Newbern ; and
* Ga. Gaz., Sept. 20, 1769; also Ga. Rev. Recs., vol. i, pp. 8-11. Jona-
than Bryan was suspended from the provincial council because he pre-
sided over this meeting. Brit. Papers {"Sparks Mss."), vol. ii, p. 284.
'5. C. Gas., Oct. 26, 1769; S. C. Gaz. & Country Journ., Sept. 12.
' Cape Fear Merc, July 11, 1770; also 5". C. Gas., Aug. 9.
COMMERCIAL REFORM I^g
on the next day, November y, 1769, an association of
non-importation was agreed upon and signed by the sixty-
four members present. The first part of the association
attributed the current depression to the revenue acts and
other statutes depriving Americans of their rights as Eng-
lishmen, and called upon all inhabitants of the province to
concur in the association until the oppressive acts should
be repealed. Derelict subscribers were " to be treated with
the utmost contempt;" the customary standard of prices for
domestic goods was to be maintained ; and the terms of the
document were to go into effect beginning January i, 1770.
In other respects, the association was almost precisely like
that of Virginia of May 18. The subscribers agreed not to
import the same list of foreign wares, nor to buy newly im-
ported slaves, nor ever again to import dutied goods, except »
paper. There were also similar regulations for encourag-
ing economy and preventing the killing of lambs. ^
While the non-importation movement was making head-
way in the plantation provinces, most of the minor provinces
in the commercial group had expressed formal allegiance
to the measure. Since these provinces were, in most cases,
tributary commercially to the great trading-towns, their
action was not of great importance. Only two provinces,
Rhode Island and New Hampshire, held off for a while;
and the course of Rhode Island created a situation of some
perplexity because of the importance of Newport as a com-
mercial center.
Delaware was the first of the minor provinces to act. At
the August session of the grand jury of Newcastle county
on the Delaware, a " compact " w^as entered into to con-
form to the spirit of the Philadelphia agreement, and to
^ S. C. Gaz. & Country lourn., Dec. 8, 1769; also N. C. Booklet, vol.
viii, pp. 22-26.
iy
1^0 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
boycott and publish any offenders against it. On Saturday,
August 26, 1769, a meeting of the principal freeholders of
the county approved and unanimously signed the compact/
Apparently no action was taken by the other counties on
the Delaware.
On October 18, the members of the House of Assembly of
New Jersey passed a vote of thanks to the merchants and
traders of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania " for
their disinterested and public spirited Conduct in withhold-
ing their Importations of British Merchandize." ^ The
only other evidence of formal action on the part of the in-
habitants came at mass meetings in Essex county and at New
Brunswick in June, 1770, when loyalty to non-importation
was pledged and a sentence of boycott pronounced upon all
importers and their allies."
On April 26, 1769, the Committee of Merchants at New
York wrote a letter to the merchants at New Haven, the
chief trading place in Connecticut, appealing to them to
adopt the same measures that Boston, New York and Phila-
delphia had united upon.* The merchants of New Haven
met for that purpose on July 10, and agreed neither to
receive nor purchase any goods from Great Britain until
the Townshend duties should be repealed, with the exception
of certain specified articles and such commodities as were
excluded by the Boston and New York agreements. Delin-
quent subscribers were to be boycotted as " enemies to their
Country." ^ In August the merchants at New London
and Groton adopted regulations of a similar tendency.^
^ Pa, Joiirn., Aug. 31, 1769; also 5. C. Gaz., Oct. 12.
2 Pa. Gas., Oct. 26, 1769; also i N. J. Arch., vol. xxvi, p. 546.
^ A^ /. Joiirn., June 7, 28, 1770; also i N. J. Arch., vol. xxvii, pp. 169-
172, 186-189.
* Conn. Coiir., July 30, 1770; also A'. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Aug. 6.
^ Bos. Eve. Post, Aug. 7, 1769; Conn. Cour., July 30, 1770.
^ Bos. Chron., Aug. 28, 1769.
COMMERCIAL REFORM
i=;i
The support of the farmers of the province was manifested
in a resolution passed, on October 12, by the House of
Representatives, a body which they entirely centrolled.
High approval was expressed of the merchants of Con-
necticut and the other provinces for stopping importation
from Great Britain/ On Christmas day, a town meeting
at Wethersfield congratulated the merchants on their con-
duct, and voted to use no goods debarred by the merchants'
agreement. Silas Deane, a local merchant in the West
Indian trade, had worked actively for these resolutions and
was made chairman of the committee of enforcement.^
Norwich followed the example of Wethersfield a month
later.'
Now occurred a movement to standardize the agreements
of the various towns ; and a call was sent forth for a meet-
ing of the principal merchants and traders at Middletown
on February 20, 1770, to take proper measures. The mer-
cantile convention met at the appointed time and there were
also *' a Number of the respectable Inhabitants " in attend-
ance. After a three days' session, the meeting formulated
a program of action, designed to free the province from
the economic domination not only of England but of the
neighboring provinces as well. A uniform agreement of
non-importation was drawn up.* Old prices were to con-
tinue; violators of the non-importation, whether merchants
or others, were to be boycotted ; and a similar treatment was
to be visited on any provinces that did not observe non-
importation. A project was launched for a " society for
^ N. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Nov. 20, 1769.
^Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. 22, 1770.
' Ibid., Feb. 5, i77o.
* About thirty articles were permitted to be imported, most of which
were useful for local manufacturing. This list was further extended
at a general meeting of September 13. Conn. Cour., Sept. 17, 1770.
1-2 THE COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
the purpose of promoting and extending the arts, agricul-
ture, manufactures, trade and commerce of this colony;"
and a committee was appointed to float the enterprise by
means of popular subscriptions/ Another committee was
instructed to seek preferential treatment from the legis-
lature for the exportation of Connecticut flour in Con-
necticut vessels, for local ships in the fisheries, and for the
establishment of a glass factory. The convention further
resolved that, in view of the extreme scarcity of cash, they
would urge the legislature at its ^lay session " to make
notes of hand negotiable with us, under proper regula-
tions, as they are in Great Britain, and in some of our
sister colonies." ^
At first thought, it may seem strange that the merchants
of Rhode Island were not abreast of Boston and New York
in opposition to the trade restrictions of Parliament. With
the course of these greater towns their true interest un-
doubtedly lay; but the temptation in hard times to turn the
self-denial of their neighbors to their own immediate ad-
vantage proved too great. ^ ^^loreover, they had so long
* This society was duly organized ; and, at its first meeting, on May
22, 1770, it offered premiums for domestic wheat, wool, textiles, stock-
ings and nails. N ezv-London Gas., June 15, 1770. But the breakdown
of the non-importation movement later in the j^ear prevented this soci-
ety from accomplishing its purpose.
^ Conn. Journ., Jan. 19, 1770; Conn. Cour., Feb. 26.
^ Thus, newspapers in New York and Boston alluded to recent " large
Importations of British Goods into Rhode Island with Intent to take
an Advantage of the Sister Colonies." N. Y. Journ., June 29, Nov. 30,
1769; Mass. Gas., July 10. Vide also R. L Commerce, vol. i, p. 246.
In August, 1769, two British manufacturers, who had been expelled
from Charleston, S. C, and later from New London, Conn., for trying
to sell imported British wares, journeyed on to Newport and quickly
disposed of their goods there. Bos. Chron., Aug. 28, 1769; A\ Y. Gas.
& Post-Boy, Aug. 28. In December, a trader in " a Country Town
Southv/ard of Boston" complained that the trade of the western part
COMMERCIAL REFORM I^^
accustomed themselves to defiances of the trade regulations
of Parliament that it violated no moral scruple to ignore
the extra-legal ordinances of nearby provinces. The mer-
chants of Newport, the leading town, were the chief of-
fenders. As one observer put it, the merchants there '' have
been pretty unanimous in disputing fees with their Col-
lector &c." but have failed to adopt non-importation meas-
ures. " They have been busy in killing flies while they
should have been destroying wolves and tygers ! '' ^
After some preliminary agitation on the part of the local
merchants, a town meeting at Providence on October 24,
1769 resolved not to import or purchase any of the com-
modities listed in the old town agreement of December 2,
1767." This, it should however be noted, was an ex-
tremely liberal form of non-importation regulation in com-
parison with the agreements in the other commercial prov-
inces. As the snow Tristram was soon expected from
London with goods forbidden by the agreement, the various
importers, some of whom had been unmoved before, arose
in the meeting and agreed to store the goods with a com-
mittee of the town. Later, precaution was taken to prevent
inhabitants from buying goods, which local merchants were
forbidden to sell, from strolling vendors, all purchasers
being warned that their names would be publicly advertised.^
of Massachusetts was being absorbed by Rhode Island merchants, be-
cause prices at Newport were twenty per cent cheaper than at Boston.
Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Dec. 21, 1769. "A Bostonian" charged in
the Boston Chronicle, Feb. 5, 1770, that Providence had developed a
considerable trade with western Massachusetts. In like vein, the
Chronicle, Dec. 11, 1769, reported that twenty chests of tea had been
brought overland from Rhode Island within the fortnight.
^ N. Y. Jotirn., Nov. 9, 1769.
"^ Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Oct. 16, 1769; Bos. Gas., Oct. 30; Mass.
Gas. & News-Letter, Nov. 2, Dec. 14. Vide supra, p. iii.
^ Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Nov. 17, 1769.
I-^ THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The Newport merchants were more refractory. A letter
of October 21,1 769 from the Philadelphia Merchants' Com-
mittee notified them that a plan was under way to sever
commercial relations with them unless they united in the
measures of the other provinces/ A Boston newspaper
announced that " all intercourse with Rhode Island is nearly
shut up, as if the plague w^ere there;" ^ and the South
Carolina Gazette of November 14 asserted that similar meas-
ures were about to be adopted at Charleston. Under this
outside pressure, the body of Newport merchants met on
October 30, and agreed to import no British manufactures or
East India goods after January i, 1770.^ Their design
was quickly detected. The Philadelphia Merchants' Com-
mittee informed them that the agreement was unsatisfactory
in two respects : by confining themselves to British and East
India goods, they still were at liberty to import from Great
Britain German, Russian and other European commodities ;
and, by postponing the operation of the agreement until
the first of January, they might import vast quantities of
goods, ordered especially for the interval. Unless these
matters were rectified and a " determinate answer " given
by December 10, they were told that Philadelphia would
boycott them.* At New York, the merchants instituted an
immediate boycott, subject to removal when the Newport
merchants conformed to conditions somewhat similar to
those imposed by Philadelphia.^ The Newport merchants
now adopted a new agreement, which was acceptable in
every respect, save that the imports lately arrived were not
^ Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 31-34.
'^ Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Oct. S, 1769.
^ N. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Nov. 13, 1769.
* Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 43-45.
° Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Nov. 2Z, 1769-
COMMERCIAL REFORM
155
to be stored/ Although not entirely satisfied, the Phila-
delphia merchants, upon strong assurance of strict observ-
ance in the future, determined to continue trade relations ;
and, some weeks later, the New Yorkers re-opened trade
with Newport." Nevertheless, the equivocal course of the
Newport merchants did not promise well for the future
conscientious performance of pledges reluctantly given.
The inaction of New Hampshire was due, for the most
part, to causes of a different character. The province was
in the midst of a period of unusual prosperity, and taxes
were lower than they had been for years." The predomin-
ant interests of the province were agricultural ; and, lacking
a first-rate trading-town, there was no aggressive mer-
cantile class to disturb the general complacency. Moreover,
most of the seats of power in the province were occupied
by relatives of Governor Wentworth, the royal appointee.*
Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Governor
Wentworth was able to write to the home government as
late as February 18, 1770: " There are not any non-impor-
tation committees or associations formed in this province,
tho' daily solicited."* He added that some Scotch merchants
had now sent their European importations there and were
carrying on their business " without the least molestation." ^
No steps were taken in New Hampshire to join the union
of the other provinces until the alarming news arrived of
the Boston Massacre.
^ Bos. Gas., Jan. 29, 1770; also Pa. Jouni., Feb. 15.
* A^. F. Joiirn., Jan. 25, 1770; N. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Jan. 29.
spry, W. H., New Hampshire as a Royal Province (Col. U. Studies,
vol. xxix, no. 2), p. 420.
* It would appear that, of the nine members of the council, eight were
connected with the governor by blood or marriage ties; Judge Atkin-
son of the Superior Court was the governor's uncle; and the clerk of
the Superior Court was the judge's nephew. Bos. Eve. Post, June 25,
1770.
^ Brit. Papers ("Sparks Mss."), vol. iii, p. 205.
CHAPTER IV
Enforcement and Breakdown of Non-
Importation (1768-1770)
I By the autumn .^i_J-76g non-importation agreements
I had been adopted in every province save New Hampshire.
^^ But if these paper manifestoes were to accompHsh their
purpose of coercing the mother country, they must be
accompanied by a firm enforcement. It is appropriate,
therefore, to inquire to what extent the boycott against
Great Britain was actually executed. Certain difficul-
ties, inherent in the inquiry, will render dogmatic con-
clusions impossible. Thus, the agreements of the sev-
eral provinces went into operation at different times,
some being separated by long intervals of time. Their
provisions varied widely in their comprehensiveness.
Furthermore, the evidence, upon which conclusions
must be based, is voluminous in the case of some pro-
vinces, and very scanty for others. Custom house
figures are of doubtful assistance in gauging the earn-
estness of the non-importers, since they do not indicate
whether the goods imported were allowed or proscribed
by the agreements, and they do not at all take into ac-
count the peculiar obstacles with which the non-impor-
ters may have had to contend in any particular locality.
In no province were the difRculties of enforcement
■ greater than in Massachusetts. The actual good faith
of the merchant body of Boston was impugned by many
156
NON-IMP OR TA TION I -7
people at the time ; and the writers of history have found
it easy to follow this example since.' But the story of the
enforcement at Boston will show that the merchants were
laboring earnestly, and with a large measure of effec-
tiveness, to establish the non-importation against un-
usually heavy odds. " I wonder for my part," wrote a
Boston merchant in 1770 to a New York friend, "how
we have been able to continue and so strictly to adhere to
the agreement as we have done." Besides the usual
obstacles, ''we have had a governor, together with a
board of commissioners, with their train of officers and
dependants who have exerted every nerve to render
abortive the non-importation agreement," and they have
had support from the military power. "We have had a
government on each side of us who have imported as
usual without the least restraint;" and "we have six or
seven ports within our government to attend to besides
our own." "" The writer might have added that the Bos-
ton merchants were the first on the continent to adopt
a non-importation agreement and had anticipated the
action of most of the provinces by many months. Finally
and not least, he should have noted that the opponents
of non-importation had a giant of strength on their side
in the person of the shrewdest and most pertinacious
controversialist in British America, John Mein of the
Boston Chronicle.
The merchants' agreement went into effect on January
I, 1769. On April 21, a meeting of the merchants ap-
pointed a committee to inspect the manifests, or official
cargo lists, of vessels which were then arriving from
^E.g., editorial note in Dickinson, Wt'itings (Ford), vol. i, p. 436;
Becker, A^. Y. Parties, 1760-1776, p. 85.
' N. Y. Journ., July 5, 1770.
I^g THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Great Britain with spring shipments and to report back
to the body the names of merchants who had imported
in defiance of the agreement.' On the twenty-seventh,
the merchants heard the report : six subscribers of the
agreement had received a few articles, the residue of
former orders, and six or seven, who were not signers,
had imported small quantities of prohibited articles.
The former had readily agreed to store their importa-
tions with the committee, while the committee was in-
structed to confer further with the latter.^ An inspired
statement a few days later informed the public that the
merchants' agreement had been "strictly adhered to"
by its signers, and that there had not been imported " in
all the ships from England more Goods than would fill
a Long-Boat." 3
A campaign that was destined to continue through
many months was begun to discredit utterly those who
violated the merchants' agreement. On May 8, the
Boston town meeting expressed its high satisfaction over
the scrupulous conduct of the merchants and recom-
mended to the inhabitants to withdraw their patronage
from "those few persons" who had imported goods
contrary to the agreement.'^ Within the next two weeks,
some thousands of handbills were dispersed through
Massachusetts and the neighboring provinces, advising
^Bos. Gaz., Apr. 24, 1769; also N. V. Journ., May 4.
"^Bos. Gaz., May i, 1769. This account contained no names. The
complete report of the committee, with the names of the importers,
eU., may be found in M. H. S. Ms., 91 L., p. 42. There were actually
twenty-eight importers who were non-signers, but the contents of their
orders were not known in most instances.
^Bos. Gaz., May i, 1769; also A^ Y. Gaz. & Merc, May 8.
^Bos. News-Letter, May 11, 1769; also Bos. Tow7i Recs. {1758-1769) ,
p. 289.
NON-IMPORTATION I^g
all people to shun the shops of the following firms as
men who preferred private advantage to public welfare :
William Jackson, Jonathan Simpson, J. and R. Selkrig,'
John Taylor, Samuel Fletcher, Theophilus Lillie, James
McMasters & Co., Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, and
Nathaniel Rogers.^ Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, it
should be noted, were sons of the lieutenant governor
and carried on a business of tea importation in which
the elder Thomas himself was interested.^ Nathaniel
Rogers, another of the proscribed men, was a nephew of
the lieutenant governor. All these men were respected
merchants of the city ; and so far as any records would
indicate, none of them were interested in illicit traffic or
even in the West Indian trade. No doubt most of them,
like the Hutchinsons, were conducting lawful businesses
which throve best under the regulations of Parliament ;
and a number of them had friends and relatives among
the official class. They were not Tories in any political
sense, and neither then nor afterwards did they hold
posts under the government. They were men who, how-
ever, objected as fiercely to a direction of their affairs by
the populace as the smugglers of 1761 did to an inter-
ference with their business by a governmental writ of
assistance.
The effort to inaugurate a boycott against these men
brought to their defense the doughty champion, to whom
reference has already been made, John Mein, a co-pub-
^ Also spelled Selkridge and Selking.
^N. Y. Journ., June 29, 1769.
^ Vide infra, p. 282. I have found no evidence to support William Pal-
frey's allegation, made in a private letter to John Wilkes, October 30,
1770, that the elder Hutchinson, after graduation at Harvard, "was for
many years in the Holland trade, where he constantly practised all the
various methods of sm.uggling." Palfrey, J. G., William Palfrey {2
Libr. Am. Biog., Sparks, ed., vol. vii), pp. 368-369.
l6o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
lisher of the Boston Chronicle. Mein was a native of
Scotland and had been a book dealer in Boston since his
arrival in October, 1764. He had received a good
education, he possessed a faculty for effective literary ex-
pression and made himself a useful citizen generally. He
had established a circulating library ; and in December,
1767, he founded, with John Fleeming, the Boston Chron-
icle, which quickly showed itself to be the most enter-
prising sheet on the continent in content as well as
typographical appearance. After a time, he converted it
from a weekly to a semi-weekly, without any addition in
price, and it thus became the only journal in New Eng-
land published with such frequency. Mein had hitherto
avoided any part in the turmoil of the times and, with
the other editors, he had published the entire series of
the Farmer s Letters. In arousing the ire of John Mein,
the merchants of Boston had stirred up a veritable hor-
net's nest.'
^ For the facts of Mein's life, vide Thomas, I., History of Printing
in America (Albany, 1874), vol. i, pp. 151-154, vol. ii, pp. 59-61; Ayer,
M. F., and Mathews, A., Check-List of Boston Newspapers 1704-1780
{Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. ix), pp. 480-481. Thomas inclines to the
contemporary opinion that Mein was in the pay of the government at
this period. Hutchinson's correspondence in the Mass. Archives fails
to give any hint of such a connection. Mein himself denied again and
again that he was acting in behalf of " a Party," and he maintained
that he was "unbiassed by fear or affection, prejudice or party." It is
evident, of course, that he held the confidence of the Customs Board
and had access to the information contained in their books. There are
some reasons for thinking that Mein left America in November, 1769,
and never returned. The present account has assumed, for good
reasons, that he was not away from Boston for any perceptible length
of time. E. g., vide Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 260. After all,
the chief consideration is that the articles in the Chronicle, of which he
was universally reputed to be the author, continued to appear without
interruption until the Chronicle ceased publication. Professor Andrews
has recently brought to light some new facts concerning Mein's exper-
iences in Boston in "The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation
Movement," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. xix, pp. 227-230.
NON-IMPOR TA TION 1 6 j
Mein's first blast came in an unsigned article in the
Chronicle of June i, 1769. Declaring that the handbills,
recently circulated, gave the impression that the firms
named were the only importers of British goods in the
city, the article asserted that it was only just to make
known the truth. An exact account showed that twenty-
one vessels had arrived from Great Britain at Boston
from January i, the date on which the agreement became
operative, to June i, 1769; and that one hundred and
ninety different persons, many of them signers of the
agreement, had imported 162 trunks, 270 bales, 182 cases,
233 boxes, 1 1 16 casks, 139 chests, ^2 hampers, and other
quantities, all carefully detailed.
The attack elicited a quick response. A writer, evi-
dently speaking for the Committee of Merchants, replied
in the Boston Gazette of June 12. In the number of
importers, he declared that Mein included almost one
hundred belonging to other ports, also clergymen,
masters of vessels and private persons who had imported
only a single article for family use. He called attention
to the fact that Mein had stated the quantity of goods
without differentiating between those permitted and
those debarred by the agreement and without noting the
number of packages imported for army and navy use.
Mein, he averred, included four vessels which, but for
storms and other delays, would have reached Boston be-
fore the agreement went into effect, and three vessels
from Scotland, belonging to strangers who had come
over to build ships. These being omitted from the list,
it was evident that the merchandise imported by the
people of Boston in violation of the agreement was " tri-
fling and of little Value." So far as signers were con-
cerned, the report of the merchants' committee of
inspection was cited to prove that they had imported,
1 62 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
contrary to the agreement, only 14 cases, 27 chests,
mostly of oil, 36 casks of beer, linseed oil and cheese,
50 hampers, chiefly of empty bottles, and 15 bundles;
all of which had been immediately placed under direction
of the committee. Not a single article of woolens nor
any kind of piece-goods had been imported by the signers.
The author of the earlier article was called upon to pub-
lish the names of the importers and to point out any
signers who had failed to submit their goods to the
committee of inspection.
Mein closed the discussion, for the time, simply by
announcing in his issue of the nineteenth that a list of
importers and manifests, from which his facts had been
drawn, was now lodged at the Chronicle office, and could
there be consulted by the candid and impartial public.
Up to this point, the chief effect of Mein's pugnacity on
public opinion concerning him was his expulsion from
the Free American Fire Society, on grounds that he was
an importer and was concerned in a *' partial, evasive and
scandalous " attack on the respectable merchants of the
town.'
Realizing the necessity for more effective measures of
dealing with importing merchants, the Boston trade
proceeded to work out an ingenious system of boycott.
At a meeting of July 26, 1769, they agreed to w^ithhold
their business from any vessel which should load at any
British port with goods forbidden by the agreement.
In addition, a committee was appointed to examine the
manifests of any vessels which should arrive from Great
Britain before January i, 1770, and to insert in the public
prints the names of violators of the agreement, unless
they should deliver the goods into charge of the stand-
^ Bos. Gaz. July 10, 1769.
NON-IMPORTATION 163
ing committee of the merchants. Another committee
was appointed to secure a subscription of Boston inhab-
itants to boycott those men whose names had been pub-
lished in the handbills/ A few days later, a house-to-
house canvass was made among the citizens for signa-
tures to buy no goods debarred by the merchants' agree-
ment, and to support any further measures of the mer-
chants.^ Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson, in a letter
about this time, wrote angrily that merchants' meetings
" are called and held by adjournments, whose resolutions
are come into. Committees appointed, and other proceed-
ings had in as formal a manner as in a body corporate
legally assembled and known and established by the Con-
stitution ; and those meetings have had such effect that
. , . most of the Traders who until now had firmness to
stand out have joined in the subscription to import no
goods." 3 Indeed, of the importers who had been ex-
posed by the handbill, Jackson, Simpson, the Selkrigs,,
Taylor and Fletcher now hastened to accept the agree-
ment and to promise that their fall importations would
be stored with the Committee of Merchants.^
Having made such headway, the merchants determined
to press their advantage. At a meeting at Faneuil
Hall on August 11, they voted that, whereas all the *' Well
Disposed Merchants " (note well the expression !) of
almost every province on the continent had resolved on
non-importation, local merchants who persisted in defy-
ing the agreement " must be considered as Enemies to
^ Mass. Gaz, July 31, 1769; also A^. Y, Gaz. & Merc, Aug. 7.
"^ M. H. S. Ms., 151, I, 15. This non-mercantile agreement, dated
July 31, was soon signed by 113 persons.
^Letter to Hillsborough, Aug. 8, 1769. Brit. Papers {''Sparks
Mss."), vol. i, p. III.
^ Bos. Gaz., Aug. 14, 1769 ; A^. Y. Journ., Feb. 8, 1770.
164
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the Constitution of their Country, and must expect that
those who have any Regard for it will endeavour in every
constitutional Way to prevent their Building- themselves
up on the ruin of their Fellow-Citizens." Thereupon,
the names of the following men were ordered to be in-
serted in the newspapers as objects of boycott : Theo-
philus Lillie, McMasters & Co., T. and E^ Hutchinson
and Nathaniel Rogers, all unrepentant though named in
the original handbills, and, in addition, John Mein, John
Bernard and Richard Clarke & Son. Richard Clarke
was another nephew^ of Hutchinson. John Greenlaw,
being called before the meeting upon charge of having
bought goods of violators of the agreement, acknowl-
edged his fault, and he surrendered the goods to the
custody of the committee.' A few days later Clarke &
Son, who had been pubnshed as importers, fully acceded
to the agreement and were ordered to be reinstated in
the public estimation. =*
These new developments brought John Mein to the
firing-line again. In the Chronicle of August 17, he
devoted almost three entire pages to a vindication of
his conduct and leveled a charge of dishonesty against
the signers of the agreement. In his various occupa-
tions, he declared, he daily supported seventeen people,
fourteen of whom lived under his own roof and most of
whom would have lost employment if he had signed the
agreement. In his two years as printer, he had purchased
something like £400 worth of paper from the mill at
Milton. He employed four or five people in his book-
bindery and paid his foreman a yearly salary of £69 6s. 8d.,
lawful money. Moreover, it was notorious, he continued,
^ Bos. Gaz., Aug. 14, 1769 ; also A^ F. Gaz. & Merc, Aug. 28.
^ Bos. Gaz. Aug. 21, 1769.
NON-IMPOR TA TION 1 5 -
that the non-importation was not generally observed.
In support of his statement, he announced his design to
publish, in the course of the following months, a detailed
account of the cargoes of the vessels which had arrived
at Boston since the beginning of the year. He began by
presenting the itemized manifest of the snow Pi^^, which
had arrived at Boston on June i.
This was the opening gun of a bitter campaign, which
continued at semi-weekly intervals, almost without in-
terruption, until the event of the Boston Massacre in
March, 1770.' Mein's usual course was to place at the
head of the first column of page one of the Chronicle a
copy of the merchants' agreement, with the allowed
articles in enlarged black letters ; then to follow with a
trenchant attack on the good faith of signers of the
agreement ; and to conclude with a manifest, which pur-
ported to show, by name and item, that signers were
continuing to import clandestinely. Mein revealed him-
self to be a keen and relentless disputant ; he utiHzed
every favorable point to the utmost, and was a past
master of phrase and retort. For instance, inasmuch as
the merchants' resolutions of August 11 had alluded to
the advocates of non-importation as the '* Well Dis-
posed," Mein never lost a chance to apply the term to
the Committee of Merchants; and he did it with many a
satiric turn that must have entirely destroyed the peace
of mind of those worthies.
The statement of '' the Merchants of the Town of
Boston" on August 28, with the fusillade of personal
^ These articles were published during the period August 17, 1769 to
March i, 1770. After the issue of October 19, the publication of mani-
fests, though not of jibes and queries directed at the Committee of
Merchants, ceased until December 11, when they were resumed. Fifty-
five cargoes were listed in all.
l66 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
vindications that followed, was a fair example of the
answering volleys which the supporters of the agreement
delivered/ Taking the five manifests which had been
published up to that time, they analyzed the figures care-
fully and showed that in no case had a signer deliberately
sought to evade the spirit of the agreement, and that
when a fault had been committed unintentionally, the
goods had been stored. Their analysis of the manifest
of the PzU will sufBce for purposes of illustration. Of
the thirty-one importers interested in the cargo, only
fifteen were Bostonians ; and, of these, only four were
signers : Timothy Newell, John Rowe, John Erving and
the Hubbards. Newell had imported tin and iron plates,
which, it was stated, though not inserted in the original
agreement as permissible, were so understood from the
beginning and had since been made so by express vote,
and also several other articles open to importation in
other provinces. Rowe had imported shot and lines,
allowed by the agreement, and blankets and lines, con-
signed to him for use of the army. Erving had imported
Irish linen and beer, which had been ordered prior to
the agreement and were now under care of the com.mit-
tee. The goods sent to the Messrs. Hubbard had been
directed to their care for Stephen Ayrault, the Newport
merchant. Of the four other manifests discussed by the
committee, three of the vessels, Lydia, Last Attempt
and Paolt, were owned by John Hancock; and each
cargo contained articles forbidden by the agreement.
In one instance, that of N. Green, it was shown that the
34 casks of pork, which he had imported, had originally
been sent by him to London and had failed of sale. In
numerous cases, it was shown that the packages had been
^ Bos. Eve. Post, Aug. 28, 1769; also Bos. Neivs-Letter, Aug. 31.
NON-IMPORTATION 15^
wrongly labeled in the manifests. In conclusion, the
committee reiterated their former position that the
agreement was being closely obeyed, except by a few
non-signers ; and Mein was charged with an attempt to
misrepresent and defraud.
Replies to Mein's attacks came from other sources as
well, usually in the form of flat disclaimers from the in-
dividual merchants accused.' Mein again paid his re-
spects to the Committee of Merchants in a lengthy reply
in the Chronicle of October 9 and 12. He made much
of the admission that Newell's importations were ad-
mitted on June i although not made an allowed article
until July 26, a palpable injustice to other dealers. He
had "good reason" to believe that Rowe's blankets
were not for army use ; and he demanded to know just
where or how Erving's importations had been stored.
As for N. Green's pork, even admitting the circumstances,
was pork an allowed article? ''Do the Public begin to
suspect," he wrote on October 23 in his " Catechism of
the ' Well Disposed '," " that a certain scheme is princi-
pally calculated to crush all the young Merchants and
Importers, that the trade may still remain in the hands
of a few grave ''well disposed'' Dons, who are believed
to be exceedingly well stocked with Goods ? "
Perhaps the most interesting charge which Mein
made was against John Hancock, merchant prince and
^Thus, John Avery denied absolutely that he had imported china
and British linen from London in the Sukey and declared that he had
imported nothing from Great Britain for two years. Bos. News-Letter,
Aug. 31, 1769. Vide statem.ents of F. Johonnot and Benj. Andrews in
the same issue. Francis Green declared wrathily that he "did not de-
viate from the Agreement in any Instance, of Course did not import
any Tea," and he dubbed Mein a " Mushroom Judge " and "conceited
empty Noddle of a most profound Blockhead." Ibid., Sept. 21. For
examples of Mein's rejoinders, vide Bos. Chron., Sept. 4, 25.
1 58 ^^'^^ COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
non-importer, for having imported five bales of " British
Linen" in the Lydia, which arrived at Boston on April
1 8, 1769. As that gentleman was out of the city, his
manager, William Palfrey, came to his defense in a sworn
statement that the contents of the bales had been misre-
presented by Mein, and that they were, in reality, '' Rus-
sia Duck," allowed by the agreement. Mein replied by
publishing a copy of the cocket, certified by the customs
collector and comptroller, which attested the correctness
of his description. This verbal exchange continued for
some time,^ and received some attention in the Newport
Mercury, September 4, 1769, where it was observed that
Hancock as '' one of the foremost of the Patriots in Boston
. . . would perhaps shine miore conspicuously ... if he
did not keep a number of vessels running to London and
back, full freighted, getting rich, by receiving freight on
goods made contraband by the Colonies."^ Hancock him-
self took no notice of Mein's attack until a letter from the
New York Committee of Merchants made allusion to it ;
and in a signed statement he announced : ''This is Once
For All to certify to whom it may concern. That I
have not in one single Instance, directly or indirectly,
deviated from said Agreement ; and I now publickly defy
all Mankind to prove the Contrary." 3 The truth
seems to be that the worst irregularity of which he was
guilty was an occasional carelessness on the part of his
ship-masters in receiving prohibited goods as freight ;
and this did not become an oiTense under the Boston
^ For this dispute, vide Bos. Chron., Aug. 21, 28, Sept. 4, 18, Oct.
9; and Bos. News-Leiter, Aug. 31, 1769.
^"Civis" in the N. H. Gaz., July 6, 13, 1770, expressed surprise
that " Mr. Hancock would suffer a consignment of 35 chests of tea to
a gentleman in this town, to come in a vessel of his from London . . ."
' Under date of January 4. N. Y. Jotir7i. Jan. 18, 1770.
NON-IMPORTATION l6g
agreement until July 26, 1769/ The discrepancy be-
tween the description in the manifest and the actual con-
tents of Hancock's bales was, in all probability, due to
clerical carelessness or possibly to the notorious practice
of merchants to doctor their freight lists in order to
evade export duties in England.
In the Chronicle of October 19, Mein announced that,
if the "'well disposed' Committee" did not discontinue
" their abusive hints and publications either here or at
New York, the Public shall be entertained with Anec-
dotes of the lives and practices of many of these Worthies
as individuals ; for all due pains shall be taken to unkennel
them ; and already ... a great store of materials has
been collected." This promised expose, however, never
progressed further than a preliminary description, a week
later, of '' The Characters of some who are thought to
be * W. D.'," wherein much was said of '' Deacon Clod-
pate, alias Tribulation Turnery, Esq.," ''William the
Knave,"* and other personages scarcely recognizable by
readers of the twentieth century. A few weeks later,
Mein collected the various controversial articles and
published them in a pamphlet of one hundred and thirty
^Hancock's vessel, Boston Packet, arrived on August 10 with 54
chests :of tea in her cargo. Hancock wrote on Sept. 6, 1769 to his
London representatives, Haley & Hopkins: "The merchants of this
town having come into a new agreement not to suffer any freight to be
taken on board their vessels, I beg you would note the same, & prevent
any of it, except Coals, Hemp, Duck & Grindstones being put on board
any of my vessels. You will please to inform my ship masters that
they may conform themselves accordingly." Brown, John Hancovk
His Book, p. 166.
'^Probably John Barrett and William Palfrey. Barrett had imported
wcolcards but had been credited on the manifest with " turnery." This
labored performance gave " great offense" to the tion-importing party,
according to Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 259.
lyo THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
pages, under the title, State of the Importations from
Great Britahi into Bostoji, fj'om Jan. 1769 to Aug, 17 y
1769^ Editions were gotten out the following year
which tabulated the later importations. These pam-
phlets were widely read in the other commercial prov-
inces and were frequently dispersed by employees of the
Customs Board.'
The merits of the dispute between Mein and the mer-
chants may now be sufftciently clear. The strength of
Mein's position lay in being a literalist in his interpreta-
tion of the agreement; in failing to differentiate between
permissible and prohibited importations ; and in testing
the efificacy of the agreement by examining the importa-
tions of non-signers as well as signers, of outsiders as
well as Bostonians, of non-merchants as well as mer-
chants. The success of the non-importation regulation,
on the other hand, lay in the sagacious exercise of a rule
of reason by the Committee of Merchants with regard
to the interpretation of the agreement, meantime placing
stress upon the performance of signers, and bringing all
possible pressure to bear upon recalcitrant merchants.
This was the course of action that was adroitly carried
out by the merchants.
While Mein was the one unrelenting opponent of non-
importation, it should not be thought that he was with-
out earnest support. Opponents of non-importation
began, after a time, to perceive the apparent contradic-
tion between the methods of the merchants and their
shibboleths. Shall we '' still pretend to talk of Liberty,
Property and Rights without a blush?*' demanded
" Martyr." " Have we not . . . established courts of
inquisition in the colonies unparalleled in any!:'age or na-
'^ Boston Ckro?i., Nov. 20, 1769. ^ Pa. Joiirn., June 28, 1770.
NON-IMPOR TA TION 1 7 j
tion? where . . . was there ever an instance of men, free
men, being summoned by illegal and mock authority to
answer for actions as offences, which are warranted by
the laws of the land, the law of nations and the law of
God ? — ' for he that will not provide for his family is worse
than an infidel '." ' Theophilus Lillie, one of the pro-
scribed merchants, declared : '' I had rather be a slave
under one master, for if I know who he is, I may per-
haps be able to please him, than a slave to an hundred
or more who I don't know where to find nor what they
will expect from me."'' Another merchant, Colburn
Barrell, placed his failure to re-ship certain goods, as he
had agreed, partly on the ground that " it was an un-
lawful agreement made with what I must call an unlaw-
ful assembly ; such an agreement as both the laws of my
Maker and my Country forbid me to stand to."^ He
maintained, further, that the laboringmen in town and
country could better afford to pay the Townshend duties
the remainder of their lives than to pay the prices ex-
acted by the merchants that winter for the necessary
articles of baize and other woolens/ Another newspaper
writer argued pleasantly that he thought all marrying
should discontinue until the revenue acts should be re-
pealed. ''Those who marry," he observed, "may possi-
bly have children ; and if we have one spark of genuine
Liberty animating our breasts, can we bear the thought
of transmitting the most abject slavery to another gen-
eration? Besides, the Ministry at home, when they see
^Bos. Ckron., Jan. 15, 1770. Fide also "A Bostonian" in idid.,
Feb. 5.
^Mass. Gaz., Jan. 11, 1770; also Bos. Citron., Jan. 15.
^Mass. Gaz. (^News-Letter, Nov. 17, 1769.
^Bos. Chron., Dec. 11, 1769.
1-2 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS : 176S-1776
our fixed determination to depopulate the country, will
be more shockingly mortified than ... by any of our
resolutions to impoverish by Non-Importation.'' In
short, he confided that his plan was to have all the
women stored and a committee appointed for keeping the
keys, of which he himself should be chairman. '' If any
man should refuse to deliver up his wife or daughter
upon such an interesting occasion, he must be deemed
An Enemy To His Country." '
Thomas Hutchinson got close to the root of the situ-
ation in frequent letters to the home government. He
denounced " the confederacy of the merchants " as unlaw-
ful, and showed that statutes of Parliament would al-
ways be nullified in America " if combinations to prevent
the operation of them and to sacrifice all who conform
to them are tolerated, or if towns are allowed to meet
and vote that measures for defeating such acts are legal."
With the utmost persistence, he urged an act of Parlia-
ment for punishing all persons concerned in such con-
federacies.''
^Meantime, in face of ]\Iein's virulent efforts, more and
more pressure w^as brought to bear upon the little band of
obdurate importers." On October 4, 1769, the town meet-
ing, ruled by the non-importers, voted its indignation that
^Boston Ckfon., Jan. 18, 1770.
^ Letters quoted by Hosmer, Hutchinson, pp. 166-168, 437-438 ; Wells,
Samuel Adams, vol. i, pp. 281, 301.
^ Thus, the Seniors at Harvard College resolved never again to deal
with John IMein. Bos. Gaz., Sept. 4, 1769. The Committee of Mer-
chants published the name of a storekeeper who, under false repre-
sentations, had disposed of two chests of tea which had come from
the store of T, and E. Hutchinson. Ihid., Sept. 11. The merchants
called before them three dealers who had imported tabooed goods and
induced them to re-ship the goods. Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Oct. 5-
NON-IMPORTATION I^^
any citizens should persist in importation, and gave an
appearance of legality to the merchants' boycott of August
II by declaring that the seven men then proscribed (not
counting the repentant Clarke & Son) should be entered
by name on the town records '' that posterity may know
who those persons were that preferred their little private
advantages to the common interest of all the colonies . . . " ^
Armed with this resolution, the merchants, who met the
same day, sought again to convince the importers of the
error of their ways. A committee of the merchants con-
ferred with T. and E. Hutchinson, at their own request,
and these gentlemen felt impelled to accede to every article
of the agreement, and they agreed to surrender eighteen
chests of tea, recently imported, as well as any goods which
might arrive later. A letter of the lieutenant governor,
written on the next day to an English friend, explained the
action of his sons : '' My sons tell me they have sold their
T to advantage . . . tho' with the utmost difficulty; but
the spirit rose too high to be opposed any longer, and be-
sides the danger to their persons they had good reason to
fear there was a design to destroy the T;" and he con-
cluded by observing that : " It was one of the sellers of
Dutch T who made the greatest clamour; and had they im-
ported any other goods than T, they would not have sub-
mitted." " Theophilus Lillie entered into similar engage-
ments with the merchants. McMasters, Rogers and Ber-
nard returned answers ''highly insolent;" and Mein, for
obvious reasons, was not approached. The merchants
^Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Oct. 5, 1769; also Bos. Tozvn Recs.
{1758-1769), pp. 297-298.
^ Mass. Arch., vol. xxvi, p. 386. Lillie was likewise intimidated by-
popular clamor, according to his statement in the Mass. Gaz., Jan. 11,
1770.
174
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
voted unanimously that these four men " were unworthy
of the future countenance and favour of the pubHc in any
respect," and appointed a committee to pubHsh the names
of all persons who should thereafter deal with them.^
Several days later, Nathaniel Rogers gave up his op-
position to the agreement: and the number of firms adver-
tised as " fJwse who x\UDACIOUSLY continue to counter-
act the UNITED SENTIMENTS of the Body of Mer-
chants thro'out North-America " was reduced to three.^
The Committee of Merchants continued its work of super-
vising the enforcement of non-importation with great assi-
duity; and its transactions were made public from time to
time. About the middle of December, the names of A. and
E. Cummings, of Boston, and Henry Barnes, a Marlboro
trader, were added to the list of those " audaciously " of-
fending.^
Those importers, who had become eleventh-hour con-
verts to non-importation, had yielded chiefly on the sup-
position that the agreement would expire on January i,
1770. Imagine, then, their consternation when, on October
17, the merchants made the operation of the agreement con-
tingent upon the repeal of the Townshend duties ! ^ Still
other importers began to regard pledges that had been wrung
from them through intimidation as having no binding force. ^
This was a situation pregnant with trouble. Late in
December, the merchants' committee of inspection made an
^Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Oct. 9, 1/69; also N. Y. Gas. & Merc,
Oct. 16.
"^ Bos. Gaz., Oct. 9, 1769; Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Oct. 19.
^ Bos. Gas., Dec. 11, 1769; also Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Dec. 14.
* Ibid., Nov. 9, 17, 1769; Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 266.
* E. g., vide statements of John Taylor and Theophilus Lillie, Bos.
Eve. Post, Jan. 15, 1770, and Mass. Gas., Jan. 11.
NON-IMPORTATION I-r^
examination of the goods which had been stored by the
various merchants in their own shops in rooms for which
the committee held keys. They found a considerable quan-
tity wanting in the instance of John Taylor and Theophilus
Lillie, and they heard several other merchants declare their
intention to sell their stored goods after January i, 1770.
A meeting of the Boston merchants on December 28 voted ' \ i
a boycott against Taylor and Lillie and all those who should J /
trade with them. The committee of inspection were di-----^^
rected to examine all stored goods at least once a week;
and their diligence brought immediate result in placing
Benjamin Greene & Company under the ban on the follow-
ing day.^ But, in spite of these measures, other merchants, ^
the Hutchinsons among them, were not deterred from re-
newing the sale of their merchandise after January i.
The merchant body was evidently facing another crisis.
On Wednesday, January 17, 1770, a large number of the
merchants gathered at Faneuil Hall to consider more drastic
measures than hitherto had been employed, and they ad-
journed from day to day, increasing their numbers with each
adjournment.^ It was claimed by the Chronicle that pains
had been taken to induce many workingmen to swell the
attendance — men " who find it their interest to proscribe
foreign commerce because they can better dispose of the
articles they make at any extravagant price." ^ William
Phillips acted as moderator. At the first day's session,
the recreant merchants were summoned to appear before the
meeting. When they refused, committees were sent to wait
on them separately, but with no result save a verbal promise
'^ Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. i, 1770; also N. Y. Journ., Jan. 18.
^ For these proceedings, vide letter of S. Cooper, Am. Hist. Rev., vol.
viii, pp. 314-316; Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. 22, 29, 1770; A''. Y. Journ., Feb.
I, 8, 15, Mch. I ; Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, pp. 266-267.
^ Bos. Chron., Feb. 5, 1770. Article by " A Bostonian."
1^5 ^^-S COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
from the Hutchinsons to turn over their teas to the com-
mittee of inspection. Even this sHght advantage was lost
when the Hutchinsons refused, on the next day, to perform
their promise. The meeting now voted unanimously that
the offending merchants, eight in number,^ had forfeited all
favor and confidence of their fellow-citizens. The whole
body of more than a thousand persons then proceeded, in
impressive and orderly array, to the houses or stores of
each of these men; and, through William Molineux as
spokesman, demanded that the goods, which had once been
placed in store, should be immediately deposited with the
committee of inspection. Only Gary made the concession
demanded. At the Hutchinson home, no one was permitted
to enter, but His Honor the Lieutenant Governor threw up
the window and chose to regard the crowd as making a
tumultuous and threatening application to him in his official
capacity. Molineux insisted that they had come in peace-
able fashion to confer with his sons about '* their dishonour-
able Violation of their own contract;" whereupon Hutchin-
son replied angrily that " a contract without a consider-
ation was not valid in law." But under the influence of
cooler thought, he sent for the moderator early next morn-
ing and effected arrangements for his sons, by which the
teas that remained unsold were delivered to the committee
and the equivalent in money paid over for the balance. The
body of merchants met later in the day and adjourned until
the Tuesday following, in order to give the other delinquents
further time to make their peace. In the interim, the
Greenes repented of their ways ; but Taylor, Lillie, Rogers
and Jackson continued obdurate.
On Tuesday, January 23, the merchants voted to with-
^ John Taylor, Theophilus Lillie, Greene & Son, T. and E. Hutchinson,
Nathaniel Rogers, William Jackson and Nathaniel Gary.
NON-IMPORTATION ^JJ
hold from these four men " not only all commercial dealings
but every Act and Office of common Civility." Then turn-
ing their attention to John Mein and the merchants who had
been placed on the proscribed list prior to the recent un-
pleasantness, they voted that " they deserve to be driven
to that Obscurity from which they originated and to the Hole
of the Pit from whence they were digged." The proceed-
ings of that day were spread upon handbills, distributed
through the nearby provinces and pasted up over the
chimney-pieces of the better known public houses.
The lieutenant governor took occasion, on this day, to
make a trial of strength between the merchants and the
government. For some months, he had been trying to con-
vince his council that '' the Confederacy of the Merchants
and the proceedings of the town of Boston " were " un-
warrantable," but he could not persuade a majority to his
view.^ He now decided to act without the consent of his
council ; and, while the merchants were in the midst of their
discussions at Faneuil Hall, he sent the sheriff with a mes-
sage denouncing their present meeting as unjustifiable " by
any authority or colour of law," and their house-to-house
marchings en masse as conducive to terror and dangerous
in tendency. As representative of the crown, he required
them to disperse and " to forbear all such unlawful as-
semblies for the future . . ." ^ Later, by dint of impor-
tunity, the lieutenant governor succeeded in getting the
council to approve his action by a bare majority. As for
the merchants, they merely paused long enough to vote their
unanimous opinion that their meeting was lawful, and re-
sumed their transactions.
* Letters of Hutchinson in Brit. Papers (" Sparks Mss."), vol. i, p.
114, and N. Engl. Chron., June 22, 1775.
"^Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. 29, 1770; M. H. S. Ms., 61 J, no; Hutchinson,
Mass. Bay, vol. iii, pp. 267-268.
1^8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The renewed activity of the merchants drew another
volley from Mein. The Chronicle of January 22, 1770,
published an itemized list of the dutied goods imported into
the port of Boston during the year 1769, with the names
of the persons who had paid the duties. Tea, paper, green
glass and painters' colors were the most frequent entries;
and, although most of the goods had gone to notorious im-
porters, the names of some of the '' Well Disposed " were
on the list also, especially for consignments of glass.
These charges were answered by signed statements of the
various merchants accused.^ The glass was, in some in-
stances, alleged to be bottles containing drugs, etc. ; in others,
consignments for persons in Rhode Island and New Hamp-
shire addressed in care of local merchants. Mein replied
in the Chronicle of February i, analyzing these explanations,
accepting some as satisfactory and rejecting others. The
career of the Chronicle was fast drawing to a close. Its
subscription list was depleted ; its advertising columns were
neglected by the non-importers; Mein himself was being
prosecuted for debt by John Hancock in behalf of London
creditors ; ^ and his physical whereabouts were unknown.
On June 25, the Chronicle closed its meteoric career with
the commonplace statement to subscribers that " the
Chronicle, in the present state of affairs, cannot be carried
on, either for their entertainment or the emolument of the
Printers . . ."'
Public opinion was thereafter entirely molded by the
Committee of Merchants.' Through a strange transposition
^ Bos. Eve. 'Post, Jan, 29, 1770; Bos. Gac, Jan. 29.
2 Brown, John Hanrock His Book, p. 94; Murray, J., Letters (N. M..
Tiffany, ed.), pp. 169-171, I73-I74.
^ In May, 1772, Mein petitioned Parliament for compensation for his
losses while " endeavoring to support Administration at the time of
the late American Revenue Acts." Bos. Eve. Post, Aug. 10, 1772.
NON-IMPOR TA TION I yr^
of terms, people had come to speak of merchandise, legally
imported but brought in contrary to the agreement, as
** contraband." '' Tea from Holland may lawfully be sold,"
wrote Hutchinson. '* Its a high crime to sell any from
England." ^ The Customs Board were now without an
organ in Boston. However, on August 2y, they succeeded
in inserting in the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury
2l statement of British importations to Boston from Janu-
ary I to June 19, 1770, filling five columns of that journal.
The high tension which public affairs had reached ripened
the public mind for violence. Already in 1768, popular
demonstrations in behalf of the smugglers had caused the
stationing of troops in Boston. In September, 1769, had
occurred the affray between James Otis and one of the
customs commissioners at the British Coffee House — an
affair which the radicals spoke of as " the intended as-
sassination of Mr. Otis." " Sometime later, John Mein;
and his partner had been assaulted while walking along;
King Street; and before the mob would desist, the two
regiments had to be ordered to their arms.^ Thereafter^
the customs officials and army officers occupied the bar-
room of the coffee house to the exclusion of the citizens of
Boston, until the fact was noted, when a group of the
radicals made it their business to frequent the place in
order to assert their equ41 rights.*
The zeal of some school children over non-importation
brought on the first death of a townsman.^ On Thursday
^Letter to Hillsborough, Apr. 27, 1770; Mass. Arch., vol. xxv, p. 391.
2 Palfrey to John Wilkes; M. H. S. Procs., vol. 47, p. 211.
' Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, pp. 259-261.
* Letter of Thomas Young, Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. xi, p. 7.
* Bos. Eve. Post, Feb. 26, Mch. 5, 1770; Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii,^
pp. 269-270.
l8o THE COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
morning, February 22, 1770, some boys placed a crude
figure representing four importers, in front of Theophilus
Lillie's door. Richardson, an " infamous Informer," re-
monstrated with the youths, and finally endeavored to de-
stroy the efiig}^ Failing in this, he retreated to his house
nearby to the shrill jeers of ''Informer! Informer!" Here
he was joined by his wife and a man: and the two sides
pelted each other with rubbish until the better marksmxan-
ship of the children was clearly established. Then from
inside the house, Richardson fired several times into the
crowd, killing Christopher Snider, an eleven-year-old boy,
and wounding the little son of Captain John Gore. Snider's
funeral was made the occasion for a great demonstration;
and the lad became the " little hero and first martyr to the
noble cause."
Less than two weeks later occurred the unfortunate street-
affray, which was glorified by the radicals as the " Boston
Massacre." It was the inevitable result of the festering
ill-feeling, which had been caused by the altercations over
smuggling and non-importation and by the unaccustomed
presence of troops in the midst of a civil population. The
familiar story of the night of ]\Iarch the fifth need not be
recounted here. Like earlier clashes, the trouble was begun
by irresponsible youths on the street: but it closed with
the fatal shooting of five men and the wounding of several
others by the soldiers. It is possible that some of the shots
into the crowd w^ere fired from the windows of the custom
house nearby.^ While the bloodshed was wholly accidental,
the radicals immediately made it a pretext for procuring
the removal of the soldiers to Castle AMlliam in the harbor,
^ On this point, Tide Channing, History of United States, vol. iii, pp.
1 19- 120 n. For a different view, vide Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii,
pp. 279-280. Vide also Murray, Letters, p. 165.
NON-IMPORTATION l8l
where the Customs Board found it prudent to join them
for a time.^
Resorts to mob violence now became more frequent.
When Hutchinson sought to get a wealthy importer to pro-
mote an association in opposition to non-importation, he
was told that such a project would only serv^e to expose the
signers to " popular rage." " Nathaniel Rogers, the un-
redeemed, was forced to flee the Boston mob only to find
conditions equally bad in New York, his place of refuge;
and he returned to Boston to sue humbly but fruitlessly for
a restoration to public favor at the hands of the Committee
of Merchants.^ One of the proscribed McMasters was
carted about Boston by a mob on June 19 and saved from
a " suit of the modern mode " only by his promise that he
would at once depart the town.* " Boston people are run
mad," wrote Hutchinson on August 26. " The frenzy was
not higher when they banished my pious great-grandmother,
when they hanged the Quakers, when they afterwards
hanged the poor innocent witches . . ." ^
The intense feeling aroused by the Massacre undoubt-
edly put new life into the non-importation cause in New
England at a time when sentiment in its favor was waning
throughout the continent. On March 13, the town of
Boston appointed a committee to circulate an agreement
among the shopkeepers against the sale of any more tea
until the duties should be removed ; and more than two hun-
dred and twelve dealers responded. On the nineteenth, the
town, by unanimous vote, entered in the town records the
^ Letters of S. Cooper, Am. Hist. Rev., vol. viii, pp. 317, 319.
^ Mass. Arch., vol. xxv, pp. 393-394.
^ Ibid., vol. xxvi, pp. 488, 491; Bos. Eve. Post, May 21, June 11, 1770.
* Ibid., June 25, 1770.
^ Mass. Arch., vol. xxvi, p. 540.
1^2
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
names of all those proscribed by the merchants on January
2^. A week later it was decided by the town that three
ships should be constructed in order to give employment to
the poor/ In the following two months, the merchants
rejected several offers of importers and Scotch merchants
to construct ships because of the invariable condition that
the latter should have the privilege of a free sale of goods.^
What degree of success did the non-importers attain in
enforcing the agreement at Boston? As already stated,
trade statistics are not satisfactory on this point, as no dis-
tinction was made between allowed and prohibited articles,
or between importation into Massachusetts and into New
England in general. And it should be recalled that two
provinces of New England were admittedly dilatory or
derelict in their professions of non-importation. Neverthe-
less, even such figures show a decrease of British imports
of almost fifty per cent, the imports from Great Britain into
all New England falling from £430,806 in 1768 to £223,694
in the following year.^ It is certain that Lieutenant Gov-
ernor Hutchinson believed that the non-importation agree-
ment was well enforced, and that in contrast to the forces
supporting it the powers of the government were insignifi-
cant.* The retired Governor Bernard informed a commit-
tee of the Privy Council in June, 1770, that "a sort of
vState Inquisition " had been erected in Boston and that the
agreements " were intirely done by force and to this Hour
^ Bos. Town Recs. (1770-1777), pp. 12-13, 16-17, 20.
"^ Bos. Gaz., Apr. 9, ]\Iay 7, 1770.
^ Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, p. 486, 494-495. The figures
for the year 1770 are even less informing, as trade was re-opened in
October of that year. Nevertheless, only £394.451 was imported as
compared with £1,420,119 in 1771. Ibid., pp. 508, 518-519.
* Hosmer, Hutchinson, pp. 166-168, 437-438.
NON-IMPORTATION ig^
intirely effected by having a trained Mob." ^ It would
seem that two friendly eye-witnesses of these events were
singularly restrained in their judgments on the execution
of the non-importation regulation. Wrote William Palfrey :
'' the agreement has been as generally and strictly adhered
to as was possible from the nature of so extensive an under-
taking, notwithstanding all the opposition it has met with
from a few individuals." ' And said Dr. Andrew Eliot
in a private letter : " That there hath been deceit among
some individuals cannot be doubted. But the Town in gen-
eral has been honest, and has suffered incredibly; more, I
am persuaded, than any Town on the continent." ^ Even
that exacting radical, Sam Adams, wrote to a congenial
spirit : " Thro the Influence of the Comers & Tories, Boston
has been made to appear in an odious Light. The Mer-
chants in general have punctually abode by their Agreement,
to their very great private loss." * In view of all the evi-
dence, these seem conclusions which the student of history^
may fairly accept.
Outside of the environs of Boston, the problem of secur-
ing enforcement of the non-importation in other ports and
towns of Massachusetts also presented some difficulties.
It proved difficult to scrutinize the conduct of Falmouth
on remote Casco Bay; and this port probably provided en-
trance for some debarred goods into the province. The
traders and inhabitants there did not formally adopt an
agreement until June 26, 1770.^ Salem and Marblehead,
^ Acts of Privy Council, Colonial, vol. v, no. 155.
' Bos. News-Letter, Aug. 31, 1769.
' Letter of Jan. 26, 1771 ; 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, p. 457.
* Letter of Nov. 21, 1770 to Peter Timothy; Adams, Writings (Cush-
ing), vol. ii, p. 65.
^ Bos. Gaz., Oct. 30, 1769, July 9, 1770.
184 THE COLOXIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
the chief trading towns next to Boston, proved more faith-
ful. The merchants of Salem adopted an agreement in Sep-
tember, 1768, similar to that of Boston of the preceding
month/ On May i, 1769, the Essex Gazette published an
itemized account of the spring importations, and concluded :
" There has not been any Goods imported here or expected
that has been wrote for since the Agreement," save, of
course, certain permitted articles. During the following
year, public notices from time to time showed that the
Salem Committee of Inspection was alert in detecting for-
bidden importations and in procuring the storing of goods. ^
In September, 1770, four dealers whose importations had
been placed in store obtained possession of them through
the assistance of a " process of law " and a doughty under-
sheriff. These persons were proscribed, as were also the
inhabitants who dealt at their stores. The town meeting
solemnly resolved that an account of the dealers' defiant
conduct should be publicly read at every annual meeting for
the next seven years. ^
The Marblehead merchants exhibited the first symptoms
of joining with Boston and Salem on October 19, 1769,
when a chest of tea, purchased of a Boston importer, was
carted ceremoniously about the streets and then returned
to its starting-point in Boston.* A week later the mer-
chants of Marblehead signed an agreement to dispense with
^ Essex Gaz., Sept. 6, 1768; also Bos. Gaz., Sept. 12.
^ Bos. Post-Boy, July 4, 1769; Essex Gas., Aug. 15, 1769; Bos. Gaz.^
Aug. 27, 1770. Upon news of the partial repeal of the Townshend
duties, the town meeting on May i, 1770 voted an agreement against
the drinking of tea; and within a week three hundred, sixty persons,
almost all heads of families, attached their signatures. Essex Gaz.,
May 8, 1770.
^ Ibid., Oct. 2, g, 16, 23, 1770.
* Bos. Gaz., Oct. 23, 1769.
NON-IMPORTATION ig-
British importations, save certain articles, until the repeal
of the Townshend duties/ Under this agreement, im-
portations were duly stored with the committee by all the
merchants, except four whose names were published." A
signed statement of the committee of inspection, in the
Essex Gazette, May 22, 1770, affirmed that a strict scrutiny
of all importations since the adoption of the agreement had
revealed only a few forbidden articles and these had been
sent to Boston for re-shipment to London. As was to be
expected, whispers began to reach Boston that Salem,
Marblehead, Newbury and Haverhill had deviated from non-
importation; and finally, on July 31, 1770, the merchants
and inhabitants of Boston appointed a committee to visit
the towns and make report of their observations. A week
later the committee was able to report that the towns in
question had honorably carried out their agreements and
the assembled body passed resolutions congratulating them
on their steadfastness.^
In addition to the places already mentioned, a host of
inland towns joined, in 1770, in resolutions to boycott the
Boston importers and to consume no more tea..„- Although
Charlestown took this step in Febr«afyn;1ie vast majority
adopted their measures coincident with the Boston Massacre
* Mass. Gas. & News Letter, Nov. 2, 1769.
2 The proscribed merchants entered a vigorous defense and promised
future adherence to the agreement; but they won no lenience. Essex
Gas., Dec. 19, 26, 1769; Jan. 16, 1770; Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Dec.
28, 1769. On learning of the partial repeal of the Townshend duties,
the town meeting voted on May 10, 1770 a continuation of the agree-
ment and ordered that, whereas 719 heads of families had signed an
agreement to use no tea, the ten delinquents should be stigmatized in
the newspapers. It was also voted that the town should pay the freight
in sending back such goods as had arrived in consequence of the
partial repeal. Essex Gas., May 15, 1770.
^ Mass. Spy, Aug. 14, 1770; also A^ Y. lourn., Aug. 23.
1 85 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
and the ensuing period of excitement. On the very day of
that affair, nine towns entered such resolutions/ Before
the first of April, seventeen more towns followed their ex-
ample; " and in May, at least four other towns joined in the
resolutions.^
The enforcement of non-importation at New York did
not present any very unusual features. The agreement
went into operation after November i, 1768; and in the
following March, before the spring shipments began to
arrive, a committee of inspection was appointed by the
merchants who were subscribers to the agreement, with
Isaac Low at its head.^ Low represented the best type of
merchant-reformer, and was long to head merchants' com-
mittees in their efforts to obtain trade concessions from
Parliament. He possessed wide commercial connections
and was financially interested in a slitting mill.^ The doc-
trinaire phrase of '' no taxation without representation "
meant to him merely a cover for carrying on business with
a modicum of parliamentary restraint. In the stormy days
of 1 774- 1 775, he retained the confidence of both radicals
and conservatives, but his own influence was thrown against
the dismemberment of the empire; when war came, his
choice lay with the home countr}^
^ Acton, Dedham, Holliston, Littleton, Maiden, Medway, Waltham,
Watertown, Westford, Most of the resolutions of this period may be
found in the Bos, Eve. Post, Mch. 19 to July 9, 1770.
^ Abington, Attleborough, Billerica, Brookfield, Cambridge, Gloucester,
Groton, Hingham, Lancaster, Medford, Milton, Pembroke, Plymouth,
Roxbury, Salisbury, Sandwich, Sudbury.
' Andover, Boxford, Danvers, Taunton.
* A''. Y. Gas. & Merc, Mch. 20, 1769. For names of the committeemen,
vide Becker, N. Y. Parties, 1760-1776, p. 75, n. 106.
^ P. Curtenius to Boston Committee of Correspondence, Aug. 26, 1774.
Bos. Co)n. Cor. Papers (N. Y. Pub. Libr.), vol. ii, pp. 381-385.
NON-IMPORTATION 1 87
The operations of the committee of inspection differed
from those of its counterpart in Boston chiefly in requir-
ing merchandise, imported contrary to the agreement, to
be kept in a public store under the lock and key of the com-
mittee. This arrangement placed a stopper on a possible
leakage of stored goods, and created public confidence in the
good faith of the non-importing merchants. In the New
York Journal, May 11, 1769, the committee stated officially
that the several vessels which had lately arrived had brought
some packages upon consignment, which were under ban of
the agreement and which had been placed in the public
store, in all but one or two instances.^ The New York
Gazette and Weekly Mercury of May 8 averred that the
dutied goods imported in the preceding fall amounted to
some hundreds of pounds sterling but that the amount did
'' not exceed 40s. this Spring." Later in the year, ship
masters whose cargoes contained prohibited articles found
it necessary to publish sworn statements, explaining and ex-
cusing their inadvertence.^
The most difficult problem that the committee of in-
spection dealt with was to prevent clandestine importations
from neighboring provinces, Pennsylvania in particular.
Since the Philadelphia agreement went into effect four
months after New York, there was a constant temptation
to introduce into New York goods that had been imported
at Philadelphia later than was permitted by the local agree-
ment. Such an instance caused *' uneasiness " among the
inhabitants in April, 1769, and the offending merchant
^ The public were asked to boycott these delinquents and all those
who traded with them. For the enforcement of the agreement upon
the arrival of the Britannia from L-^ndon, April 29, 1769 (probably
the first case of enforcing non-importation), vide N. Y. Gas. 6r Merc,
May I, 1769; Bos. Chron., May 15.
^ Vide two instances in N. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Nov. 20, 1769.
1 88 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
" voluntarily " returned the goods to Philadelphia/ Two
months later, the committee commended to the public the
action of Peter Clopper, for returning to Philadelphia, of
his own accord, some fineries which he had purchased there
for his family.^ Alexander Robertson, another merchant,
was not so tractable. Some New Jersey people examined
his casks of goods in transit from Philadelphia and re-
ported the nature of his shipment to the committee of in-
spection. With an air of injured surprise, he avowed to
the committee his innocence of evil intent, implored the
pardon of the public in a published statement, and agreed
to send back the goods. It quickly developed that he did
conscientiously return the casks, but their contents remained
in the cellar of the ferry-house for a later introduction into
New York. This duplicity brought upon him all the rigors
of a boycott.^
The shopkeepers and other inhabitants had adopted an
agreement which confirmed and buttressed the merchants'
combination. This element of the population soon began
to grow impatient with the deliberate measures of the mer-
chants, and they recalled with relish the swift effective meth-
ods of Stamp Act days. When, therefore, the silversmith^
Simeon Cooley, was proscribed by the committee on July
20, 1769, for insolent defiance of non-importation, it did not
seem sufficient to the inhabitants in general that his behavior
should be dismissed with a declaration of boycott. A mass
meeting was held the following day in the Fields to treat
with him; and when he refused to appear for fear of per-
sonal violence, the crowd moved en masse upon his house.
^ N. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Apr. 17, 1769.
^ A''. Y. Journ., June 29, 1769.
^ N. Y. Gas. & Merc, June 19, 1769; N. Y. Journ., June 29, July 6;
Bos. News-Letter, June 29, For Willett's offense of a similar char-
acter, vide N. Y. Gas. & Merc, July 17.
NON-IMPORTATION l8g
Fleeing to the fort, he prevailed upon Major Pitcairn to send
a file of soldiers to guard the house ; but these were suddenly
withdrawn, apparently upon sober second thought of the
military. Cooley agreed to meet the crowd the next after-
noon; and there he '' publickly acknowledged his Crimes;
. . . engaged to store an Equivalent to the Goods he had
sold, together with all those he had in Possession," and to
conduct himself faultlessly in the future. The boycott re-
mained; and two months later he disposed of his business
and departed in disgust for Jamaica with a pocket-book
much the lighter for his pertinacity.^ On September 19,
an assemblage of inhabitants again met to deal with a
jeweller who had been proscribed by the merchants. A
scaffold was erected near Liberty Pole ; the culprit, Thomas
Richardson by name, was then called before them; and,
mounted on the rostrum, he discovered a readiness to ask
the forgiveness of the public and to agree to store his goods. ^
With each application of mob law the merchants as a class
became more fearful. The employment of violence was
not a part of their program for obtaining trade reforms;
they had every reason to desire to hold the populace in leash.
As events progressed, the rift between the merchants and
the " Sons of Liberty " widened. As Colden remarked, at
this time, of attempts to instigate violence, '' People in gen-
eral, especially they of property, are aware of the dangerous
Consequences of such riotous and mobish proceedings." ^
On Tuesday, June 26, 1770, a transient named Hills was de-
tected in the act of peddling wares debarred by the agree-
^ A'. Y. Joiini., July 20, 1769; .V. Y. Gas. & Merc, July 24, Sept. 18.
Coole)''s version, first published in the London Public Ledger, may
be found in Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Nov. 22,.
' A''. Y. Journ., Sept. 21, 1769.
' Colden, Letter Books, vol, ii, p. 200.
IQO THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ment, and on the demand of the committee of inspection he
surrendered his goods, worth almost £200, to be stored..
About one o'clock that night a number of persons in dis-
guise took forcible possession of the goods and committed
the whole to the flames. Without further warning, Hills
fled the town. The committee of inspection made this the
occasion for a solemn preachment and warning. In a.
signed statement, the midnight visitation was stigmatized
as '' a high Insult " offered to the committee and to the city
by " some lawless Ruflians/' and every good citizen was
urged to do all in his power " to bring the Authors, Aiders
and Abettors of so unwarrantable an Act to speedy Justice." ^
Naturally the offenders continued undiscovered; but these
new instances of mob assertion had a controlling influence
on the course of the merchants in the subsequent years.
There is every reason to believe that non-importation was
exceedingly well enforced in New York. The committee
had no difficulty to contend with, except the greed of those
merchants who sought to import goods at the prevailing high
prices. It was claimed in December, 1769, that every bit of
goods brought in contrary to the agreement had been placed
in the public store." Although this high standard of per-
fection was not reached, the figures show that the importa-
.tions from Great Britain in 1769 had fallen to £75,930, as
compared with £490,673 in the preceding year, a record
which was not equalled or even approached in any other
province.^
^ A''. Y. Joiirn., June 28, July 5, 1770.
^Letter from New York; Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Dec. 21, 1769.
^ Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, pp. 486, 494-495. The British
importations into New York in 1770 amounted to £475,991. Ibid., p.
508. It is, of course, impossible to know what proportion of the
goods imported during these years was permissible under the agree-
ment. It will be remembered that the agreement was also directed
NON-IMPOR TA TION I g i
In Philadelphia the opposition to non-importation, once
that measure had been adopted, was even milder in char-
acter. The body of merchants were its hearty supporters,
although there was a pronounced feeling on the part of the
importers of British drygoods that the provisions of the local
agreement discriminated unjustly against them. Their com-
plaint was that their commerce was cut off, while the mer-
chants who traded with the West Indies and the Wine
Islands continued their business as before the agreement;
and they pointed out that these prospering traders were
paying duties upon importations of molasses and wines and
thus counteracting the principle of home rule in taxation,
for which the Americans professed to be fighting. More-
over, the merchants of Maryland and Albany, acting under
more liberal agreements, were importing goods for the In-
dian trade, a privilege that was denied to the Philadelphia
merchants.^ Their dissatisfaction with the agreement took
the form of efforts to modify it or repeal it rather than
clandestine attempts to violate it.
The Society of Friends, in which some of the great mer-
chants were very influential, found an early occasion to take
an official stand against it. At the time of the Stamp Act,
more than fifty of them, including such prominent Quakers
as Israel and James Pemberton, had signed the agreement;
and indeed the measure appeared to be a Quaker method of
resistance. But the present agreement was more rigorous
in its terms ; and when the Charming Polly episode disclosed
that the populace, most of whom '' were incapable of judg-
ing prudently on a matter of so great importance," might
against smuggled importations from Hamburg and Holland. There
were no published accounts of efforts to enforce these latter restric-
tions. " A, B." in the A^ Y. Journ., Nov. 23, 1769, made an incidental
reference to the storing of large consignments from foreign merchants.
^ Pa. Gaz., Jan. 25, 1770; Pa. Mag., vol. xiv, p. 42.
ig2 THE COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
be called in to exert force in executing the agreement, the
monthly meeting of Philadelphia advised Friends to have
nothing to do with non-importation measures/ Neverthe-
less, many prominent Quakers were concerned in the agree-
ment, including John Reynell who headed the committee
of inspection.
The Philadelphia merchants established an excellent rec-
ord of enforcement. On Monday, July jy, 1769. occurred
the first effort to violate the agreement, when the Charming
Polly with a cargo of malt arrived in port. Amos StrettelL
the consignee, was able to show that he had not ordered
the malt; and at a public meeting the following day the
brewers of the city presented an agreement that they would
have none of it. The meeting voted unanimously that any
person who bought any of the malt or helped to unload it
should be deemed an " Enemy to his Country." A week
later, the captain of the brig, not perhaps lacking a sense of
humor, sailed with his malt to Cork." On July 29, the brig
Speedwell arrived with some debarred goods, which had been
ordered prior to the agreement; these were placed in a
public store. ^
The expeditious return of imports commended itself as
a better device than the storing of them on either the New-
York or the Boston plan. The Philadelphia Committee
believed it w^ould defeat the scheme of " some monied peo-
ple " in England " to buy up quantities of manufactures on
easy terms and lodge them in the principal towns in America
to be ready for the first opening of the markets after the
repeal." ^ Therefore, at a meeting of August 2, the mer-
^ Sharpless, I., The Quakers in the Revolution (Philadelphia, 1899),
pp. 77-80; Lincoln, Revolutionary Movement in Pa., p. 151.
^ Pa. Journ., July 20, 1769; also A'. Y. Gaz. & Merc, July 24.
'Pa. Journ., Aug. 3, 1769.
* Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 29-31.
N ON -I MP OR T ATI ON 1^3
chants decided that all goods, which arrived from England
on consignment or which had been ordered after February
6, should not be stored as other goods but should be sent
back/ This plan was followed thereafter. A notable case
of enforcement occurred when the Friend's Good Will ar-
rived on September 30 with a great quantity of merchandise
shipped by British merchants on speculation. These goods
were said to have been offered to eighty-four merchants in
vain; and the brig returned with her cargo intact." In
December, the signers of the agreement authorized the com-
mittee to auction off such stored goods as were likely to
perish from prolonged storing, the profits of such sale to
be devoted to some public use.^
The committee of inspection continued its activities far
into the year 1 770 and did not find it necessary to proscribe
offenders by name until June of that year.* Statistics show
that British imports had been reduced in value from £441,- ^
829 in 1768 to £204,978 in the year 1769, and to £134,881
in 1770.^ Next to New York, this was the best record of
any province for the year 1769, and the best record on the
continent for the year 1770. The enforcement of non-
importation was free from all exhibitions of mob violence,
^ Pa. Gaz., Aug. 3, 1769; also Pa. Journ., Aug. 3.
^ Pa. Journ., Oct. 5, 1769; S. C. Gas., Nov. 16. The committee of
inspection also had to be watchful to detect fraudulent practices on
the part of British merchants. In one instance, Stephen Collins
solemnly informed the London merchant, Samuel Elam. " thy Brother
Emanuel was found to have antedated his Invoices and Letters in
sutch a manner as to Lead people here [toj talke very freely of them."
A few months later, he returned a bale of cloth sent by Samuel Elam
himself contrary to orders, with the admonition : " I am realy sorry
for thy sake it has happened, as many people seem mutch Disaffected."
Collins, Letter Book 1760-177 3, Sept. 18, Dec. 11, 1769.
' Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 64-67.
* E. g., vide Pa. Journ., July 5, 12, 28, 1770.
* Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, pp. 4^5, 494-495, 5o8.
194 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
largely because goods violative of the agreement were im-
mediately re-shipped to Great Britain.
Of the minor provinces in the commercial group, New
Hampshire took a belated stand on the side of non-importa-
tion when the emotions of the people were deeply stirred
by the news of the Boston Massacre. As late as February,
1770, Governor Wentworth had written that some Scotch
merchants were plying a trade in imported wares undis-
turbed.^ After the fateful fifth of March, all indifference
vanished among the people. " The cry of Blood, reechoed
from one to the other, seems to infuriate them," wrote the
governor. " Upon this event the Assembly were prevailed
upon to forward their petition, which would otherwise have
slept forever; the people will not be persuaded but that the
Commissioners of the Customs and the Revenue Acts are
exerted to destroy the lives and absorb the property of the
people." ^ The first action was taken by town meetings at
New Ipswich and Exeter, two towns located not far from
the Massachusetts line. New Ipswich was a sparsely settled
township with trading relations solely with Boston ; and on
March 19, they resolved to purchase no articles forbidden
by the Boston agreement and to boycott all importers.^
The inhabitants of Exeter, notwithstanding the reputation
they enjoyed of living up to " the tip top of the Fashion."
agreed a week later to discourage the use of foreign luxuries
and to stop totally the consumption of tea until the duty
should be removed.* No action was taken by Portsmouth,
the chief port, until McMasters. a proscribed importer of
^ Vide supra, p. 155.
^ Brit. Papers ("Sparks Mss/'), vol. i, p. 17. Letter of Apr. 12, 1770
to Hillsborough.
^ Bos. Eve. Post, Apr. 9, 1770.
*iV. H. Gas., Apr. 13, May 11, 1770.
NON-IMPOR TA TION 1 95
Boston, sought to introduce his wares there. The town
meeting, on April 11, resolved to have no dealings with
McMasters or any other importer, and to boycott vendue
masters and coasting vessels that were in any way connected
with them. They even threatened to cancel the licenses of
tavern-keepers who permitted such goods to be exposed
for sale in their houses.^ The movement in New Hamp-
shire partook too much of the nature of an emotional revival
to be lasting in its effects ; and, as we shall see, the merchants,
at Portsmouth resumed importation as soon as the excite-
ment subsided.
Of the remaining northern provinces, Rhode Island was.
the only province whose conduct resembled, in any respect,
that of New Hampshire. Dragged into the non-importa-
tion league by threats of boycott by the great trading-towns^,
the merchants at Newport regarded their tardy agreement
with keenest disrelish. Hutchinson voiced the commor^
opinion of other provinces when he said : '' Rhode Island
professed to join but privately imported to their great
gain." ^ When John Maudsley, a member of the Sons of
Liberty, returned from London with goods forbidden by
the agreement, which had been adopted during his absence,
he *' cheerfully submitted " the goods to be stored, accord-
ing to the account in the Newport Mercury, April 9, 1770.
But if "Americanus," of Swanzey, is to be believed in the
Boston Gazette, May 7, the goods in question were placed
in Maudsley's store on the wharf, and, after dark, were
carted to his house, immediately opened and publicly sold
to almost every shop in Newport, unnoticed by the Mer-
chants' Committee. This tale bears the color of truth.
Certain it is that the Merchants' Committee at Newport
1 N. H. Gas., Apr. 13, 1770; also Bos. Eve. Post, Apr. 16.
^ Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 261 n.
Iq5 the colonial MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
never displayed any noticeable activity in detecting tabooed
importations.
All evidence would indicate that New Jersey, the Dela-
ware Counties and Connecticut were true to their profes-
sions of non-importation and non-consumption. In the case
of Connecticut, "A Freeman of Connecticut " wrote in July,
1770, with every assurance of truth, that the various agree-
ments of the towns had been kept " save in three or four
trivial instances, inadvertently and inconsiderately done;
and in every instance, one excepted, public satisfaction has
been given and the goods stored." ^ The exception was a
small importation of tea from Boston.
1 Conn. Couranf, July 30, 1770. A case, which gained local notoriety,
was the importation of some coarse woolens by Mr. Verstille, of Weath-
ersfield, a man who had been in England when the non-importation
agreement was adopted. As the merits of the case were not at all
clear, some merchants cut the knot by buying the goods from Verstille
and placing them in store at their expense. Ibid., Mch. 5.
CHAPTER V
Enforcement and Bbeakdown of Non-Importation
(Continued)
In the plantation provinces, non-importation and the prob-
lems of its enforcement were much less a part of the fabric
of everyday life than in the commercial provinces. The
agreements and associations had been promoted by the plant-
ing class in opposition to the small, active mercantile class ;
and in the general absence of trading centres, it was difficult
for the planting element to implant the fear of discipline
in the hearts of the merchants. The geographical distribvi-
tion of southern society deprived the planters of the oppor-
tunity of exerting their influence compactly, except at the
periodical meetings of the legislative assemblies. Further-
more, since the economic discontent in the South was not
directly traceable to the Townshend duties and restrictions,
a literal obedience to the agreements did not always seem
imperative to the planters themselves.^ The result was that
^ The conduct of George Washington probably typified the attitude
of many of the planters toward the non-importation association. On
July 25, 1769, he ordered a bill of goods from a London house, with
instructions that: "If there are any articles contained in either of
the invoices (paper only excepted) which are taxed by act of Parlia-
ment ... it is my express desire . . . that they may not be sent."
Washington ignored the fact that a long list of household luxuries and
personal fineries were equally under the ban with the dutied articles.
Vide supra, p. 137 n. A little more than a year later, however, he place<i
orders in London for goods, which seemed to correspond entirely
with the provisions of the Virginia association. Washington, Writings
(Ford), vol. ii, pp. 270 n., 284 n.
197
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
-^axnport^ from England to the plantation provinces actually
increased somewhat in the years 1769 and 1770, whereas, in
the commercial provinces, they declined two-thirds in the
year 1769 as compared with the year 1768, and fell below
the level of 1768 even in the year 1770 when the agreements
_ collapsed. Virginia appears to have been the worst of-
fender quantitatively. To Maryland and South Carolina
falls the distinction of having made the most honorable
record.
Soon after the adoption of the Virginia Association of
May 18, 1769, it became evident that the factors dominated
the situation in the province and that, unless their aid was
enlisted, the association could be hardly more than a glitter-
ing futility.^ A new and even more liberal plan was there-
fore drafted; and on June 22, 1770, it was jointly adopted
b}' the members of the House of Burgesses and the merchant
body of Williamsburg. The new association was a lengthy
document which covered the essential points of the earlier
agreement. Several changes were made in the list of articles
enumerated for non-importation. A regulation was added
to boycott importers who defied the association or who
bought goods imported into Virginia because rejected in
other provinces; and a committee of inspection was au-
thorized for each county with instructions to publish the
names of ail offenders. The association was signed by the
moderator, Peyton Randolph, by Andrew Sprowle, chairman
of the Williamsburg traders, and by one hundred and sixty-
six others. Copies of the association were sent to the coun-
ties for signing." Only one or two attempts to enforce the
* Bland, Papers (Campbell, C, ed.), vol. i, pp. 28-30; Washington,
Writings (Ford), vol. ii, pp. 280-283.
^ Pa. Gas., July 12, 1770; also A^ Y. Joiirn., July 19. A copy, signed
by sixty-two inhabitants of Fairfax County, is in the Library of
Congress.
NON-IMPORTA TION I gg
association were noted in the newspapers. In one instance,
Captain Spier of the Sharpe, whose conduct at Philadelphia
had caused his proscription, arrived at Norfolk to ply his
trade. Although the signers of the association took occa-
sion to express their belief that the landing or storing of his
goods would be an offense against the association, neverthe-
less the merchants, William and John Brown, received goods
from him and defied the local committee. In Rind's Vir-
ginia Gazette of August 2, 1770, the committee published the
facts of the affair, with the statement : " What is further
necessary to be done ... is submitted to the Consideration
of the Virginia Associators."
Considerably more pains were taken to enforce the as-
sociation in Maryland and with greater success. The non-
importation combination in that province gained much
strength from the proximity of the Maryland ports to
Philadelphia and from the fact that non-importation had re-
ceived some local mercantile support from the beginning.
The number of native merchants was greater than in Vir-
ginia; and indeed Baltimore was showing indications of
becoming a commercial rival of Philadelphia.^ The execu-
tion of the Maryland pact was jealously scrutinized by the
merchants at Philadelphia, and for a time the good faith
of the Baltimore merchants was suspected. This feeling
took definite shape in November, 1769, when the Baltimore
Committee of Merchants permitted two merchants to bring
in goods, valued at £2600, that violated the local agreement
of March 30. In the one case, the importer had satisfied a
meeting of associators that he had received a special exemp-
tion covering the fall shipments; and, in the other, it had
been shown that the goods were permitted by the general
Maryland association which postdated the local agreement.
^Lincoln, Revolutionary Movement in Pa., pp. 59-65-
200 THE COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
These occurrences brought a sharp letter from the Philadel-
phia Committee of Merchants, with an intimation that the
Marylanders were plotting to deflect trade from Phila-
delphia and a warning that their conduct would surely bring
on them a rigorous boycott. When they got further light,
however, the Philadelphia Committee freely admitted their
error and expressed pleasure at the upright conduct of Balti-
more/ In view of no evidence to the contrary, the mer-
chants of Baltimore seem to have merited this good opinion.
Thus, in May, 1770, a meeting of merchants refused to
permit a shipment, valued at £1292, to be landed.^
In all Maryland, the best known case of enforcement was
that of the brigantine Good Intent at Annapolis in Febru-
ary, 1770.^ Courts of law have seldom sat on cases involv-
ing nicer points of interpretation; and few better examples
could be found of the application of a rule of conduct
against the wish and interest of individuals. The Good
Intent arrived from London heavily laden with European
goods for a number of mercantile houses of Annapolis.
James Dick and Anthony Stewart, the largest importers and
respected merchants of the town, admitted that their own
shipment amounted to £1377, of which only £715 worth con-
sisted of articles permitted by the agreement. Believing
that the character of the importations w^as being widely
misunderstood, Dick & Stewart requested a joint meeting
^ Md. Gas., Dec. 28, 1769; Papers of Phila. Merchants, pp. 45-47, 62-63.
^ Pa. Gas., June 7, 1770; also N. Y. Journ., June 7.
• The Proceedings of the Committee Appointed to examine . . .
Brigantine Good Intent . . . (Annapolis, 1770), reprinted in Md. Hist.
Mag., vol. iii, pp. 141-157, 240-256, 342-363; statement of minority of
this committee in Md. Gas., Apr. 19, 1770. An abstract of the pam-
phlet was published in ibid., Feb. 14, and copied into N. Y. Journ., Mch.
8. Vide also Governor Eden's correspondence with reference to this
affair in 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. x, pp. 621-626.
NON-IMPORTA TION 201
of the committees of the counties of Baltimore, Prince
George and Anne Arundel to render judgment in the matter,
and agreed that no goods should be removed from the
vessel for twelve days after its arrival. Before this joint
committee a vast mass of evidence was laid by the various
importers, consisting of correspondence, manifests, invoices,
shop-notes, bills of lading and other papers. After careful
consideration, ''Abundant and satisfactory Proofs " ^ made
it clear that the importers had ordered their goods before
any association had been formed in Maryland ; but the com-
mittee held that, long since, the orders had properly become
" dead," because of the protracted delay of the London
shipper in sending the goods after hearing of the Maryland
Association, and because of countermanding orders in other
cases. The shipper's belated performance of his orders was
attributed to his " ungenerous Principle ... in trumping
up old Orders to colour a premeditated Design to subvert
the Association." Therefore, the committee resolved that
merchandise debarred by the association should not be
landed, and that, as the allowable articles were packed in
with them, no goods at all should be landed. The im-
porters made several pointed protests, emphasizing that they
had not violated the letter of the association and that many
practical difficulties lay in the way of returning the goods.
Nevertheless, they were forced to yield: and the Good
Intent with all goods on board sailed for London on Tues-
day, February 2y. The principle upon which the committee
acted was that, if the present cargo were admitted, *' every
Merchant in London, trading to this Province, might send
in any quantities of Goods he pleased, under Orders that he
must in Course of Business have refused to comply with."
Although Baltimore and Annapolis were the chief trading
^ The committee's own expression.
202 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
centres, committees of inspection were established through-
out the province; and a number of instances of enforcement
were noted in the newspapers/
The efforts to execute the non-importation association at
Charleston, South Carolina, developed a situation which
contained some unusual features. Sam Adams has been
fX^ ^ said to have had his counterpart in Chris Gadsden of South
A r ^y^ Carolina. Likewise, it may be said that the course of Wil-
liam Henry Drayton at this period reflected the stormy
career of John Mein. Drayton was a young man scarce
twenty-seven, a gentleman of independent wealth. Fear-
less, hotblooded, and of brilliant parts, he was by nature a
conservative. His later conversion to the radical cause has
been attributed to personal ambition, but can be more rightly
ascribed to his intense Americanism and to a change of
British policy in 1774 that outraged his sense of justice
as deeply as the situation he faced in 1769. Drayton was
the foremost adversary of non-importation in South Caro-
lina; and unlike John Mein, his tendency was to place his
opposition on legal and constitutional grounds, although he
indulged in furious abuse upon occasion. Whether he
knew of Mein or not is uncertain; but Mein knew of him
and copied some of his most effective strictures into the
columns of the Boston Chronicle.
Drayton opened the attack in an article in the South
Carolina Gazette, August 3, 1769, under the signature
" Free-man." Centering his attention on the clause of the
association which proscribed all persons who failed to at-
tach their signatures within one month, he likened it to " the
Popish method of gaining converts to their religion by fire
and faggot. To stigmatize a man . . . with the infamous
^ Particularly in the counties of Prince George, St. Mary's, Talbot
and Charles. Md. Gaz., Apr. 12, May 24, July 12, 1770; Pa. Gaz., Nov.
30, 1769.
NON-IMPORTA TION 203
name of an enemy to his country can be legally done by no
authority but by that of the voice of the Legislature." Of
Gadsden he declared, in a transparent allusion, " this man
who sets up for a patriot and pretends to be a friend to
Liberty, scruples not, like Cromwell, who was the patriot
of his day, to break through and overthrow her fundamental
laws, while he declared he would support and defend them
all, and to endeavour to enslave his fellow-subjects, while
he avowed that he only contended for the preservation of
their liberties." Doubtful as to whether this patriot were
" a traitor or madman," he proposed that, to avoid any ill
consequences of his disorder, " he may be lodged in a certain
brick building, behind a certain white house near the old
barracks, and there maintained, at least during the ensuing
change and full of the moon, at the public expence."
The next issue of the Gazette brought an answer from
"' C. G.", full of abuse and personaHties ; and he was an-
swered in kind by " Freeman " the following week. On the
afternoon of September i, 1769, a general meeting of the
inhabitants of Charleston was held under Liberty Tree to
take counsel over the persistence of a few people in refusing
to sign the agreement. It was voted that the delinquents
should be given until September 7 to redeem themselves.^
When that day arrived, handbills were distributed over the
city containing the names of all non-subscribers. It ap-
peared that, exclusive of crown officials, only thirty-one per-
sons had withheld their signatures.^ Among the names pub-
lished were those of William Henry Drayton, William
Wragg and John Gordon. All three men hastened to issue
protests,^ but the burden of the controversy clearly rested
^ S. C. Gas., Sept. 7, 1769; also A^. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Oct. 30.
^ 5. C. Gas., Sept 14, 1769; also A'. Y. Gas. & Merc, Oct. 30.
* Gordon announced that he had signed the early merchants* agree-
ment; but that in the profusion of agreements, attempted and signed,
204
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
with the energetic and caustic pen of Drayton. Drayton
dwelt long and emphatically on the charge that the com-
mittee— *' that Harlequin Medley Committee " — had vio-
lated the first principle of liberty while pretending to strive
for it. He denounced " the laying illegal Restraints upon
the free Wills of free Men, who have an undoubted Right
to think and act for themselves;" and he declared: ''The
profanum vulgns is a species of mankind which I respect as
I ought, — it is humani generis. — But I see no reason why I
should allow my opinion to be controlled by theirs." ^
Gadsden replied in an article bristling with insinuation
and disparagement. He maintained that the proceedings of
the association did not violate a single law of the land ; and,
turning Drayton's own phrase, he held that freemen had a
right to associate to deal with whom they pleased." The
mechanic members of the General Committee, aroused by
Drayton's supercilious allusions, expressed their gratifica-
tion in print that he had '* been pleased to allow us a place
amongst human beings," and added reprovingly: "Every
man is not so lucky as to have a fortune ready provided to
his hand, either by his own or his wife's parents." ^
" Freeman " returned to the controversy in two more
articles, addressing himself largely to the task of refuting
Gadsden's assertion that the association did not violate the
law. He showed, to his own satisfaction, that the associa-
he would not be " bandyed from resolutions to resolutions " and,
moreover, he would not adopt a measure of which he disapproved.
5'. C. Gas., Sept. 14, 1769. Wragg wrote that he had not signed, be-
cause he did not believe in subscribing to an agreement to starve him-
self; and he argued that the agreement would not accomplish the
end desired. Ibid., Sept. 21.
^ Ibid., Sept. 21, i76g; also Bos. Chron., Oct. 30.
' S. C. Gaz., Sept. 28, 1769.
^Ibid., Oct. 5, 1769.
NON-IMPORTATION 205
tion bore the legal character of a '* confederacy " in that it
was a voluntary combination by bonds or promises to do
damage to innocent third parties, and that therefore the as-
sociators were punishable by law/ Gadsden now advanced
to a truly revolutionary position. Passing over the charges
of the illegal character of the association, and citing the his-
tory of England as his best justification, he affirmed that,
whenever the people's rights were invaded in an outrageous
fashion by a corrupt Parliament or an abandoned ministry,
mankind exerted '' those latent^ though inherent rights of
SOCIETY, which no climate, no time, no constitution, no
contract, can ever destroy or diminish;" that under such
circumstances petty men who cavilled at measures were
properly disregarded.^
Drayton was precluded from seeking redress for his
injuries in a court of law, as a majority of the common
pleas judges were signers of the association and as the jury
would probably consist entirely of signers, also. On De-
cember 5, 1769, he therefore had recourse to the legislature;
but his petition was rejected by the lower house without a
reading. The petition was afterwards published; ^ it con-
tained a powerful summary of the arguments he had used
in the Gazette as well as eloquent evidence of the efficacy of
the boycott measures. He freely admitted that " his com-
modities which heretofore were of ready sale now remain
upon his hands," and that possible purchasers, as soon as
they learned of his ownership of the comm.odities, " im-
^ Ibid., Oct. 12, 26, 1769. William Wragg, maintaining the same
point, argued that it did not follow that a number of persons as-
sociating together had a right to do what one man might do, and he
said that Parhament had acted on this doctrine in punishing tailors
for combinations to increase wages. Ihid., Nov. 16.
' " A Member of the General Committee," ihid., Oct. 18, 1769.
^ Ihid., Dec. 14, 1769; also Bos. Chron., Jan. 11, 1770.
2o6 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
mediately declined any further treaty for the purchase of
them, because of the Resolutions." Realizing that he was
a beaten man, he sailed for England on January 3, 1770, in
a ship that, appropriately enough, carried goods outlawed
by the association/
A vigorous execution of the association at Charleston
was insured by the fact that two-thirds of the General Com-
mittee consisted of planters and mechanics, only one-third
being merchants and factors. So successful was the en-
forcement that a recountal of even the striking instances
would be tedious and purposeless.^ The General Com-
mittee met regularly every Tuesday; subordinate to them
was a vigilant committee of inspection, which saw to the
storing of goods or their reshipment, as the importer pre-
ferred.* Almost every issue of the South Carolina Gazette
contained statements of the arrival of vessels and of the
transactions of the committee thereon. In only one in-
stance was the good faith of the committee impugned. Ann
and Benjamin Mathews having been publicly proscribed for
selling goods stored by them, Mrs. Mathews retorted, in a
printed article, that the goods had been ordered prior to the
association, that her son had given the promise to store
while she was lying very ill, and that stern necessity had
compelled her to open the goods. She charged that in-
dividual members of the committee, whom she named, had
been permitted to receive articles ordered before the associa-
tion had been adopted, and that in one or two instances their
articles had arrived after hers. The only difference between
her offense and that of Mr. Rutledge, who had recently
^ S. C. Gas., Jan. 4, 1770.
* An interesting account may be found in McCrady, S. C. under
Royal Govt., pp. 664-676.
' S. C. Gas., Nov. 14, 1769.
NON-IMPORTATION 207
imported two horses in consequence of an old order, was,
she averred, that he was a man who would not be trifled
with, while she was a poor widow living within two doors
of a leading man of the committee and thus in a position to
take a little cash from some of his customers. By way of
vindication, the committee was able to show that the im-
portations of the Mathews' had been purchased after copies
of the South Carolina Association had arrived in England,
a fact not obtaining in the other cases. A few months later,
the son appeared before the committee, acknowledged guilt
and heartfelt contrition, and promised to deliver all goods,
remaining unsold, into charge of the committee.^
The provision for the immediate reshipment of slaves was
rigidly enforced. For instance, Captain Evans arrived on
May 2, 1770, from Africa with three hundred and forty-
five negroes; and after attending a public meeting held to
consider his case, he filled his casks and set sail with his
cargo for the more hospitable shores of Georgia.^ It was
estimated by friends of non-importation that Great Britain
had lost not less than £300,000 sterling, at a moderate com-
putation, through the South Carolina regulations against
slave importation.^ Some little difficulty was experienced
in preventing violations of the association at Georgetown
and Beaufort; but this was obviated when committees of
inspection were appointed there early in February, 1770.*
Governor Bull wrote on December 6, 1769, to the home
government that " the people persevere under much in-
convenience to trade in the strict observance of the associa-
tion ; " on March 6 following, that the royal officials who
'^ S. C. & Am. Gen. Gas., June 15, 1770; S. C. Gas., May 31, June 28,
Oct. 4.
^ Ibid., May 17, 1770.
^Ibid., May 24, 1770.
* Ibid., Feb. i, 1770.
2o8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
had declined the association '' daily experience great losses
thereby, as Subscribers are forbidden to purchase Rice,
Indigo &c from non Subscribers;" and again on October
20, that the subscribers to the non-importation were '' tak-
ing large strides to enforce the rigid observing of their
Resolutions " through " the vigilance and industry of the
leaders, whose impetuosity of behaviour and reproachful
language deter the moderate, the timid and the dependent." ^
Trade statistics substantiate this view of the situation :
English imports into the Carolinas dropped from £306,600
in 1769 to £146,273 in 1770.^
Facts throwing light on the observance of non-importa-
tion in North Carolina are meager ; but it would appear that
the province-wide association, inaugurated by the assembly
in November, 1769, was generally ignored by the mer-
chants. On June 2, 1770, a general meeting was called at
Wilmington by the " Sons of Liberty " and was attended
by " many of the principal inhabitants of six large and
populous counties," mostly planters. The meeting agreed
to boycott and publish all who imported or purchased goods
contrary to the agreement. A letter, issued later by the
General Committee of the Sons of Liberty upon the Cape
Fear, expressed the hope that the merchants' " own interest
will convince them of the necessity of importing such
articles, and such only, as the planters will purchase." Com-
mittees of inspection were established in the six counties,
and those for the towns of Wilmington and Brunswick
were instructed to use particular vigilance.^ Thereafter,
the conditions of enforcement improved. The Cape Fear
Mercury of July 11, 1770, presented some instances of the
^ Brit. Papers ("Sparks Mss."), vol. ii, pp. 202, 206, 217.
' Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, pp. 494-495, 508,
^ Cape Fear Merc, July 11, 1770; Connor, Harnett, pp. 55-56.
NON-IMPORTATION 209
activity of the Wilmington Committee of Inspection, al-
though it admitted that some merchants were " daily pur-
chasing wines and many other articles " prohibited by the
agreement, a course of conduct which would surely lead to
the publication of their names. At the town of Newbern
no formal steps were taken to adopt an agreement; but it
was claimed in September, 1 770, that " the whole town
cannot now furnish a single pound of Bohea Tea," and that
" all the merchants here cannot produce for sale a single
yard of osnabrigs, negro cloth, coarse linens or scarcely
any European goods at all." ^
In Georgia, the non-importation association, which had
been so reluctantly adopted, was speedily disregarded. ■
Attempts were made to introduce slaves overland into South
Carolina; but this clandestine trade was closely watched.^
On June 2y, 1770, a general meeting of Charleston inhabi-
tants voted solemnly, without a dissenting voice, that
Georgia ought "to be amputated from the rest of their
brethren, as a rotten part that might spread a dangerous
infection," and that all commercial intercourse should be
severed, after fourteen days.* The desertion of Georgia
had no important results, since Georgia had no trading re-
lations of importance.
At first thought it may provoke surprise that the move-
ment for a general relaxation of non-importation should
be promoted by the merchants of two of the chief commercial
provinces. The merchants of the northern provinces were
certain to receive important material benefits from a repeal
^ S. C. Gaz. & Coun. Journ., Oct. 2, 1770.
* Brit. Papers (" Sparks Mss."), vol. ii, p. 286.
' S. C, Gas., May 17, 1770.
* Ibid., June 28, Aug. 23, 1770.
^
210 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of the various trade and revenue statutes; and it was this
purpose that had caused them to undertake the great non-
importation union of the provinces at the outset. But as
the months passed, they began to discover that the character
of their utihtarian revolt was changing under their eyes;
that self-styled '' Sons of Liberty " conceived of them as
bearing the standard in a great struggle for constitutional
rights; and they were chagrined to realize that they had, in
some instances, given grounds for such an interpretation.
Furthermore, the chief burden of the non-importation
had fallen upon the commercial provinces, imports from
England decreasing two-thirds in the year 1769 whereas
they actually increased somewhat in the plantation provinces.
In the early months, the checking of the stream of British
manufactures had increased the demand for goods which
had long cluttered their shelves; and the merchants dis-
posed of much old stock to advantage.^ Debts, long out-
standing from their customers, were called in; and remit-
tances were made to England at fifteen to twenty per cent
advantage on the £100 sterling.^ But when, after a time,
their stocks became depleted, they began to feel the injustice
^ The merchants obHged us at this time " to take old moth-eaten
cloths that had lain rotting in the shops for years and to pay a mon-
strous price for them;" this was the statement made later by a bitter
opponent of the non-importation movement of 1774. Seabury, S.,
Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress. . . .
By a Farmer (New York, i774), P- 12.
^ Conn. Cour., July 30, 1770; Pa. Gas., ^lay 31; Mass. Gas. & Post
Boy, Sept. 24. Governor Pownall declared in Parliament in March,
1770, that a monthly record of the rate of exchange for the last eight
years at the three leading ports of America showed an average rate
of 1673^ for the iioo sterling at Philadelphia, i7i5o at New York,
and 133^ at Boston ; while the current rate at the same ports was
145, 162 and 125-123, The rise and fall of exchange, he asserted,
was the barometer of trade, a falling exchange signifying a doubly
great loss of trade. Parliamentary History, vol, xvi, p. 860.
NON-IMPORTATION 2 1 1
of bearing the brunt of a struggle, from which the whole
populace expected to reap large benefits.
When they advanced their prices, they were accused by
the populace of being " monopoHsts " and "extortioners;"
and no countenance was given to their plea that high profits
were necessary in order to offset the general falling-off of
business. The storm centre of controversy was the price
of Bohea tea. At Philadelphia a memorial was pre-
sented to the Committee of Merchants, in January,
1770, which complained that the price of Bohea had
reached 5s. a pound and upward in face of an agree-
ment of dealers to maintain it at 3s. gd. ; and "A. B.",
writing in the Chronicle, declared he would post a.
list of all offenders in his shop and distribute it among his.
neighbors.^ At New York, the Committee of Merchants
advertised in the New York Journal, September 28, 1769,
that a careful investigation had failed to disclose any en-
hancement of prices; but on February 24, 1770, they found
it necessary to call the tea dealers before them and extract
a promise to keep the retail price of Bohea down to 5s. 6d.
and the wholesale price at 4s. 6d.^ A few weeks later, the
inhabitants of the city assembled, and called some of the
delinquents before them.^ Nevertheless, the price of tea
continued its ascent. Bohea reached los. a pound at
Annapolis by the middle of the year; and when Williams
& Company, the worst offenders, refused to conform to the
^ Pa. Chron., Jan. 29, 1770. It was announced in the same issue
that thereafter the size of the Chronicle would be smaller, because of
the rise in the price of paper. In the issue of July 2Z, a writer
claimed that tea had reached the " unconscionable sum of los.," a
paper of pins had advanced from lod. to 2s. pd., and other articles
were equally high in proportion.
' N. Y. Gas. & Merc, Feb. 26, 1770.
^ Ibid., Mch. 12, 1770; N. Y. lourn., July 12.
212 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
demand of the committee of inspection, the firm was pro-
scribed in the newspapers.^ A few complaints were also
heard at Boston against high prices, although apparently no
attempts were made to regulate prices there."
While the importing merchants were suffering a decline
'. in trade and the radical class in the population was beginning
to dominate the situation, a further affliction came in the
./ '.form of a decrease in the export trade to England. An
excessive exportation of American products to England in
1768 produced a slump in the export market in the year
1769, and there was only a slow recovery in the next few
years. This condition bore proportionately more severely
upon New York and Pennsylvania than upon New Eng-
land.^ " Interest, all powerful Interest, will bear down
Patriotism," predicted a Quaker merchant on December 9,
1769. " . . . Romans we are not as they were formerly,
when they despised Riches and Grandeur, abode in extreme
poverty and sacrificed every pleasant enjoyment for the
love and service of their Country." *
Thus, the seeds of discontent were pretty generously sown
among the merchants when news reached America that
'^ : Parliament had, on April 12, 1770, repealed the most im-
• portant portions of the law against which their agreements
were directed.^ This news did not come as a surprise, as
the governors had been notified by a letter of May 13, 1769
that such a measure was under contemplation and that the
taxes on glass, paper and colors had been laid " Contrary
1 N. Y. Journ., Aug. 2, 1770.
^ Bos. Chron., Dec. 11, 1769; Mass, Gas. & News-Letter, Dec. 21.
' There was some decrease in the export trade of the plantation
provinces, also; but the merchants there did not dominate the non-
importation movement.
* Letter of Henry Drinker; Pa. Mag., vol. xiv, p. 41.
*» 10 George III, c. 17. To be operative on December i, 1770.
NON-IMPORTATION 213
to the true principles of Commerce." ^ The reasons stated
for the proposed repeal coincided exactly with those urged
in the formal utterances of the merchant class in America."^
When Lord North carried through the repeal bill on the plea
that the duties affected were anti-commercial, the merchants
throughout the commercial provinces, with the exception of
the Bostonians, who had taken an advanced stand in their
pamphlet of December, 1769, had a right to feel self-gratu-
latory. They had obtained all the remedial legislation that
they had been specifically demanding, save only the rescind-
ing of the tea duty which had been withheld because the
king believed that " there must always be one tax to keep
up the right." ^
The only question before them was whether they, as
practical men of business, would be justified in continuing
their costly boycott against Great Britain for the sake of
the one remaining tax.* As in 1766, they felt it was no
concern of theirs that the tea tax was retained as an assertion
of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies for revenue
^ I N. J. Arch., vol. x, pp. 109-110.
' North was primarily interested in the fact that the duties were
anti-commercial from the standpoint of the home merchants, declaring
" SO) many articles, the manufactures of Great Britain, are, by the Act
in question, subject to taxation, that it must astonish every reason-
able man to think how so preposterous a law could originally obtain
existence from a British legislature." Parliamentary History, vol.
xvi, pp. 853-855.
' Donne, W. B. Correspondence of George III with Lord North
(London, 1867), vol. i, p. 202.
^ E. g. vide letter of Phila. Comm. to N. Y. Comm., May 15, 1770,
in N. Y. lourn., Aug. 16, 1770. Asi "Cethegus" put it, "It is vain to
think that we can hold Breath always . . . We have only to chuse
whether to unite in maintaining an Agreement of a more restricted
Nature, or to go on disputing about a Shadow which cannot longer be
realized." A^. Y. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Oct. 8, 1770; also i .V. /. Arch.,
vol. xxvii, pp. 282-283.
X
214 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
only ; or that earlier revenue duties remained on the statute
books ; or that the Declaratory Act continued in its pristine
vigor as a part of the imperial constitution. To these gen-
eralizations, the merchants of Massachusetts constituted an
exception, probably because the warp of their prosperity w3ls
v/oven so closely with the woof of an unrestricted foreign
commerce.
Upon hearing that the bill for partial repeal of the Towns^
hend duties was pending passage in Parliament, the South
Carolina General Committee addressed a circular letter to
the committees of the other provinces on April 25, 1770.
The letter recounted that the provinces had adopted agree-
ments differing " in Extent of Matter and Limitations of
Time," and that South Carolina, being among the last to
act, had been the most comprehensive in her plan, specifying
among her sine qua non demands the disestablishment of the
Customs Board and of the oppressive vice-admiralty juris-
diction. The committee asserted that, if any province should
take advantage of the repeal of " these trifling duties " to
re-open trade with Great Britain, it would have been in-
finitely better to have submitted to the yoke from the begin-
ning.^ In this letter and in a later one, the northern prov-
inces were exhorted to extend their agreements to cover all
the demands named in the South Carolina Association."
Authentic news of the passage of the repeal bill reached
America early in May, 1770. Outside of Boston and a
few other places of minor importance, there ensued, through-
out the commercial provinces, several perplexing months of
indecision, interrupted only by the premature break of
^ N. C. Col. Recs., vol. viii, pp. i97-i99; published at the time in S.
C. Gas., May 17, 1770; Pa. Gaz., May 24; N. Y. Journ., May 17; Bos.
Gas., May 28.
2 The second letter was dated June 2/; S. C. Gas., June 28, 1770;
also A^. Y. Journ., July 12.
NON-IMPORTATION 21 5
Albany, the Rhode Island ports and Portsmouth from the
non-importation combination. The merchants of Albany
rescinded their agreement on May 10 in favor of the non-
importation of tea alone ; but when, after a few weeks, they
learned that Boston and New York remained steadfast, they
hastened to resume their agreement and to countermand the
orders which had been sent to England in the meantime/
Only a few days behind Albany, the merchants of New-
port and Providence cast aside their agreements and dis-
charged their committees of inspection.^ " They were
dragged in the first place like an ox to the slaughter, into
the non-importation agreement . . .," wrote a contempor-
ary. "Adherence to the non-importation agreement in them
would have been acting out of character and in contradiction
to the opinion of the country." ^ Within a week the answer
came from the great ports : mass meetings at Philadelphia
and New York and a meeting of merchants at Boston de-
clared ~an absolute boycott against the merchants of Rhode
Island.* The town of Providence now took things in hand,
and followed the prudent example set by Albany by scurry-
ing back under cover of the agreement, announcing a boy-
cott against any who should have dealings with the aban-
doned Newport importers.^ The merchants of Newport
re-enacted their agreement also; but their resolution to
store rather than re-ship the goods recently arrived inclined
the other provinces to believe that the action of Newport
was merely a screen for clandestine importations. A wave
1 Ms. in Hist. Soc. of Pa.; A^ Y. Journ., Aug. 23, 30, 1770; N. Y.
Gaz. & Merc, Sept. 24.
' Bos. Gaz., May 28, 1770.
^ "iRachd" in New London Gazette, June 22, 1770.
*■ Pa. Gaz., May 24, 1770; A^ Y. Journ., June 7; Bos. Eve. Post,
May 28.
^ Prov. Gaz.. June 2, 9, 1770.
2i6 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of anger swept up and down the coast ; and by the early days
of July trading relations had been suspended by the leading
ports of eight provinces/ The Rhode Islanders began to
perceive, as Stephen Collins had predicted, that where they
gained a penny in the trade of British drygoods, they stood
a chance of losing a pound in their coastwise trade.^ The
Boston trade sent a committee, headed by Molineux, to
Newport and Providence to induce the merchants to enter
new resolutions. Both towns acceded — the Newport mer-
chants on August 20 ^ — and, on a recommendation of the
Boston merchants, the merchants of Philadelphia and
Charleston now re-established trading connections with the
city/
In New Hampshire, the merchants had remained un-
sympathetic with the non-importation movement all along;
but, it will be remembered, the inhabitants in general had
been inflamed to resolutions of protest and non-importation
by the event of the Boston Massacre. Several weeks later,
the Boston trade learned that Portsmouth merchants were
importing British merchandise on a larger scale than ever be-
fore; and on June 18, they instituted a boycott against that
province.^ The trading towns on the Connecticut river
followed the example of Boston.® The inhabitants of the
little parish of Rye, New Hampshire, near the Massachu-
1 Mass., N. Y., Conn., Pa., Md., Del., N. C, S. C. Vide files of N. Y.
Journ. Newport coasting-sloops were actually turned back at Marble-
head, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Chester, Baltimore, Nor-
ifolk and Charleston, S. C.
* Collins, Letter-Book 1760-1773, June 8, 1770.
^Newport Merc, Aug. 27, i77^\ N. Y. Journ., Aug. 30.
*Mass, Spy, Aug. 14, 1770; Pa. Gaz., Sept. 20; 6". C. Ga::., Oct. 18, 25.
^ Bos. Eve. Post, June 11, 25, 1,770. For an mstance of enforcement,
vide ibid., July 9.
* Essex Gas., July 2, 1770.
NON-IMPORTATION 217
setts border, voted unanimously to unite with Boston in non-
importation ; ^ but Portsmouth, the chief centre of popula-
tion, remained unmoved. '' One of the Boston zealots was
immediately dispatched here," wrote Governor Wentworth
to the home government; and he carried with him a ready-
prepared report, " expressed in the most abusive terms,"
for adoption by the town meeting. But his machinations
were in vain; he ''decamped precipitately for Boston" in
fear of tar and feathers; and the town meeting, by a poll
of ten to one, dismissed the whole matter and dissolved
the meeting.^
After all, the bone and sinew of the non-importation
movement were the agreements of the great trading towns
of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. On the action of
these towns depended the integrity of the commercial com-
bination. Should the merchants of any of these towns accept
the partial repeal as satisfactory and proceed to revoke their
boycott of British importations, this breach in the non-im-
portation dike would render the whole barrier useless.
There was no indecision at Boston. When the merchants
there learned, at a meeting of April 25, 1770, that some of
their number had ordered goods to be shipped upon the
passage of the partial repeal, it was agreed that this event
would not justify a re-opening of trade, and it was voted that
the goods should be re-shipped immediately upon their
arrival.^ But in both Philadelphia and New York, there
was a sharp division of sentiment, the alignment being be-
^iV. H. Gaz., July 27, 1770; also Bos. Eve. Post, July 30.
2 Brit. Papers C Sparks Mss."), vol. i, p. 18 ; N. H. Gaz., July 13, 1770.
* Letter of Boston Comm. in N. Y. Journ., May 10, 1770. Tea was
excepted from this vote upon the belief that the act of 11 George I,
c. 30, sec. 8, would thereby be violated. Ibid., July 5. The merchants
were later obliged to publish the names of five merchants who refused
to obey. Mass. Spy, Aug. 14.
2i8 THE COLOXIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
tween tlie leading merchants, who were willing to accept
the remedial legislation of Parliament as the best that could
Y be attained under the circumstances, and the non-mercantile,
property-less population, who were fired with the current
political %'iews and considered the issue of taxation un-
changed until ever}^ one of the Townshend duties had been
removed. In both cities, there was an active dispute over
the merits of the situation, and a further controversy over
the question of where the power lay to re-open importation.
It was clear that the merchants had been the prime movers
in non-importation: but they had depended upon the popu-
lace for endorsement and support. Could the merchants
give up their agreement without the consent of the populace ?
At Philadelphia, the importers of British goods had been
nursing a particular grievance because the importers of
wines and molasses remained undisturbed in their traffic,
notwithstanding that duties derived from these sources were
piling up in the British treasurv*. Moreover, the ^Maryland
Agreement, differing f rem the Philadelphia .A^eement, per-
mitted the importation of coarse woolens, an article neces-
S2sy for the Indian trade : and the Marvdand merchants were
running away with their trade. ^ As a protest, four mem-
bers, including John Re}-nell. tlie chairman, resigned from
the Committee of Alerchants, and three others ceased to at-
tend meetings: the committee was reduced to twelve mem-
bers.' These ex-members, \\-ith other interested merchants,
began to agitate a relaxation of tlie agreement, and quickly
drew the fire of tlie newspaper writers.
-An article in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, May 7, 1770,
• maintained that the mercliants would be betra^-ing the
American cause, if importation were resumed, and that the
^ Pa. Mag., toL xiv, pp. 4-2-43.
* Circular letter of the "late Committee." Pq. Chr^^-. Oct. i 1770.
NON-IMPORTATION 219
consuming class would buy no goods from them in such a
contingency.^ Other writers denied that two or three hun-
dred signers of the agreement had " the sole right to deter-
mine a question of liberty that most nearly concerns every
freeman of this province." " A meeting of the subscribers
of the non-importation was called for Monday afternoon,
May 14. As many of the signers were not in the import-
ing business and were thus likely to vote a continuance of
the agreement, the importing merchants held several sessions
in preparation for the occasion and agreed that each should
be present promptly at the hour set and bring with him a
friend. This scheme was detected at the last moment and
exposed in a broadside, addressed to the artificers, manu-
facturers and mechanics, probably written by Charles Thom-
son.^ As a result, the meeting, when it assembled, was
prevailed upon to postpone definite action until June 5 and,
in the meantime, to consult with the merchants of New
York and Boston.*
The merchants of the sister ports, however, declared
a-gainst any change in their agreements, Boston on principle,
New York because of the hope that the tea duty would be
repealed in the next few weeks. ^ On May 23, a meeting
of the workingmen and tradesmen of Philadelphia resolved
their unanimous determination '' to render the non-importa-
tion, as it now stands, permanent," and agreed to support
this action at the meeting of June 5.^ About the same time,
^ For similar arguments, vide ''Tradesman" in ibid., May 21, 1770;
■" Nestor " in Pa. Journ., July 12, Aug. 9.
'"Cato" in Pa. Chron., June 4, 1770; "Son of Liberty" in Pa.
Gas., May 31 ; letter from Philadelphia in N. Y. loiirn.. May 31.
'Pa. Chron., May 14, 1770; Pa. Mag,, vol. xiv, pp. 43-44-
*A^. Y. Journ., Aug. 16, 1770.
^ Bos. Eve. Post, May 28, 1770; K. Y. Journ., May 24, Aug. 16.
^ Pa. Gaz., May 24, 1770; also N. Y. Journ., May 31.
220 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
letters were received by Joseph Galloway and Charles Thom-
son from Doctor Franklin in England, urging Philadelphia
to persist in the agreement; and his advice had "wonder-
ful effects." ^ The trend of events was distinctly turning in
favor of the opponents of change; and at the general meet-
ing of inhabitants on June 5, the signers of the agreement,
having first met by themselves, agreed, with only four dis-
senting votes, to make no alteration in it " at this time/' ^
The inhabitants of New York engaged in a similar con-
troversy, although the outcome was different. The non-
importation pact was there based upon an agreement of the
merchants, confirmed and supported by a separate agree-
ment of the tradesmen and workingmen. The issue be-
tween the two groups was made clear in the opening sen-
tences of a broadside issued about the middle of May:
" Nothing can be more flagrantly wrong than the Assertion
of some of our Mercantile Dons that the Mechanics have
no Right to give their Sentiments about the Importation of
British Commodities. . . . What particular Class among
us has an exclusive Right to decide a Question of General
Concern ?" ^
At a meeting on May 18, prompted by the letter from
Philadelphia, the merchants decided, as we have seen, " to
wait a few Weeks longer in Hopes of hearing the Duty on
Tea would also be repealed " before taking any action.^
This brought about a meeting of the inhabitants of all ranks,
who voted by a large majority to preserve the non-importa-
tion inviolate and to boycott all persons who should trans-
gress it. They also issued a pronunciamento against the
^ Pa. Mag., vol. xlv, p. 45 ; Colden, Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 223.
"^ Pa. Gas., June 7, 1770.
' Broadside in N. Y. Pub. Libr., signed " Brutus."
* N. Y. Joiirn., May 24, Aug. 16, 1770.
NON-IMPORTATION 22 1
cargo of a Glasgow vessel then in the harbor, a matter al-
ready dealt with in regular manner by the Committee of
Merchants/ The Committee of Merchants accepted the
issue, resigned their seats because of the irregular proceed-
ings of the mass meeting, and had the satisfaction of being
re-elected at a public meeting of citizens.^ On the strength
of this vindication, the Committee of Merchants, now con-
vinced that hope of a total repeal of the Townshend duties
was illusory, determined to abandon the agreement and con-
fine non-importation only to dutied articles; and for this
purpose they invited the merchants of the non-importing
commercial provinces to send delegates to a congress at
Norwalk on June i8, " to adopt one general solid System
for the Benefit of the Whole, that no one Colony may be
liable to the Censure or Reproaches of another . . ." ^
The invitation found the other trading towns in anything
but a receptive mood. The Boston trade voted unanimously
to have nothing to do with it, chiefly for the reason that any
deviation from the present agreement would create an im-
pression in England prejudicial to a further redress of
grievances/ The merchants of Essex County, New Jersey,
asked pointedly : " Shall we meet to consult whether we have
Honour or Eaith or public Virtue ... If you had proposed
a Meeting for strengthening . . . the Resolutions of the
Colonies, we should have joined you." ^ Hardly less de-
cisive were the answers of meetings at Newark and New
^ This meeting occurred on May 30. Ihid., June 7, 1770,
^ The re-election occurred on June i. N. Y. Gan. & Merc, June 4,
1770; N. Y. Joiirn., June 7.
^Circular letter of June 2; New London Gaz., June 15, 1770; also
N. Y. Journ., June 28, Aug. 16.
* The Boston meeting occurred on June 8. Bos. Eve. Post, June 11,
1770; also N. Y. Journ., June 21.
Ihid., July 5, 1770; also i N. J. Arch., vol. xxvii, pp. 193-194.
5
222 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Brunswick a few days later, although the people of the latter
place agreed to accept the conclusions of the Norwalk con-
gress/ Even the Philadelphia merchants, stiffened by the
action of the public meeting of June 5, advised against pre-
cipitate measures, and refused to take part in the proposed
congress.^ Only at Hartford and Providence did the mer-
chants actually appoint delegates; and the latter rescinded
their action when they learned of Boston's decHnation.^
The New Yorkers were thus forced to solve their problem
according to their own lights.
It was probably the unfavorable action of the Boston
merchants that determined the New York promoters of
importation to abandon the project of a congress and to
concentrate their efforts at once on the local situation.
Their plan was to ascertain the sentiments of the inhabitants
by a house-to-house poll. When " a number of selfish, mer-
cenary importers and a few mechanicks " proposed this
course to the Committee of Merchants, that body, while
withholding official assent, made it clear that they would not
discountenance the proceedings.* How deeply individual
members of the committee were interested in this scheme
was revealed on June 14 when the ultra-radical Isaac Sears
and the shopkeeper Peter Vander Voort resigned member-
ship on the ground that many of the committee were work-
ing to break through the agreement.^ Beginning on June
^ N. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Aug. 6, 1770; A''. 7. Journ., June 28.
2 Letter of June 18; ibid., Aug. 9, 1770.
^ New London Gas., June 15, i77o; Prov. Gas., June 16.
*N. Y. Journ., June 21, 1770. The words quoted are taken from
an account by "A Son of Liberty" in the same issue. Vide also A^.
y. Gas. & Post-Boy, July 2.
^ N. Y. Journ., June 21, 1770. Jacob Watson and Edward Laight
were among those who worked openly for an alteration of the agree-
ment. Ibid., July 12.
NON-IMPORTATION 223
12, the poll was taken by persons appointed in each ward,
each inhabitant being asked if he approved of confining non-
importation to tea and other dutied articles, provided Boston
and Philadelphia concurred; or if he preferred the continu-
ance of the present agreement. Now, as the promoters of
the poll knew of the unfaltering resolution of Boston, it is
clear, as the non-importers charged, that their motive was
to feel the pulse of the people with a view of determining
whether it would be safe to ask their support later when
it was learned that the other two towns had refused to co-
operate. The canvass showed that 1180 persons favored
re-opening trade in concert with Boston and Philadelphia,
about 300 wxre indifferent or unwilling to talk, and a minor-
ity, whose number was not stated, preferred the existing
system. Colden noted that " the principal Inhabitants "
voted for importation and that '' few of any distinction de-
clared in opposition to it." ^ The opposition protested that
the voters for importation were hardly one-fourth of the
city people entitled to vote, and that the country f olk| should
have been consulted.
On June 16, letters were despatched to Boston and Phila-
delphia with news of the New York vote. The merchants
in those places, however, saw no reason for revising their
former decisions.^ On July 4 a broadside, scattered about
^ Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 223.
^ AT. Y. Journ., July 5, 1770; Bos. Eve. Post, July 2. The Boston
Committee of Merchants reminded the New York Committee that,
as the preamble of the Townshend Act remained unrepealed, it was
clear that the tea duty was retained expressly for raising a revenue.
Furthermore, they asserted that the sentiment of Boston had been
ascertained in the surest way, '' that is, not by appointing Gentlemen
to go thro' the several Wards, asking Persons singly, but by calling
a Meeting and there coming to a Conclusion after fair Debate and
reasoning upon the Point." N. Y. Gaz. & Merc, July 30. From
the merchants at Hartford, where Silas Deane was a member of the
committee, came likewise a letter protesting against any alteration.
Conn. Journ., July 27.
224 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
New York, inquired of the public whether, in face of this
uniform response, it would be just or pohtic or honorable for
New York to undertake a measure " independent of the Ap-
probation of those whose hearty Concurrence we have hither-
to solicited ? " New York was reminded of having origin-
ated non-importation at the time of the Stamp Act ; " and
shall New York be the first to disgrace an Expedient origin-
ally devised by itself . . . ?" ^
But this appeal and others like it fell on deaf ears. The
latter days of June brought to New York authentic news that
an act of Parliament had been passed with the sole view of
relieving business stringency in that province. This was the
statute exempting New York temporarily from the opera-
tions of the general prohibition of legal-tender currency,
enacted in 1764, and authorizing her to issue £120,000 in
legal-tender paper money.^ This event removed any re-
maining misgivings that the merchants may have felt; the
body of the trade worked with precision and speed. The
group solidarity of the merchants was clearly revealed by
an article from New York in a Boston newspaper, contain-
ing the names of some of those who were working hardest
for a re-opening of trade. Of the one hundred and twenty-
eight persons named in the article, eighty-five were classed
as merchants or importers; eighteen as dealers or shop-
keepers ; three as vendue-masters ; two as brewers. Of work-
ingmen (such as carpenters, blacksmiths, rope-makers, etc.),
there were but twelve.^ Fifteen of the one hundred and
twenty-eight were members of the Committee of Mer-
1 Signed "Fabius;" N. Y. Journ., July 12, 1770.
2 10 George III, c. 35 ; Becker, N. Y. Partks, 1760-177^, PP- 69-71,
77-79, 88.
2 "Bona Fide" in Bos. Gas., July 23, 1770. To complete the list,
there were three lawyers, three royal officials, Hugh Gaine, editor of
the New York Gazette and Mercury, and James DeLancey, Esq.,
member of the General Assembly.
NON-IMPORTA TION 225
chants (of which there were at that time twenty-two mem-
bers in all) ; and among the fifteen was Isaac Low, the
chairman. Colden is authority for the assertion that all
the members of the governor's council, with a single ex-
ception, and the city representatives in the Assembly were
zealous advocates of importation/ The merchants had an
excellent talking-point in the exaggerated charges of viola-
tions of non-importation at Boston ; and especially convinc-
ing for their purpose proved a timely pamphlet from John
Mein's press, which purported to give an account of British
importations into Boston from January i to June 19 of
the current year."
The first step taken by the New York Committee of Mer-
chants, upon hearing from Boston, was to call a meeting of
citizens and read the replies that had come from Philadelphia
and Boston.^ The crowd that assembled was not as small
as the promoters of the meeting had apparently intended,
for a large majority opposed the proposal for taking another
poll of the city. A motion was then made that the letters
read should be published, so that the people might better
judge of the expediency of departing from the agreement;
but the committee, through their chairman, declined to per-
mit publication. A few days later, on Saturday, July 7, a
number of merchants conferred privately with several
members of the committee, and decided, notwithstanding
the public vote, that a poll of the city should be taken at
once. With the sanction of the committee, two persons, one
^ Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 229.
2 Reprinted in A^. 7. Gas. & Merc, Aug. 27, 1770. For a pointed
correspondence between the Boston and New York committees with
regard to this pamphlet, vide the A^, Y. Journ., Aug. 9, and Bos. Eve.
Post, Sept. 10.
^ For this meeting and the troubles during the poll, vide two letters
in Bos. Eve. Post, July 16, 1770; "A Citizen" in N. Y. Gas. & Merc,
July 23; accounts in A''. Y. Col. Docs., vol. viii, pp. 218-220.
226 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of each party, were therefore appointed to canvass each ward,
presenting to the citizens, without comment, this propo-
sition: as the people of Boston and Philadelphia are in
favor of maintaining their agreements unchanged, is it your
judgment '' that we should also abide by our present Non-
Importation Agreement; or to import every Thing except
the Articles which are, or may hereafter be, subject to
Duty?"
At noon the same day, the radicals, led by Isaac Sears
and Alexander McDougall, met at the City Hall, declared
unanimously against an importation, and agreed to use all
lawful means to oppose it. In the evening a mob collected,
parading the streets with a flag inscribed with the legend,
" Liberty and no Importation but in Union with the other
Colonies," hissing and hooting at the doors of those who
favored importation. A crowd of the opposition gathered,
and under the leadership of Elias Desbrosses, magistrate
of the city and already slated for the next presidency of the
Chamber of Commerce, they came in collision with the riot-
ers in Wall Street, where stiff blows were exchanged with
cane and club and the non-importers finally dispersed.
By Monday evening, July 9, the canvass was completed ;
and the vote resulted in a victory for the merchants. A
protest signed by many inhabitants later declared that " only
794 Persons in this populous City, including all Ranks and
both Sexes," signed for importation, notwithstanding " the
Co-operation of Interest, Necessity and Influence." ^ It
was further claimed that the great number of those entitled
to vote had abstained because they considered the proceeding
irregular.^ Nevertheless, the merchants accepted the poll as
^A''. Y. Joimu, July 26, Aug. 2, 1770.
* Ibid., July 12, 1770. Another method employed to discredit the
poll is illustrated by the recantation of Charles Prosser for signing
in favor of importation when " too much in Liquor to be trusted with
the common Rights of ^Mankind." Conn. Coiir., Aug. 20.
NON-IMPORTATION 227
conclusive; and within two days a vessel departed for Eng-
land with orders for a general importation of goods, except
tea or any other dutied articles/
The late Committee of Merchants of New York made all
haste to inform their brethren in Philadelphia and Boston
of the new developments. When a copy of the letter
reached Princeton, James Madison and his fellow-students,
garbed in black gowns, solemnly witnessed the burning of
the letter by a hangman, while the college bell tolled funereal
peals.^ This was an augury of the reception that the letter
was to receive elsewhere. At Philadelphia, a great meeting
of the inhabitants of the city and county adopted numerous
resolutions, condemning the action of New York as "a sor-
did and wanton Defection from the common Cause " and
declaring a boycott against that city except for five neces-
sary articles.^ At Boston, a meeting of the trade at Fan-
euil Hall voted unanimously that the New York letter, " in
just indignation, abhorrence and detestation, be forthwith
torn into pieces and thrown to the winds as unworthy of
the least notice;" which was accordingly done.* The New
York Committee received a scathing letter from the mer-
chants of Albany, remarking on their " unaccountable Dup-
licity " and quoting cruelly from their recent letter of cen-
sure on Albany for wavering in their non-importation.^
^ N. Y. Journ., Julj^ 12, 1770; N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. viii, pp. 220-221.
On Nov. 26, Isaac Low advertised that, although he had lately been
" distinguished as Chairman of a certain Committee," he had freshly
imported goods in stock. N. Y. Gas. & Merc, Nov. 26.
"^N. Y. Journ., July 19, 1770; Madison, Writings (Hunt), vol. i,
pp. 6-7.
^ A/Teeting of July 14; Pa. Chron., July 16, 1770; also Pa. Gaz., July
19. The excepted articles were : alkaline salt, skins, furs, flax and hemp.
* Meeting of July 24; Bos. Eve. Post, July 30, 1770; also N. Y. Journ.,
Aug. 2, 9. A New York sloop with a cargo of pork was turned away
from Marblehead by the Committee of Merchants there. Essex Gaz.,
Aug. 14.
^ N. Y. Journ., Aug. 2Z, ^77o. A town meeting at Huntington in
228 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
New Jersey was aflame with indignation. " Shall we be
humbug'd out of our Liberty and enslaved only by a Sett
of Traders?" wrote the committee of Somerset County/
Formal resolutions of censure and boycott were adopted by
mass meetings in Woodbridge and New Brunswick and in
the counties of Essex, Sussex and Burlington.^ A New
Yorker, daring to hawk fruit at Woodbridge, was " gen-
teelly ducked to cool his courage." ^ The inhabitants of
Sussex County, in the extreme northwestern corner of the
province, resolved that, although they had hitherto patron-
ized New York markets " by a long and tedious land-
carriage," they would now turn their trade of wheat and
iron " by the more natural and easy water-carriage down
the River Delaware " to Trenton and Philadelphia.*
The people of Connecticut were equally incensed. The
New Haven merchants and other inhabitants resolved to buy
no British imports from New York and, when a general
importation occurred, to exert their influence either to di-
vert the trade of Connecticut to Boston or Philadelphia or
to give preference to local merchants.^ Before very many
towns had followed this example, a public meeting at Hart-
ford started a movement for a general meeting of ^' the
mercantile and landed interest of the several towns " at
the eastern part of Long Island denounced the " mercenary and per-
fidious Conduct" of New York and resolved to maintain the non-
importation inviolate. Ibid., Aug. 30.
^ A^. Y. Gas. & Post-Boy, Sept. 24, 1770; also i N. J. Arch., vol.
xxvii, pp. 253-254.
"^N. Y. Journ., July 26, Aug. 9, Sept. 27, Oct.ir, 1770; also i N. J.
Arrh., vol. xxvii, pp. 206-207, 215-217, 218-219, 252-253, 260-262.
'A^. Y. Journ., Aug. 9, 1770; also i N. J. Arch., vol. xxvii, p. 220.
^AT. F. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Sept. 24, 1770; also i N. J. Arch., vol.
xxvii, pp. 252-253.
^ Meeting of July 26; Conn. Journ., Aug. 3, 1770.
NON-IMPORTA TION
229
New Haven on September 13 to adopt uniform measures
in dealing with New York/ At this meeting, attended by
delegates from a great majority of the towns, resolutions
were passed to sever all intercourse with New York so far
as the purchase of British imports was concerned.^ From
the plantation provinces, also, came expressions of in-
dignation.^
The patriotic indignation of the other provinces at the
defection of New York was splendid to behold. But the
merchants throughout the continent realized in their hearts
that the prostration of the stalwart pillar of New York
would cause the whole great edifice to topple. The dry-
goods importers at Philadelphia were stirred to re-open the-
agitation there. Some frankly placed their demand for
alteration on the ground that a non-importation of tea would
accomplish every desirable object, and that the defection of
New York precluded any possibility of distressing British
merchants at the same time that it made Pennsylvania
traders a prey to the merchants of that city.* Others re-
^ New London Gaz,, Aug. 17, 1770; also Mass. Spy, Aug. 21.
^ Conn. Cour., Sept. 17, 1770; also A^. Y. Journ., Sept. 20.
' Considerably less notice was attracted in the plantation provinces
than in the commercial provinces. The inhabitants of Talbot County
in Maryland resolved to cut off all trade relations with the province
of New York. Pa. Gaz., Aug. 2Z, 1770. A general meeting of mer-
chants and inhabitants of Wilmington and Brunswick in North Caro-
lina took occasion to renew their agreement " with great spirit and
unanimity." Mass. Spy, Sept. [Dec] 3, 1770. At Charleston, South
Carolina the keenest interest was displayed. A general meeting of
August 22 unanimously voted that the " scandalous Revolt from the
common Cause of Freedom " should be punished by an absolute boy-
cott; and in the subsequent months, New York skippers were actually
forbidden trading rights in the port. S. C. Gaz., Aug. 20, 23, Sept. 6,
27, Nov. 22, 1770.
*" Philo- Veritas " in Pa. Gaz., Aug. 2, i77^', " Philadelphian " in
iUd., Aug. 16; CoUins, Letter-Book 1761-1773, Nov. 24.
230 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
vived the old complaint that the persons most violent in
favor of the existing agreement were in general " Men
little or not at all interested in the [drygoods] Trade " but
who were cheerfully paying duties on molasses, sugar and
wine in the course of their trade with the West Indies and
the Wine Islands/
To these arguments came the answer of " Juris Prudens "
in exalted strain — that if the wine and molasses merchants
were little affected, the glory of the drygoods merchants was
all the greater; and he recalled that ''the Weight of the
Stamp Act fell upon the Lawyers, they generously bore it
and desired not Partners in Distress." ^ Rather more
pointed was the reminder given by "Amor Patriae " that
the merchants had deliberately chosen to make the Towns-
liend duties the sole object of repeal, even to the point of
rejecting a proposition from Boston for including the wine
and molasses duties as objects; that therefore reflections
upon these latter merchants had no bearing upon the matter
under discussion.^ Other writers emphasized that the tea
act was, in principle, just as much a violation of American
rights as the duties that had been repealed, and that the
material condition of the poor in Pennsylvania was better
than it had been in years.*
Matters came to a head when the seven ex-members of
the Committee of Merchants joined with seven other mer-
cantile firms, on September 12, 1770, to request the com-
mittee to canvass the sentiments of the subscribers of the
agreement in a house-to-house poll. The committee, headed
1 " Philo-Veritas " in Pa. Gaz., July 19. 1770; " Talionis " in Pa,
Chron., Aug. 8.
' Pa. Gas., Aug. 2, 1770.
^ Ihid., July 26, 1770.
* " True Philadelphian " and " Pennsylvanian " in ibid., Aug. 23, 1770.
NON-IMPORTA TION 23 1
by Charles Thomson and WiUiam Fisher, repHed that the
agreement itself provided the only method of its amend-
ment,— through a general meeting of subscribers after three
days' notice/ Without consulting the committee further,
the fourteen sent notices around to the subscribers to meet
at Davenport's Tavern on Thursday, September 20.^ Only
one hundred and thirty-five persons attended, and the im-
porters had, through assiduous effort, succeeded in collect-
ing a majority favorable to their design. The committee
appeared, made a fervent appeal to the meeting to be loyal
to the liberties of America, and presented a list of three
carefully worded questions to be voted on, with the purptjse
of preventing any alteration except in concert with the other
provinces and of patterning the alteration, should any be
made, on the Maryland or Virginia association. The im-
porters submitted a counter-list of questions, which put
squarely before the gathering the expediency of restricting
non-importation to tea and other dutied articles, as the New
Yorkers had done. The meeting voted to consider the last
list of questions first and passed them in the affirmative.
A trial vote on one of the committee's questions showed
an adverse vote of 89 to 45. The committee then contended
that the inhabitants in general should have a vote in the
matter and that, in any case, the subscribers not present
should be consulted. But they could make no headway
against the majority; and Charles Thomson, speaking for
the eleven members of the committee, declared that they
deemed that the agreement had been broken and announced
their resignation.
The people of Philadelphia did not accept the decision
1 Pa. Gaz., Sept. 20, 1770.
'For accounts of this meeting, vide ibid., Sept. 27, Oct. 11, 1770; and
especially the circular letter of the " late Committee " in Pa, Chron.,
Oct. I.
232
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
without loud protest. A grand jury, of which John Gibson,
one of the resigned committeemen, was foreman, declared
that they would unite with their fellow-citizens to discoun-
tenance the use of British goods until the parliamentary
claim to colonial taxation was relinquished, the tea duty
repealed, the jurisdiction and power of the vice-admiralty
courts restricted, the Customs Board dissolved, and the
standing army removed or placed under direction of the
civil authority.^ A mass meeting of inhabitants voted, with
only one dissenting voice, to adopt the resolutions which
the committee had submitted in vain to the merchants' meet-
ing; and a formal request was made that the merchants
should re-consider their action.^ Meantime, the merchants
had chosen a new committee to supervise enforcement of
the altered agreement; and on Saturday, the twenty-ninth,
the London Packet sailed with the orders of the merchants
for British merchandise.^
It was scarcely to be expected that the merchants at Bos-
ton should continue their non-importation when all about
them yielded to the stern call of necessity. '' Some who
have been leaders would have been glad to hold out longer,"
wrote Dr. Andrew Eliot, " but persons in trade were weary,
and, as interest is generally their god, began to be furious." *
After all, their purpose of bringing pressure to bear upon
British merchants and manufacturers was already defeated
by the defection of New York and Philadelphia. The first
\ indication of weakening came when the merchants, not-
I withstanding their intense indignation, failed to pass reso-
I lutions of boycott when New York departed the agreement.^
^September 24; Pa. Gas., Sept. 27, 1770.
' September 27; ibid., Oct. 4, 1770.
^ Pa. Chron., Sept. 24, 1770; A^. Y. Journ., Oct. 11.
*4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, p. 458.
* Vide sarcastic comment in Newport Merc, Aug. 6, 1770; also
NON-IMPORTATION 233
On September 11, a few days before the final steps to dis-
solve the Philadelphia agreement had been taken, a great
meeting of the Boston trade was held, at which it was esti-
mated that not less than one thousand were present, includ-
ing " a very great Number of the principal and most wealthy
Merchants, as well as the most respectable Tradesmen of
the Town." The assemblage voted to propose to Phila-
delphia an interprovincial congress of merchants to plan
ways and means of strengthening the union of the prov-
inces.^ The letter reached Philadelphia after the committee
of that city had become non-existent. The news of the
desertion of Philadelphia brought the Boston merchants to
a decision after a few weeks of irresolution; on October 12,
they met at the British Coffee House and unanimously voted
to open the importation of all British goods, except tea and
such other articles as were or might be subject to revenue
duties.^ A week later, the goods which had been placed in
store were delivered up to their owners.^
The downfall of ncfn-importation in the commercial prov- 1
inces meant that the associations to the southward must soon
crumble also. The merchants of Baltimore lost little time
in sending forth a call for a meeting of the General Com-
mittee of Maryland at Annapolis whten they learned that the
Philadelphia merchants had forsaken their agreement.
They resolved, furthermore, that if the provincial meeting
Mass. Spy, Aug. 14. The Mass. Spy on November 5 quoted from a
London paper that " at a late Meeting of the American Merchants,
it was agreed to give imlimited Credit to such of the Colonies as
should follow the Example of New York, by a general Importation."
Such rumors, whether true or not, served no doubt to increase the
sentiment for renewing importation.
^ Bos. Gaz., Sept. 17, 1770; Pa. Chron., Oct. i.
^ Mass. Spy, Oct. 13, 1770; also Mass Gas. & Post-Boy, Oct. 15.
^Mass. Spy, Oct. 20, 1770.
234 ^^^ COLOXIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
should not be held, they would consider the association dis-
solved and open the importation of all goods save tea and
other dutied articles/ A provincial meeting was duly held
on October 25, but it proved a rather heterogeneous gather-
ing, consisting of a majority of the Assembly, several
Annapolis merchants, some members of the Council, a num-
ber of planters, and of properly chosen deputations from
only three counties. Jonathan Hudson, representing the
Baltimore merchants, defiantly informed the meeting that his
constituents were determined to depart the association not-
withstanding any resolutions they might adopt, and that he
had been instructed to agree to no terms short of a dis-
solution of the association. The meeting answered by
voting that the association should be strictly adhered to and
that all trade should be stopped with the Baltimore mer-
chants or any other violators." The Annapolis incident
proved to be only a piece of theatricalism so far as the mer-
chants of the province were concerned. "A Merchant of
Maryland " ridiculed the gathering as '' a fortuitous Col-
lection, not of Merchants, but of Counsellors, Representa-
tives, Lawyers, and others, who . had been convened at
AnnapoHs on other public Business;" and he remarked
" how absurd, not to say indecent, it is for Men whose Occu-
pations and Employments lie altogether in a different Walk,
to attempt giving Law to the mercantile Part of the Com-
munity." ^ The subsequent months showed that he spoke
with entire truthfulness when he said that the merchants did
not intend to pay '' the least Regard to those flaming and
ridiculous Resolutions which were lately flashed off," but
that they would confine their non-importation only to tea
and other dutied articles.
^ October 5, Md. Gas., Oct. 11, 1770; also Pa. Gas., Oct. 18.
^ Md. Gas., Nov. i, 1770; also Pa. Gas., Nov. 8.
' Ibid., Dec. 13, 1770.
NON-IMPORTATION 235
In the latter part of October the South Carolina Gen-
eral Committee addressed a circular letter to the northern
provinces with the purpose of learning whether the body of
the people acquiesced in the decision of the mercantile por-
tion in altering the non-importation/ While the liberal
terms of the South Carolina Association and its compara-
tively recent adoption had prevented the growth of the in-
tense dissatisfaction which had disrupted the northern
agreements, yet the defection of the commercial provinces,
joined with a widespread belief that the declining price of
rice was due to the non-importation,^ resulted in seriously
weakening the sentiment in South Carolina. On November
20, the General Committee announced that a meeting of the
subscribers of the association would be held on December
13 to decide as to their future course.^ The merchant,
Henry Laurens, presided at the meeting. The non-import-
ing faction were led by Thomas Lynch, planter and radical,
who came fifty miles for the purpose and '' exerted all his
eloquence & even the trope of rhetorical tears for the ex-
piring liberty of his dear country which the merchants would
sell like any other merchandize." * It was quickly evident
that the importers controlled a majority; a motion to delay
action until the General Assembly met, and an effort to con-
tinue the association with an open importation from Holland,
met with defeat. The assemblage thereupon voted to limit
^ S. C. Ga/j., Nov. I, 1770; also Mass. Spy, Jan. 3, 1771.
""A Planter" in 5. C. Gas., Dec. 27, 1770. Current newspapers
5how that rice averaged 70s. per hundredweight in 1768 (before the
non-importation) ; 60s. during 1769; 45s. during 1770.
' S. C. Gaz., Nov. 22, 1770. For an account of the meeting, vide ibid.,
Dec. 13.
* Bull to Hillsborough, quoted in McCrady, S. C. under Royal
Govt., pp. 682-683.
236 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
non-importation and non-consumption to tea and other
articles subject to duty/
In Virginia, the non-importation spirit, which had been
feeble throughout, gradually subsided. A meeting of as-
sociators was called for December 14, 1770, at Williams-
burg; but so few attended that they did nothing but adjourn
until the following summer.^ In February Thomas Jeffer-
son sent an order for goods to an English merchant with
instructions to send immediately only such goods as were
admissible by the association; by June he felt so confident
that the approaching meeting would repeal the association,
except for dutied articles, that he took time by the forelock
and ordered the shoes and other debarred articles to be
shipped at once.^ Early in July the Virginia meeting took
the action that Jefferson had anticipated.* In North Caro-
lina, no record apparently remains of the passing of the
non-importation.
Before leaving the subject of the second non-importation
movement, it would appear desirable to determine the effects
of the colonial plan of commercial coercion on Great Britain.
Statistics of trade show that the English merchants and
manufacturers dependent upon American commerce suf-
^ A committee was appointed to send a protest in behalf of South
Carolina against the conduct of the northern provinces. There ap-
peared to be a strong sentiment in favor of stopping trade with those
parts, especially since it was held that that commerce drained specie
from South Carolina "mostly for mere Trash." But this action was
not taken, apparently because " the defection not having been among
the Landholders, Farmers and Mechanicks ... it would be unjust to
retaUate upon them, for the Injuries received from some of the Mer-
chants in those Colonies." 5*. C. Gaz., Dec. 27, 1770.
^Brit. Papers {"Sparks Mss."), vol. ii, p. 70.
3 Writings (Ford), vol. i, pp. 387-389, 394-395-
* Washington, Writings (Ford), vol. ii, pp. 334-338.
NON-IMPORTATION ( 237 /
f ered a great loss of trade/ Friends of parliamentary tstxa-*''
tion in England were quick to claim that the colonies were
being partially supplied by means of a clandestine trade by
way of Quebec and Halifax; but there was little basis for
this charge in fact.^ Yet, notwithstanding the decline of
American trade, very little actual distress was experienced
in England during the period of the non-importation. This
was the result of several fortuitous circumstances uncon-
nected with the American situation. Crops in England
were better than they had been in years, and the material
condition of the workingmen was much improved by the
general reduction of the price of provisions.^ Further than
this, the Russo-Turkish war, which broke out in 1768,
and the increased demand for woolens in Germany, as well
as other unusual circumstances, served to neutralize the ef-
fects which the American non-importation agreements
would otherwise have produced.*
*' Not a manufacturing village in this kingdom complains
^ Exports to the thirteen colonies fell from £2,157,218 in 1768 to
^1,336,122 in 1769; imports from the colonies, from £1,251,454 to
£1,060,206. Vide Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, under the ap-
propriate dates, for these and the other figures cited hereafter.
2 Pa. Gaz., June 21, Sept. 6, 1770; A''. Y. Joiirn., Aug. 30, Sept. 6.
There was probably some evasion of non-importation by way of Canada,
for the purpose, it would appear, of providing Albany traders with
merchandise for the Indian trade, English importations at Quebec
increased from £110,598 in 1768 to £174,435 in 1769; at Newfoundland,
from £46,761 to £64,080; at Nova Scotia, there was a small decrease.
A suspicious increase of imports occurred at Jamaica, from £473,146 in
1768 to £570,468 in the following year ; but contemporary writers failed
to prefer any charges on this score.
^ Bos. Chron., Nov. 16, 1769; also N. Y. Gas. & Merc, Nov. 27.
* This was repeatedly averred. E. g., vide 5 M. H. S. Colls., vol. ix,
pp. 384-385; Pa. Gas., Jan. 4, Sept. 6, 1770; Bos. Chron., June 11;
N. Y. Gas. & Post-Boy, May 21; N. Y. Journ., Sept. 27; Mass. Spy,
Sept. 15; Adams, John, Works, vol. ii, p. 35^; N- Y. Gas. & Merc,
Nov. 27, 1769.
238 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of a slack trade," declared a London newspaper of Novem-
ber 27, 1768, " nay, what is more, when some of them were
applied to, at the close of last session to sign a petition
setting forth their distresses arising from the suspension
of the American orders, they said that they were then so
fully employed that they could not, with any colour of truth,,
sign such a petition." ^ An American travelling in England
wrote back to Philadelphia friends in May, 1770, that goods
were scarce and prices advanced at Birmingham, Halifax
and Leeds, and only at Sheffield were prices lower than
formerly.^ Even the merchant, Barlow Trecothick, while
arguing before the House of Commons for a total repeal
of the Townshend duties in April, 1770, admitted that ** at
present all our manufacturers were employed and all our
manufactures vended," pointing out, however, that the
woolens trade with Germany and northern Europe was only
transitory, "a passing cloud." ^
" The merchants here," wrote Dr. Franklin from London
in March, 1770, " were at length prevailed on to present a
petition, but they moved slowly, and some of them, I
thought, reluctantly." * Some of the merchants in Ameri-
can trade w^ere buoyed up by the rumors from Boston that
the agreements were collapsing ; ° others declared impatiently
that non-importation " is now a stale device and will not
do a second time ;" ^ still others had gotten their share of
^ A^. Y. Journ,, Feb. 22, 1770.
2 Pa. Gaz., Aug. 16, 1770; also A^ Y. Journ., Aug. 30.
^Bos. Chron., June 11, 1770; 5 M. H. S. Colls., vol. ix, pp. 430-431.
In face of this universally accepted evidence, however, it should be
noted that the statistics in Macpherson's Annals of Commerce do not
disclose any abnormal increase in English exportations to Russia^
Holland or Germany.
* Writings (Smyth), vol. v, p. 252.
^ Bos. Chron., Jan. 8, 1770; also A'". Y. Journ., Jan. 18.
6 .Y. Y. Gaz. & Merc, Sept. 3, I770.
NON-IMPORTATION 239
the new trade with northern Europe. At the instigation
of the colonial agents, the merchants in American trade at
Bristol and London finally petitioned Parliament in Janu-
ary and February, 1770, for a total repeal of the Towns-
hend duties/ The manufacturing towns absolutely refused
to move; and thus the memorials lacked the solid business
support which had been given to the demand for the repeal
of the Stamp Act. The petition of the London merchants
furnished merely the occasion, not the cause, for Lord
North's motion to repeal all the Townshend duties save
the tea tax. The ministry had announced its intention as
early as 1 769 so to proceed ; and Lord North's motion was
based on the claim that the Townshend law, the product of
a former ministry, was " preposterous " in so far as it im-
posed taxes on British manufactures.^ He did not deny
that " dangerous combinations " had been formed beyond
the Atlantic and that the British merchants with American
connections were discontented; but it was clear that the
former consideration made him reluctant to make any con-
cessions at all, while the force of the latter was minimized by
the practical certainty that the non-importation agreements
could not continue much longer. In conclusion, then, it
would appear that the effects of American trade coercion
were off-set by a fortuitous expansion of British commerce;
and that the partial repeal was produced by a desire to
correct a law, passed by a former ministry and based upon
a principle injurious to British commercial interests.
if
• ^Fo. Mag., vol. xii, p. 164; Pa. Gas., Apr. 26, 1770.
' Parliamentary History, vol. xvi, pp. 853-855 ; 5 M. H. S. Colls., vol.
ix, pp. 421-422.
CHAPTER VI
Colonial Prosperity and a New Peril (1770-1773)
The three years that followed the breakdown of the
great mercantile combination were, for the most part, years
of material prosperity and political calm. In the earlier
years the merchants of the commercial provinces had been
the backbone of the demand for a restricted parliamentary
control; but in the period following the autumn of 1770
the alliance of the commercial interests and the radicals
was broken. The merchants were dominated by a desire to
prevent any further strengthening of non-mercantile power
in provincial politics and by a substantial satisfaction in the
concessions that Parliament had made. The influence of
the moderates generally was thrown in favor of " letting
well enough alone; " and the return of better times seemed
an irrefutable argument in favor of this position. Happy it
would have been for the merchant class and for the stability
of the British empire if the merchants had not been induced
to depart from this position during a few critical weeks in
the fall of 1773!
Colden at New York observed : "All Men of property are
so sensible of their danger, from Riots and tumults, that
they will not rashly be induced to enter into combinations,
which may promote disorder for the future, but will en-
deavour to promote due subordination to legal authority." ^
Even Thomas Cushing, v/ho as speaker of the Massachusetts
House of Representatives had been a leading spokesman for
^ iV. Y. Col Docs., vol. viii, p. 217.
240
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 24 1
radical colonial demands and who as a merchant continued
somewhat restive under the existing trade regulations, pre-
ferred that " high points about the supreme authority of
Parliament " should " fall asleep " lest there be " great
danger of bringing on a rupture fatal to both countries." ^
John Adams wrote in his diary at this time that he had
learned wisdom from his experience in fighting in behalf
of the people's rights : '^ I shall certainly become more re-
tired and cautious. I shall certainly mind my own farm
and my own business." ^ As " Chronus " expressed it,
the public had become impatient with the " group of gloomy
mortals " who prated unceasingly of tyranny. He noted
that justice was duly administered by " learned and judicious
men who have estates and property of their own and who
are therefore likely to be as tenacious of the public rights
and liberties as any other person can be ; " that shops were
filled with merchandise, business thriving; that ships were
plying a brisk trade abroad and farmers were busily cultivat-
ing their own lands. Were such men slaves groaning from
lack of liberty? he queried; and he reminded his readers
of the evils resulting in the past from following " officious
Patriots," men who " have nothing to lose, but when public
rule and order are broken in upon and all things are thrown
into confusion, they may be gainers." ^
After six years of almost continuous agitation and bad
business conditions, the merchants turned, with a sense of
profound relief, to the pleasant task of wooing the profits
of commerce. Conditions generally were favorable to the
pursuit of this beguiling occupation. The non-importation
had caused a net balance of trade in favor of the com-
^ 4 M.H. S. Colls., vol. iv, p. 360.
' Works (Adams, C. F.), vol. ii, p. 260.
' Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Jan. 6, 1772.
242 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
mercial provinces; and for the first time in memory, gold
was imported from England in the course of commerce.
The great demand for com in France, Spain and Italy,
caused by devastating floods, had enabled the American
merchants to pay off their standing debts in England ; and,
due to the non-importation, they had ordered their balance
to be transmitted to them in bullion instead of in the form
of merchandise/ It was with great elation that a Phila-
delphia newspaper announced that the brig Dolphin had
brought to Philadelphia £6000 sterling in specie from Lon-
don, and a little later, that two vessels had arrived with
£10,000 more, " this being some of the golden fruits of
the Non-Importation. . ." ^ The same thing went on at
other ports. ^
, With so much inactive capital on hand, the re-opening-
f of trade in the last months of 1770 caused the colonial
^ merchants to invest in great quantities of British wares.
\ English houses met them more than half way with liberal
extensions of credit in order to regain the American market.
' In such centres as New England and Pennsylvania, British
importations increased three- to fivefold. "Commerce never
was in a more flourishing state." * In fact, business was
experiencing too rapid a recovery from depression ; the mer-
chants became greatly overstocked, and in the course of the
next year or so, competition at times caused goods to sell
lower than the first cost and charges.^ Meantime, however,
^ Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Sept. 24, 1770; Mass. Spy, Oct. 30; London
Chron., Nov. 8; Parliamentary History, vol. xvi, p. 861.
^ Pa. Journ., Aug. 30, Nov. i, 1770.
^ 5. C. Gac, Nov. 22, 1771 ; Am. Hist. Rev., vol. viii, p. 320.
* Hutchinson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 350.
"* Collins, Letter-Book 1761-1773, Dec. 6, 1771; Feb. 28, Oct. 8, 1772;
Mch. 22,, Apr. 28, Aug. 3, 1773; Brown, John Hancock His Book, p. 175;:
"A Merchant" in Mass. Spy, Jan. 9, 1772.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
243
the merchants felt they were enjoying a deserved feast after
a long and trying fast.
The newspaper advertising indicated that colonial agricul-
tural products and certain varieties of domestic manufac-
tures were enjoying a wider sale than ever before. The
Bostonian and New Yorker could expect to find in the local
shops Pennsylvania flour and iron, '' Choice Philadelphia
Beer," potash kettles cast at Salisbury, Conn., Rhode Island
cheese, Virginia tobacco, and Carolina pitch, indigo and
rice. The first volume of Blackstone was reprinted at
Boston for two dollars although the price of the British,
edition war three times as great. Lynn shoes for women,,
New England cod-fish hooks, Milton paper and Boston-
made sails had an established clientele. Philadelphia news-
papers advertised locally-made watches, bar steel, pot and
pearlashes. Governor Franklin of New Jersey transmitted
to the home government the report that, during the non-
importation struggle, a new slitting mill had been erected in
Morris County, so contrived as to be an appendage to a
grist mill and in such a manner as to evade the parliamentary
prohibition.^
The general satisfaction of the merchants was not dis-
turbed by the vestiges of the old restrictive and revenue
measures which still remained on the statute book. Even
complaints against the absence of a circulating medium
ceased, until the resumption of commercial relations with
Great Britain again drained off the gold supply ; and in May,
1773, Parliament took steps to ameliorate the condition of
currency stringency that had been potentially present since
the prohibition of legal tender in 1764. This act provided
that paper, issued by the colonies as security to their public
^ I N. J. Arch., vol. x, p. 444.
244 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
creditors, might be made, by the colonial assemblies, a lega
tender for the payment of provincial duties and taxes/
The conduct of the merchants and their customers towar(
the importation and use of duty-laden tea during this perio(
throws considerable light upon their philosophical attitud
toward those '' high points about the supremacy of Parlia
ment " which, according to Gushing, should best " fal
asleep." Outside of the ports of New York and Philadel
phia, the tea duty was universally acquiesced in, notwith
standing the widespread resolutions of boycott that had beei
adopted against customed articles in 1770. No efforts what
soever were made to enforce the non-importation in thes
provinces, so far as the newspapers recorded ; ^ and th
popular apathy f aisled to provoke criticism or protest. Eve
the arch-radicalV* J^ohn Adams, could confide to his diar^
on February 14, 1771, that he had '' dined at Mr. Hancock'
with the members, Warren, Church, Cooper, &c. and Mi
Harrison, and spent the whole afternoon, and drank greei
tea, from Holland, I hope, but don't know." ^
When in the autumn months of 1773 public sentimen
underwent an abrupt and radical change for reasons tha
will be discussed later, further light was thrown on the stat
of public mind that had existed prior to that time. Thus
in August, 1774, Robert Findlay was adjudged by th
Charles County, Md., Committee to have " fully and satis
factorily exculpated himself of any intention to counterac
the resolutions of America " because he showed that hi
^ 13 George III, c. 57. Vide also Macpherson, Annals of Com., vo
iii, p. 538.
2 The single recorded instance in any of the thirteen provinces wa
the case of John Turner, a New York shopkeeper, who was detected i:
the act of selling some dutied tea about six weeks after the New Yor
agreement had been adopted. A". Y. Gas. & Merc, Aug. 20, 1770.
» Works (Adams, C. F.), vol. ii, p. 255.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
245
orders for dutied tea had been sent in the fall of 1773/
Likewise T. C. Williams & Company of Annapolis issued a
statement in October, 1774, with reference to the tea con-
signed to them in the Peggy Stewart, in which they declared :
When we ordered this tea [in May, 1774], we did nothing more
than our neighbours ; for it is well known that most merchants,
both here and in Baltimore, that ordered fall goods, ordered
tea as usual ; and to our certain knowledge, in the months of
April, May and June last, near thirty chests were imported into
this city by different merchants, and the duties paid without
the least opposition. . . . We therefore think it hard, nay cruel
usage, that our characters should be thus blasted for only doing
what most people in this province that are concerned in trade,
have likewise done.^
At Charleston, S. C, the importation of dutied tea had
also been carried on during the years 1 771- 1773 with ab-
solutely no attempt at concealment.^ At the public meeting,
held in December, 1773, upon the arrival of the East India
Company's ship, it was strongly argued that *' Tea had ever
been spontaneously imported and the Duty paid ; that every
subject had an equal right to send that article from the
Mother Country into their Province, and therefore it was
unreasonable to exclude the Hon. East India Company from
the same privilege." * Indeed, while the people were still
in session, some dutied teas on board the tea-ship, not owned
by the East India Company, were landed and carted past the
meeting-place to the stores of private merchants ! °
^ Md. Gas., Aug. 11, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 703-704.
""Md. Gaz., Oct. 27, 1774.
' S. C. Gaz., Nov. 29, Dec. 6, 20, 1773.
* iV. Y. Gazetteer, Dec. 23, 1773.
^Drayton, J., Memoirs of the American Revolution (Charleston,
1821), vol. i, p. 98.
246 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
This contemporary evidence ^ is abundantly supported by
the official figures of the British government on the tea
importations into the colonies." At Boston, a total of
373,077 pounds of dutied tea was imported from December
I, 1770 to January 5, 1773 without articulate protest from
the radicals.^ " Three hundred whole and fifty-five half
Chests came in Vessels belonging to Mr. John Hancock the
Patriot," stated the comptroller of customs at Boston in a
letter of September 29, 1773, to John Pownall, under-secre-
tary of state in the colonial department.* In the other
importing provinces, the amount of dutied tea received from
December i, 1770 to January 5, 1773 was less in quantity
but probably about equal in proportion to their normal
volume of trade. At Rhode Island, the quantity of dutied
tea entered was 20,833 pounds; at Patuxent, Md., 33,304
pounds; at the several Virginia ports, 79,527 pounds; at
Charleston, S. C, 48,540 pounds; and at Savannah, 12,931
pounds. The total for all provinces, always excepting New
/ York and Pennsylvania, was 580,831 pounds, on which the
/ duty was paid without arousing comment.
New York and Philadelphia were the only parts of
British America where the people faithfully observed the
^ For further confirmatory evidence, vide, in the case of Massachu-
setts, Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Dec. 6, 1773; for Maryland, Md. Gas.,
Aug. 18, 1774; for Georgia, Ga, Gaz., July 27, 1774. Cf. Meredith's
statement in House of Commons, 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1624-1625.
'^ Abstract prepared in the office of the inspector of imports and ex-
ports; quoted by Channing, History of U. S., vol. iii, p. 128 n.
3 " Q " in the Bos. Eve. Post, Nov. 15, 1773, declared that 173 different
merchants were concerned in this importation ; but a letter from Boston
in the Pa. Packet, Dec. 13, 1773, claimed that the number of importers
had been confounded with the number of importations.
* Letter of Benjamin Hallo well; Stevens, Facsimiles, vol. xxiv, no.
2029, p. 5. A chest contained 340 pounds. Vide also John Adams's
Works, vol. ii, p. 381.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 247
boycott against dutied tea/ These places were the chief ^
centers for tea-smugghng in America. Unembarrassed by
the presence of the Customs Board, the enterprising mer-
chants of these ports drove a brisk trade with Holland,
Sweden and Germany and with the Dutch island of St.
Eustatius for contraband tea, powder and other supplies but
particularly for the forbidden tea.^ Lieutenant Governor
Golden and Lord Dartmouth exchanged views on the sub-
ject, agreeing in the sentiment that the illicit trade between
New York and Holland prevailed '' to an enormous de-
^ee." ^ " It is well known," wrote Samuel Seabury in
1774, " that little or no tea has been entered at the Gustoms
House for several years. All that is imported is smuggled
from Holland, and the Dutch Islands in the West Indies." *
Gilbert Barkly, a Philadelphia merchant of sixteen years'
standing, wrote in May, 1773, of the extensive smuggHng
of tea " from Holland, France, Sweden, Lisbon &c, St.
Eustatia, in the West Indies &c." ^ Smuggling " has amaz-
ingly encreased within these twenty years past," asserted
"A Tradesman of Philadelphia." ^ Hutchinson informed
the home government that " in New York they import
scarce any other than Dutch teas. In Rhode Island and
Pennsylvania, it is little better." '^ Since smuggled tea was
^ Contemporaries realized this. E. g., vide "A Tradesman of Phila-
delphia" in Pa. Journ., Aug. 17, 1774.
^-Letters of Hutchinson in Mass. Arch., vol. xxvii, p. 317; Bos. Gaz.,
Nov. 27, Dec. 4, 1775 ; A^". Engl. Chron., July 29.
^ N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. viii, pp. 487, 510-512.
* Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress . . .
By a Farmer (1774). Also vide Becker, A^. Y. Parties, 1760-1776, p. 84,
n. 158.
5 Drake, F. S., Tea Leaves (Boston, 1884), p. 201.
^Pa. Journ., Aug. 17, 1774.
■^ Letter of Sept. 10, 1771 ; Bos. Gaz., Nov. 27, 1775. Newport prob-
ably ranked next in importance to New York and Philadelphia as a
centre for tea-smuggling. Vide Drake, op. cit., pp. 194-197.
248 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
cheaper for the consumer to drink than dutied tea and the
profits of the tea dealer greater, the systematic neglect of
the dutied article in New York and Philadelphia corres-
ponded as much to self-interest as devotion to principle,
and gave fair occasion for the coining of the epigram that
'' a smuggler and a whig are cousin Germans . . ." ^
The smuggling merchants experienced little difficulty in
getting their teas into America. Notwithstanding all the
regulations of recent years, there were still many secluded
landing places on the extensive coast line and all the tricks
which the mind of a resourceful skipper could invent to
deceive the customs officials.^ There were, furthermore,
customs officials who, from lack of reward from the govern-
ment, did not care to risk " the rage of the people," ^ or
who, because of the forehandedness of the smugglers,
found rich reward in conniving at the traffic. Golden cited
the case of his grandson, recently appointed surveyor and
searcher of the port of New York, who was given to under-
stand by interested parties that *' if he would not be officious
in his Duty, he might depend upon receiving £1500 a year." *
The views of contemporary observers throw some light
on the proportion of imported tea which failed to pay the
parliamentary duty. Governor Hutchinson, who seems to
have furnished the brains for the tea business carried on
^ " Massachusettensis " in Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Jan. 2, 1775.
^ E. g., filling the interstices of a lumber cargo with tea, carrying
false bills of lading, and the like; private letters in Pub. Rec. Off.:
C. O. 5, no. 138 (L. C. Transcripts) , pp. 151-152, 175. Vide the sailing
orders of Captain Hammond for obtaining a tea cargo at Goteborg or
Hamburg and for running it past the customs officials at Newport.
R. L Commerce, vol. i, pp. 332-333.
'Letters of Hutchinson to Hillsborough, Aug, 25, Sept. 10, 1771, in
Bos. Gas., Nov. 27, 1775.
* Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 370-372.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 249
by his sons at Boston, estimated that the total annual
consumption of teas in America was 19,200 chests or 6,-
528,000 pounds.^ For approximately the same period, the
amount of tea that paid the duty was about 320,000 pounds.^
Hutchinson's estimate was evidently wide of the mark, for
even Samuel Wharton, who gravely averred that the fron-
tiersmen and many Indians shared the popular habit of im-
bibing tea twice a day, placed the total consumption at a
million and a half pounds less.^ The London tea merchant,
William Palmer, judged more dispassionately when he
hazarded a figure about half of that named by Hutchinson,
remarking that Hutchinson's estimate of " 19,200 chests
is more than has been hitherto annually imported from
China by all foreign companies." * Assuming Palmer's
conservative figure to be approximately correct, the con-
clusion would seem valid that in a year, like 1771, marked
by unusually large importations of customed tea, more ? ;^ ^
than nine-tenths of the tea consumed was illicitly imported. '^ 1
The incentive to smuggling existed in spite of the well-
intentioned efforts of the British government. The Towns-
hend act of 1 767, although imposing a small import duty of
threepence a pound in America, had removed all British im-
^ Bos. Gas., Nov. 27, 1775.
' The amount of dutied tea imported from Dec. i, 1770 to Jan. 5, 1772
was 344,771 pounds, according to an abstract prepared in the office of the
inspector of imports and exports; quoted by Channing, op. cit., vol. iii,
p. 128 n.
^ " Observations," Pa. Mag., vol. xxv, p. 140.
* Drake, op. cit., p. 197.
'" Hutchinson in 1771 set the figure at nine-tenths for New York and
Philadelphia and five-sixths for Massachusetts. Bos. Gas., Nov. 27,
1775. He said elsewhere that the contraband tea consumed at Boston
came there by way of New York and Philadelphia. Mass. Arch., vol.
xxvii, p. 317.
250
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
port duties from tea exported to America/ and had thus,
for a time at least, reduced the cost of English tea to the
American consumer below that of the contraband article.
This advantageous situation of English tea could, in the
nature of things, continue only so long as the wholesale
price of the tea in the English market did not go up, or the
price of smuggled tea fall. The former occurred. The
East India Company, although not permitted to sell at
retail, were permitted to name an upset price at their public
auction sales. Treading the edge of a quicksand of bank-
ruptcy and obliged by the act of 1767 to make good any
deficiency in the revenues resulting from the discontinuance
of certain tea duties, the company sought to recoup their
losses by advancing the upset price of tea. Governor Hutch-
inson wrote to Lord Hillsborough on August 25, 1771 : " If
the India company had continued the sale of their teas at 2s.
2d. to 2s. 4d. as they sold two years ago, the Dutch trade
would have been over by this time; but now that the teas
are at 3s. the illicit traders can afford to lose one chest in
three . . ." ^ Meantime, Dutch teas were selling in Hol-
land from i8d. to 2s. per pound and paid no import duty
into America.^ Hutchinson urged constantly in his busi-
ness and political correspondence that " by some means or
other the price of Teas in England to the Exporter ought
to be kept nearer to the price in Holland." *
The next act of Parliament dealing with the East India
1 7 George III, c. 56. Vide Farrand's article already referred to, in
Am. Hist. Rev. vol. iii, pp. 266-269.
2 Bos. Gaz., Nov. 27, 1775.
^ Drake, op. cit., pp. 191, 192, 194-197. Hutchinson calculated the cost
of landing smuggled tea at five per cent.
* Letters to William Palmer and Lord Hillsborough, in Mass. Arch.,
vol. xxvii, pp. 206-207; Bos. Gas., Nov. 27, Dec. 4, I77S- Vide also me-
morial of Barkly, the Philadelphia merchant, to the same purpose.
Drake, op. cit., pp. 199-202.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 25 1
Company, enacted in June, 1772, relieved the company from
future liability for deficiency in the tea revenues but granted
a drawback of only three-fifths of the English import duties
on tea exported to America instead of a complete reim-
bursement as formerly/ This act failed to alter the situ-
ation materially, so far as the American dealer in dutied
teas was concerned." The tea smuggler continued to con-
trol the situation, particularly at New York and Philadel-
phia; and in the period from December i, 1770 to the ter-
mination of the customs service in 1775, only 874 pounds
of customed tea were imported at New York and 128 pounds
at Philadelphia.^
Illicit traffic in other commodities was also carried on,
although probably in lesser volume than ever before. The
total duties collected on wines and molasses in all the colonies
increased steadily until 1773.* During the year 1772, ships-
of-war all along the coast displayed greater activity and
more than doubled the amount of their seizures.^ Exces-
^ 12 George III, c. 60. The East India Company were obliged to pay
the British government more than £115,000 as a result of the falling off
of the tea revenues during the first four years under the act of 1767.
* It would appear that certain other trading conditions discouraged
the merchants of the Middle Colonies from undertaking the importation
of English teas. English ports, unlike those of Holland: and certain
other foreign countries, were seldom open for the importation of
American corn and flour; and even when they were, the sales of the
East India Company occurred at such irregular intervals that colonial
merchants did not know when to direct their proceeds to be invested
in teas as homeward freight. Moreover, American merchants received
preferential treatment at the foreign ports, — a moderate price and
"Advantageous Terms of Discount, Difference of Weight &c, amount-
ing in the whole, to near 20 per Centum." Pa. Mag., vol. xxv, p. 140.
^ Channing, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 128 n.
* Vide table compiled from accounts of cashier of the American cus-
toms ; quoted by Channing, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 90 n.
^ Seizures by ships-of-war amounted to £719 in 1771 ; £2017 in 1772.
252
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
sive zeal on the part of the customs officials still had a ten-
dency to excite popular fury ; and indeed it was an incident
^growing out of this situation that produced the first serious
^/clash between the British government and the colonists
?' during this period. Already in November, 1771, the comp-
troller of the customs at Falmouth had been aroused from
his slumbers by disguised men and, at the point of a pistol,
forced to divulge the name of the person who had lodged
an information with him/ In the same month, a mob of
thirty disguised men had overcome, with some brutality,
the crew of a revenue schooner anchored near Philadelphia,
and had rescued a captive vessel that was laden with contra-
band tea, claret and gin.^
Resistance to customs authority reached its climax in the
destruction of the revenue vessel Gaspee on the night of June
9, 1772. The commander of the vessel. Lieutenant Dud-
ingston, had, in patrolling Narragansett Bay and the con-
necting waters, displayed " an intemperate, if not a repre-
hensible zeal to aid the revenue service." ^ He had made
himself obnoxious to legitimate traders as well as to smug-
glers, and was believed to have contributed, through his
officiousness, " not a little to enhance the price of fuel and
provisions " in Rhode Island.* One day while pursuing a
However, seizures by land officers fell from £607 to £3,7^. Vide Chan-
ning, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 89 n. Notices of the Vice-Admiralty Court in
the Boston newspapers showed that large quantities of goods were being
condemned for illegal importation, especially molasses, sugars and
wines. For an example of increased activity at New York, vide R. L
Commerce, vol. i, p. 383.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 26-27.
' Pa. Col. Recs., vol. x, pp. 8-15.
'Report of the royal Commission of Inquiry; Bartlett, J. R., A His-
tory of the Destruction of His Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee
. . . (Providence, 1861), p. 128.
■* Governor Wanton to Hillsborough ; ibid., p. 39.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
253
colonial vessel, the Gaspee ran aground on a narrow spit of
land about six miles from Providence. Led by John Brown,
the most opulent merchant of that town, and by Abraham
Whipple, a ship captain in the West Indian trade, a band of
citizens boarded the vessel in the night, seized the crew and
set the vessel on fire/ A commission of inquiry was ap-
pointed by the king to sift the matter and to convey the
perpetrators out of the colony for trial. Although the names
of those who had taken part in the affair were known to at
least a thousand persons, no one could be found to inform
the commissioners against them. Moreover, Stephen Hop-
kins, chief justice of Rhode Island and a shipbuilder and ex-
smuggler himself, declared that not a person should be
removed for trial outside of the colony's limits. The com-
missioners abandoned the inquiry and reported their failure
to the home government. The latter did not appear anxious
to make an issue of the Gaspee incident. Lieutenant Dud-
ingston was sued by some Rhode Island merchants for al-
leged unlawful conversion of sundry casks of rum and sugar.
After three trials in local courts, he acknowledged himself
beaten, and the Customs Board at Boston made good his
losses to the extent of £363.^ In general, revenue vessels
relaxed their vigilance during the year 1773; and their
seizures fell off almost three-fifths.^
The keener minds among the radicals were not blind to
the change that had come over the merchant class and to the
resulting paralysis which had seized on the public mind.
1 Based on statement of a participant many years later; ihid., pp. 19-20.
"Many of them appeared like men of credit and tradesmen; and but
few like common men," declared the deposition of Midshipman Dickin-
son. Ihid., p. 31.
' Channing, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 126.
' Ibid., p. 89 n. ; Stevens, Facsimiles, vol. xxiv, no. 2029, p. 5.
254 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776-
Sam Adams's comment when the Boston merchants decided
to abandon their general suspension of trade for tea non-
importation alone showed keen appreciation of the economic
basis of mercantile discontent. Admitting freely that the
merchants had held out longer than he had expected and
that his connection with them had been '' but as an Auxiliary
in their Nonimportation Agreement," he wrote to a brother
radical in South CaroHna in this strain :
Let the Colonies still convince their implacable Enemies that
they are united in constitutional Principles, and are resolved
they will not be Slaves ; that their Dependance is not uporr
Merchants or any particular Class of Men, nor is their dernier
resort a resolution barely to withhold Commerce with a nation
that would subject them to despotic Power/
In effect, he was saying that the merchant class had been
utilized to the utmost as fertilizers of discontent; that
their spirit for trade redress had sustained them surpris-
ingly well in their opposition to England but that hence-
forth the struggle of the colonies must be divorced from the
self-interest of the merchant class and rest on a broader
popular basis.
Adams labored hard to keep alive radical sentiment in
Boston. James Otis, in his intervals of sanity, was pursuing
a strongly reactionary course.^ John Adams withdrew him-
self from public hfe, devoting himself to his profession;
and for a time he ceased even to use his pen in defense of
popular rights. Sam Adams's chief care was to keep hot the
coals of Hancock's resentment against Parliament, for Han-
cock was the local Croesus,^ and some of his funds and all
^To Peter Timothy, Nov. 21, 1770; Adams, Writings (Gushing),,
vol. ii, p. 65. Vide also ihid., p. 58.
^ Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 2^.
' John Adams credited the statement that " not less than one thou-
sand families were, every day in the year, dependent on Mr. Hancock for
their daily bread." Ihid., vol. x, p. 260.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
255
of his influence had been employed to promote the anti-
parliamentary movement in the preceding years. But, as
was the case with many another merchant, Hancock's busi-
ness affairs had gone awry while he was playing the politi-
cian; ^ and he was averse to any further agitation by the
radicals while the golden fruits of commerce invited pick-
ing. "All friendship between them was suddenly at an end/'
wrote Hutchinson in his history, " and Mr. Hancock ex-
pressed his dissatisfaction with the party, and with their
extending their designs further than appeared to him war-
rantable." ^ For the next couple of years, Hancock, al-
though resisting all efforts of Governor Hutchinson to com-
mit him to the other side, pursued the course of the typical
merchant, and at several critical times threw his influence
and vote in favor of conciliation and against the disturbing
schemes of Adams. ^
What the radical cause lacked was, first, a compelling ^^
issue, and, second, an organization divorced from the con-
trol of the merchant class. The home government supplied
promising material for the first when the report reached
Boston in late September, 1772, that the salaries of the
judges would thereafter be paid out of the customs revenue.
No propagandist ever utilized an opportunity more dexter-
ously than did Sam Adams on this occasion. Masquerad-
ing under the signature *' Valerius Poplicola," he appeared
in the Boston Gazette of October 5, 1772 in an eloquent pro-
test against the innovation. '' The Merchants of this Con-
tinent," he declared,
have passively submitted to the Indignity of a Tribute; and
^ Brown, John Hancock His Book, pp. 158, 163, 168.
^ Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 346. See also Wells, Samuel Adams, vol. i,.
pp. 458, 459.
' Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 348, 356, 361 ; Wells, op. cit., vol. i^
pp. 465-475.
V"
256 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the Landholders, tho' Sharers in the Indignity, have been per-
haps too unconcern'd Spectators of the humiliating Scene. . . .
Had the Body of this People shown a proper Resentment, at
the time when the proud Taskmasters first made their appear-
ance, we should never have seen Pensioners multiplying like
the Locusts in Eg}^pt. ... Is it not High Time for the People
of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be
Freemen or Slaves? . . . Let us . . . calmly look around us and
consider what is best to be done. . . . Let it be the topic of con-
versation in every social Club. Let every Town assemble.
Let Associations & Combinations be everywhere set up to
consult and recover our just Rights.^
AVith the radical program so outlined, Adams decided to
work out the plan through. the agency of the town meeting.
Of these town meetings, Hutchinson had already written
several months earlier : they are '' constituted of the lowest
class of the people under the influence of a few of a higher
class, but of intemperate and furious dispositions and of
desperate fortunes. Men of property and of the best char-
acter have deserted these meetings, where they are sure of
being affronted." ^ According to Adams' plan, a petition
for a town meeting w^as at once presented to the selectmen.
Hancock was a selectman and, with three or four others,
he unhesitatingly rejected the petition, disapproving of w^hat
seemed to him precipitate measures. Other petitions were
then set on foot, and finally, after more than three ^veeks'
delay, the selectmen yielded to the pressure.^ The meeting
^ Adams, S., Writings (Gushing), vol. ii, pp. 33^-337-
^ This letter of Mch. 29, 1772 to Hillsborough continued: "By the
constitution £40 stg., which they say may be in cloaths, household
furniture or any sort of property, is a qualification ; and even with that
there is scarce ever any inquiry, and anj^thing with the appearance of a
man is admitted without scrutiny." Hosmer, Hutchinson, p. 231.
'Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 361-362; Wells, op. cit., vol. i, pp.
490-491.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
257
occurred on Wednesday, October 28, and two adjourned
sessions were needed to carry on an animated colloquy with
Governor Hutchinson over the question of the judges'
salaries/ At the last meeting, on November 2, the temper
of the citizens had reached the proper pitch; Adams seized
the moment to introduce a motion for a standing committee
of correspondence with the purpose
to state the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in
particular . . . , to communicate and publish the same to the
several Towns in this Province and to the World as the sense
of this Town, with the Infringements and violations thereof
that have been or from time to time may be made ; also request-
ing of each Town a free Communication of their Sentiments.^
The motion was carried unanimously.
Adams had succeeded in arousing the town meeting; he-1
had yet to convince the men who had been leaders in the
late agitation against the Townshend duties of the propriety
of his course. A number of these men, although asked to
serve on the committee, declined their appointments. Three
of the Boston representatives in the Assembly, Speaker
Gushing, Hancock and William Phillips, and three select-
men, Samuel Austin, John Scollay and Thomas Marshall,
all merchants, excused themselves, each alleging " his private
Business would not then admit of it." At least three others
took a like step.^ James Otis was induced to accept the
chairmanship. The twenty-one men who composed the
committee were the best who could be obtained under the
circumstances, and probably served Adams' purposes better
* Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Nov. 2, 9, 1772.
' Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. i, p. i ; also Bos. Town Recs. {1770-1777),
pp. 92-93-
• Benjamin Austin, Benjamin Kent and Samuel Swift. " Q. E. D."
in Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Nov. 12, 1772.
258 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1768-1776
than if the more weighty citizens had been persuaded to
sacrifice their private interests. Otis soon retired to the
madhouse ; and the '' Grand Incendiary of the Province " ^
himself assumed the chairmanship, a substitution which,
to Hutchinson's view, w^as probably little better than a
change from Philip drunk to Philip sober. In the commit-
tee as completed, the merchant element was in the minor-
ity; and the effective activity of the committee was largely
directed by the chairman. Hutchinson had as yet no sus-
picion that " the foulest, subtlest and most venomous ser-
pent that ever issued from the eggs of sedition " ^ was
growing before his eyes. '' The restless faction," he wrote
jeeringly to England, were unable ** to revive the old plan
of mobbing; and the only dependence left is to keep up a
correspondence through the Province by committees of the
several towns, which is such a foolish scheme that they must
necessarily make themselves ridiculous." ^
The plan began to yield fruit when the committee re-
ported to the town meeting on November 20 a cogently
reasoned paper, written by Adams, which was unanimously
accepted by the three hundred men present. This docu-
ment revealed the consummate ability of the master agita-
tor. Frankly designed to arouse the public from their
lethargic sleep, the paper bristled with allusions to past irri-
tations and future perils; it gave to current abstractions a
practical application; it made bold appeals to the self-inter-
est of smuggling merchants and to the self-esteem of home-
manufacturing farmers; it pictured the dwindling sphere
* Hutchinson's characterization of Adams; Wells, op. cit., vol. i, p. 488.
* The well known phrase of " Massachusettensis," in Mass. Gaz. &
Post-Boy, Jan. 2, 1775.
^Letter of Nov. 13, 1772 to Secretary Pownall; Hosmer, op. cit.,
p. 235.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 259
of provincial self-government, and dangled the bogey of an
American episcopate. The lengthy " List of Infringements
& Violations of Rights " was presented in terms which could
be understood by the least imaginative. The revenue duty
on tea was represented as an entering wedge for other taxes
which might affect lands; the arbitrary powers of the cus-
toms officials with respect to searching vessels or houses for
smuggled goods were fully dilated upon; the presence of
" Fleets and Armies " for supporting '* these unconstitu-
tional Officers in collecting and managing this unconstitu-
tional Revenue" was noted; the extension of the power of
the vice-admiralty courts was once more condemned; the
laws against slitting mills and the transportation of hats
and wool were cited as " an infringement of that right with
which God and nature have invested us." Regarding the
payment of the governor's and judges' salaries, i. e. of
" the men on whose opinions and decisions our properties
liberties and lives, in a great measure, depend," the divorcing
of these branches from popular control was deplored as fatal
to free government. References were also made to inter-
ferences in provincial home rule through the agency of royal
instructions, and to minor matters.^
This document, which, according to Hutchinson, " was
calculated to strike the colonists with a sense of their just
claim to independence, and to stimulate them to assert it," ^
was sent to all the towns in the province, with a circular
letter urging that they freely communicate their own senti-
ments and give appropriate instructions to their representa-
tives in the Assembly. The maneuver of Boston met with
immediate success. Groups of extremists in the various
^ Bos. Town Recs. (1770-i/yy), pp. 94-108; also Adams, S., Writings
(Gushing), vol. ii, pp. 350-374-
^ Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 366.
26o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
localities engineered town meetings, which approved the
Boston resolutions or adopted others more radical, and ap-
pointed standing committees of correspondence composed of
radicals. In all, seventy-eight such meetings, mostly of
inland towns but including the ports of Plymouth, Marble-
head and Newburyport, were noted in the journals of the
Boston Committee of Correspondence or in the newspapers,
Thus, all on a sudden, from a state of peace, order, and general
contentment, as some expressed themselves, the province, more
or less from one end to the other, was brought into a state oi
contention, disorder and general dissatisfaction; or, as others
would have it, were aroused from stupor and inaction, to sen
sibility and activity.^
The merchants as a class continued to hold aloof from the
jDrganized popular clamor." When the Assembly met ir
February, 1773, Governor Hutchinson, now keenly alive tc
the danger, denounced the committee of correspondence sys-
tem as unwarrantable and of dangerous tendency, and askec
the body to join him in discountenancing such innovations.'
This unwise action produced a storm of messages and re-
plies that, for the time, fanned higher the flame which was
already beginning to die for lack of fuel.
Indeed the weakness of Adams' plan Avas that the mani-
festo of the Boston town meeting was largely a recitatior
of old grievances, and the leading new issue could scarcel)
^ Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 370 n. Note some of the extravagan
protests against " these mighty grievances and intolerable wrongs," sc
freshly discovered ! Ibid., pp. 369-370 n.
^ It is significant that Salem failed to take action, and that twenty-
nine of substance and character at Marblehead expressed their " entir(
disapprobation." Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Dec. 28, 1772; Adams, S.
JVritings (Gushing), vol. ii, p. 350. The little town of Weston refusec
to appoint a committee by a large vote.
'Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 37O390; Hosmer, op. cit., pp. 39^
et seq.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 26 1
be an enduring one to a people who had been complaining
for generations against the burden of paying high salaries
to governors and judges. Moreover, the radical propaganda
had not yet advanced to a stage where it could be sustained
without the support of the merchant class. Adams, how-
-ever, had an abiding faith in the efficacy of a campaign of
education and agitation, and in the establishment of a popu-
lar organization which would be ready for action when the
time should arrive.
The matter of salaries was in form a local issue, and .
was not likely to stir the people of other provinces to the .
point of organization. However, the radicals of the Vir- y
ginia House of Burgesses, in March, 1773, seized the op-
portunity to establish a single committee of correspondence
for the whole province, when news reached them that a
royal commission of inquiry of large powers had been ap-
pointed to investigate the Gaspee affair. This committee,
composed almost entirely of radical planters, was empowered'
" to obtain the most early and authentic intelligence of all.
such acts and resolutions of the British parliament, or pro-
ceedings of administration, as may relate to or affect the
British colonies in America," and to carry on a correspond-
ence with the sister provinces respecting these matters.^
On April 10, 1773, Adams wrote to a member of the Vir-
ginia committee, urging the establishment of municipal com-
mittees of correspondence in every province;^ but he did
not understand, as they did, that political leadership in Vir-
ginia was held by the planting class and that the few urban
centres were dominated by the narrow views of merchants
and factors. The Virginia type of committee became at
^ Frotbingham, Rise of Republic, pp. 279-281. Collins, E. D., " Com-
mittees of Correspondence of the American Revolution," Am. Hist.
Assn. Rep. (1901), vol. i, pp. 243-271, is important in this connection.
^ To R. H. Lee; Writings (Cushing), vol. iii, p. 26.
262 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
once the popular plan of organization among the radicals;
and by July, 1773, ^^e assemblies had followed the lead of
that province/ It was not until Great Britain adopted meas-
\ ures which affected all provinces alike and which aroused the
i powerful merchant class once more to protest that the or-
i ganization of committees in local subdivisions throughout
]^ the continent was made possible. After July, 1773, the
flurry of discontent stirred up by the radicals of Massachu-
setts and Virginia quickly subsided." The mercantile and
conservative classes had made their influence felt once more.
General apathy again reigned.
As destiny would have it, Lord North, not Sam Adams,
was responsible for the abrupt determination of the mer-
chant class to take up cudgels again in a struggle for com-
mercial rights in the fall of 1773. ^^ was the enactment
of a new tea act by Parliament in May, 1773, that caused the
merchants to throw discretion to the winds and to seek again
popular support for commercial reform. Like the earlier
tea legislation, this act was designed to accomplish a double
purpose : to help the East India Company to sell their surplus
tea stock, amounting to seventeen million pounds; and to
enforce the collection of the parliamentary tax in America.^
^ R. I., Conn., N. H., Mass., S. C. A second group of assemblies
acted from September, 1773, to February, 1774: Ga., Md., Del., N. Y.,
N. J. Vide Collins's article, loc. cit. There seemed to be little or no
J-- -connection between the later movement and the agitation against the
L. East India Company which was developing concurrently.
^ For one thing, the commission to investigate the Gaspec affair had
failed to exercise any of their extraordinary powers.
' With reference to the second purpose, the revenue arising from all
the various duties in America during 1772 had yielded a balance of less
than £85 above the expenses of collection, not counting the cost of main-
taining ships-of-war for the suppression of smuggling. FrankUn, Writ-
ings (Smyth), vol. v, p. 460; vol. vi, pp. 2-3. Under the circumstances,
it was cheaper for the home government to adopt some expedient for
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 263
The act of 1773 involved no new infringement of the con-
stitutional or natural rights of the Americans, so far as the
taxation principle was concerned. Continuing the three-
penny import duty in America, the act provided that, in place
of a partial refund, a full drawback of English import duties
should be given on all teas re-shipped to America, thus re-
storing the arrangement which had existed under the Towns-
hend Act save that the company were not to be liable for
deficiencies in the revenue. The radical innovation was in-
troduced in the provision which empowered the East India
Company, if they so chose, to export tea to America or
to " foreign parts " from their warehouses and on their own
account, upon obtaining a license from the commissioners of
the treasury.^
--•^In other words, the East India Company, which hitherto
had been required by law to sell their teas at public auction
to merchants for exportation, were now authorized to be-
come their own exporters and to establish branch houses in
, America. This arrangement swept away, by one stroke,
the English merchant who purchased the tea at the com-
pany's auction and the American merchant who bought it
of the English merchant; for the East India Company, by
dealing directly with the American retailer, eliminated all
the profits which ordinarily accumulated in the passage of
the tea through the hands of the middlemen. From another
point of view, as Joseph Galloway has pointed out,
the consumer of tea in America was obliged to pay only one
carrying out Hutchinson's oft-repeated suggestion of sinking the selling
price of tea. The particular method adopted had already been suggested
by Samuel Wharton in London and Gilbert Barkly, the Philadelphia
merchant, and by others. Pa. Mag., vol. xxv, pp. 139- 141 ; Drake, op. cit.,
pp. 199-202.
1 13 George III, c. 44. Such exportation was to be permitted only
when the supp'y of tea in the company's warehouses amounted to at
least io,ooo,ooc pounds.
264 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
profit to the Company, another to the shopkeeper. But before
the act, they usually paid a profit to the Company, to the London
merchant, who bought it of the Company and sold it to the
American merchant, and also to the American merchant, be-
sides the profit of the retailer. So that, by this act, the con-
simier of this necessary and common article of subsistence
was enabled to purchase it at one-half of its usual price . . ?■
t^ The colonial merchant class saw at once that the new act,
if permitted to go into effect, would enable the American
consumer to buy dutied teas, imported directly by the East
India Company, at a cheaper rate than dutied teas imported
in the customary manner by private merchants or than
Dutch teas introduced by the illicit traders. Therefore,
when the colonial press announced in September, 1773, that
the East India Company had been licensed to export more
than half a million pounds of tea to the four leading ports
of America, an alliance of powerful interests at once ap-
peared in opposition to the company's shipments.
As Governor Hutchinson at Boston put it in a letter of
January 2, 1774:
Our liberty men had lost their reputation with Philadelphia
and New York, having been importers of Teas from England
for three or four Years past notwithstanding the engagement
they had entrd into to the contrar}'. As soon as the news
came of the intended exportation of Teas [by the] E. I. Com-
pany which must of course put an end to all Trade in Teas by
private Merchants, proposals were made both to Philadelphia
and York for a new Union, and they were readily accepted, for
although no Teas had been imported from England at either of
those places, yet an immense profit had been made by the Im-
portation from Holland, which wou'd entirely cease if the Teas
^Galloway, Historical' and Political Rejections on the Rise and Pro-
gress of the American Rebellion (London, 1780), pp. 17-18. For similar
statements, vide also " Z " in Boston Eve. Post, Oct. 25, 1773, and
" Massachusettensis " in Mass. Gazette and Post-Boy, Jan. 2, 1775.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 265
from the E. I. Company should be admitted. This was the
consideration which engaged all the merchants.^
An extended controversy began in newspaper and broad-
side, which not only revealed the fundamental antagonism
between the undertaking of the British trading corporation
and the interest of the colonial tea merchants, but also
pointed out the far-reaching menace which the new act held
for American merchants in general. To broaden the basis
of the popular protest, the old theoretical arguments against ■
the taxing authority of Parliament were exhumed ; and new j
and bizarre arguments were invented.
An examination of the propagandist literature and of a
few private letters will bear out this preliminary analysis.
Most of the writings against the tea shipments issued from
the presses of Boston, New York and Philadelphia and, with
varying emphasis, covered substantially the same ground.
The Charleston newspapers reprinted many of the northern
arguments, and the events there may therefore be said to
have been determined in large part by the same sentiments.
At Boston, the newspaper writers laid great stress on the
fact that the legitimate traffic in English teas was assailed
with destructive competition. "A Consistent Patriot " de-
clared that the new statute would displace the men in the
American tea trade and force them to seek their living else-
where " in order to make room for an East India factor,
probably from North-Britain, to thrive upon what are now
the honest gains of our own IVferchants." " " Surely all the
1 Mass. Archives, vol. xxvii, p. 610. Such also was the view of the An-
nual Register (1774), p. 48: "All the dealers, both legal and clandestine,
. . . saw their trade taken at once out of their hands. They supposed
it would fall into the hands of the company's consignees, to whom they
must become in a great measure dependent, if they could hope to trade
at all." Vide also Ramsay, History of the American Revolution (Phila-
delphia, 1789), vol. i, p. 96.
' Mass. Spy, Oct. 14, i773-
266 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
London Merchants trading to America and all the American
Merchants trading with Britain," said " Reclusus," *' must
highly resent such a Monopoly, considered only as it effects
their private Interest " and without regard to the fact that
everyone who buys the tea will be paying tribute to the
"harpy Commissioners" and to ParHament; the newly-
appointed tea consignees " can't seriously imagine that the
Merchants will quietly see themselves excluded from a con-
siderable branch of Trade . . . that they and the odious
Commissioners may riot in luxury." ^ "A Merchant " ex-
pressed surprise that the merchants and traders had not met
to take action in the crisis, noting, among other commercial
ills, that " those gentlemen that have dealt in that article
will altogether be deprived of the benefit arising from such
business." ^ The loyalist town of Hinsdale, N. H., resolved
unanimously that the tumult against the tea was not due
to objections against a revenue tax, " but because the in-
tended Method of Sale in this Country by the East India
Company probably would hurt the private Interest of many
Persons who deal largely in Tea." ^
At New York and Philadelphia, the chief smuggling ports,
I greater emphasis was placed on the threatened ruin awaiting
the illicit tea traffic. The Philadelphia merchant, Thomas
Wharton, pointed out that " it is impossible always to form
a true judgment from what real motives an opposition
springs, as the smugglers and London importers may both
declare that this duty is stamping the Americans with the
badge of slavery." * A tea commissioner at Boston believed
^ Boston Eve. Post, Oct. i8, 1773.
^ Mass. Spy, Oct. 28, I773-
' A^. H. Gazette, June 17, 1774. Other acts of Parliament, added the
town meeting, infringe our rights more than that law — thus, the
molasses duty and the late act estabHshing custom-house fees — and
yet no complaint is made against them.
* Drake, op. cit., p. 273.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 267
that the agitation against the act was " fomented, if not ori-
ginated, principally by those persons concerned in the Hol-
land trade/' a trade " much more practised in the Southern
Governments than this way." ^ "A Citizen" conceded cau-
tiously in the New York Journal of November 11, 1773,
that " we have not been hitherto altogether at the mercy of
those monopolists [the East India Company], because it
has been worth the while for others to supply us with
tea at a more reasonable price," but that hereafter " if tea
should be brought us from any foreign market, the East
India Company might occasionally undersell those concerned
in it, so as to ruin or deter them from making many experi-
ments of the kind." A loyalist writer expressed the same
thought from a different point of view when he affirmed to
the people of New York that every measure of the radical
cabal
is an undoubted proof that not your liberties but their private
interest is the object. To create an odium against the British
company is the main point at which they have laboured. They
have too richly experienced the fruits which may be reaped
from a contraband trade ... to relinquish them to others with-
out a struggle.^
One of the tea commissioners at New York declared that
" the introduction of the East India Company's tea is vio-
lently opposed here by a set of men who shamefully live by
monopolizing tea in the smuggling w^ay." ^ Governor Tryon
and others entertained a similar .opinion.*
1 Drake, op. cit., pp. 261-262.
^N. Y. Gazetteer, Nov. 18, 1773.
^Abram Lott to W. Kelly, Nov. 5, 1773; Drake, op. cit., p. 269.
^A''. Y. Col. Docs., vol. vlii, pp. 400, 408. A similar opinion was
shared by Haldimand, at New York, Brit. Papers ("Sparks Mss."),
vol. iii, p. 175; and by the anonymous authors of letters in 4 Am. Arch.,
vol. i, p. 302 n., and of an address in ibid., p. 642.
268 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
To rob the new law of the appeal it held for the pocket-
books of the tea purchasers, the writers impeached the good
faith of the company in undercutting prices. '' Reclusus "
predicted confidently that " tho' the first Teas may be sold
at a low Rate to make a popular Entry, yet when this mode
of receiving Tea is well established, they, as all other Mono-
polists do, will meditate a greater profit on their Goods, and
set them up at what Price they please." ^ " Hampden "
wrote :
Nor let it be said, to cajole the poor, that this importation of
tea will lower the price of it. Is any temporary abatement of
that to be weighed in the balance with the permanent loss that
will attend the sole monopoly of it in future, which will enable
them abundantly to reimburse themselves by raising the price
as high as their known avarice may dictate ? ^
In the words of " Mucins,"
Every puchaser must be at their mercy . . . The India Com-
pany would not undertake to pay the duty in England or Amer-
ica— pay enormous fees to Commissioners &c &c unless they
were well assured that the Americans would in the end reim-
burse them for every expence their unreasonable project should
bring along with it?
The writers sought to show that the present project of the
East India Company was the entering wedge for larger
and more ambitious undertakings calculated to undermine
the colonial mercantile world. Their opinion was based on
the fact that, in addition to the article of tea, the East India
Company imported into England vast quantities of silks,
* Boston Eve. Post, Oct. i8, 1773. Vide also Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol.
vi, p. 452.
^ A''. Y. Journal, Oct. 28, 1773.
3 Pa. Packet, Nov. i, 1773.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
269
calicoes and other fabrics, spices, drugs and chinaware, all
commodities of staple demand; and on their fear that the
success of the present venture would result in an extension
of the same principle to the sale of the other articles. Per-
haps no argument had greater weight than this ; nor, indeed,
was such a development beyond the range of possibility/
If they succeed in their present experiment with tea,
argued *'A Mechanic,"
they will send their own Factors and Creatures, establish
Houses among US, Ship US all other East-India Goods ; and,
in order to full freight their Ships, take in other Kind of Goods
at under Freight, or (more probably) ship them on their own
Accounts to their own Factors, and undersell our Merchants,
till they monopolize the whole Trade. Thus our Merchants are
ruined. Ship Building ceases. They will then sell Goods at
any exorbitant Price. Our Artificers will be unemployed, and
every Tradesman will groan under dire Oppression.-
" Hampden " warned the New Yorkers :
If you receive the portion [of tea] designed for this city, you
will in future have an India warehouse here ; and the trade of
all the commodities of that country will be lost to your mer-
^ In a letter of Oct. 5, 1773 to Thomas Walpole, Thomas Wharton pro-
posed the extension of the East India Company's trade, under the new
regulations, to include pepper, spices and silks. Drake, op. cit., pp. 274-
275. Dickinson, in an essay in July 1774, quoted a contemporary writer
in England as proposing " that the Government, through the means of a
few merchants acquainted with the American trade . . . , should estab-
lish factors at Boston, New-York, and a few other ports, for the sale
of such cargoes of British manufactures as should be consigned to them;
and to consist of such particularly as were most manufactured in the
Province, with directions immediately and continually to undersell all
such Colony manufactures." 4 Am. Archives, vol. i, p. 575 n. The
probability of some such scheme was also contemplated by "An Ameri-
can Watchman" in Pinkney's Va. Gazette, Jan. 26, 1775.
' Pa. Gazette, Dec. 8, 1773. Vide also a letter in Pa. Chron., Nov. 15,
1773, and "A Countryman " in Pa. Packet, Oct. 18, 1773.
2^0 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
chants and be carried on by the company, which will be an im-
mense loss to the colony.^
A customs commissioner writing to the home govern-
ment from Boston noted that it was pretended that " when
once the East India Company has estabhshed Warehouses
for the Sale of Tea, all other articles commonly imported
from the East Indies and Saleable in America, will be sent
there by the Company." ^
That the fear of monopoly was the mainspring of Ameri-
can opposition is further evidenced by the trend of discus-
sion in the early wrecks before it was known definitely that
the new law provided for the retention of the threepenny
import duty. The report gained currency that the tea
shipped by the East India Company was to be introduced
free of the American import duty. This understanding
was based upon a misreading of that portion of the statute
which empowered the company '' to export such tea to any
of the British colonies or plantations in America, or to for-
eign parts, discharged from the payment of any customs or
duties whatsoever, anything in the said recited act, or any
other act, to the contrary notwithstanding." ^ Had this
been a correct interpretation of the law, there is every reason
to believe that the course of American opposition would have
developed unchanged and the tea would then have been
dumped into the Atlantic as an undisguised and unmixed
protest against a grasping trading monopoly.
^ N. Y. Journal, Oct. 28, 1773.
2 Stevens, Facsimiles, vol. xxiv, no. 2029, p. 4. Vide also Hancock's
view, expressed in the annual oration of ]Mar. 5, 1774. i M. H. S.
Procs., vol. xiii, p. 187.
' Unsigned article in -V. Y. Gazetteer, Oct. 28, 1773. Vide also
" Poplicola," 'ihid., Nov. 18, 1773. "A construction strongly implied by
the liberty granted to export the same Commodity to foreign Countries
free of Duties," wrote Tryon to Dartmouth, Nov. 3, 1773- -V. Y. Col
Docs., vol. viii, pp. 400-401,
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
271
Governor Tryon, of New York, in a letter to the home
government made reference to the animated discussion over
the question ; and added :
If the Tea comes free of every duty, I understand it is then to
be considered as a Monopoly of the East India Company in
America; a monopoly of dangerous tendency, it is said, to
American liberties ... So that let the Tea appear free or not
free of Duty those who carry on the illicit Trade will raise
objections, if possible, to its being brought on shore and sold.^
Tryon's analysis of the situation is confirmed by the tone
of newspaper discussion during the weeks of uncertainty.
Even if the tea bears no duty, wrote a New Yorker to his
friend in Philadelphia, " would not the opening of an East-
India House in America encourage all the great Companies
in Great Britain to do the same? If so, have we a single
chance of being any Thing but Hewers of Wood and Draw-
ers of Waters to them? The East Indians are a proof of
this." ^ In like spirit, "A Mechanic " declared scornfully
that it made no difference whether the tea was dutied or
not. " Is it not a gross and daring insult, to pilfer the
trade from the Americans, and lodge it in the hands of the
East India Company?" he queried. "It will first most
sensibly affect the Merchants ; but it will also very materially
affect . . . every Member of the Community." ^
In the vigorous words of "A Citizen," " Whether the duty
on tea is taken off or not, the East India Company's scheme
has too dangerous an aspect for us to permit an experiment
to be made of it." In the same letter he said :
The scheme appears too big with mischievous consequences
^ N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. viii, p. 400.
^Pa. Chron., Nov. 15, 1773.
3 Pa. Gazette, Dec. 8, 1773.
272
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
and dangers to America, [even if we consider it only] ... as it
may create a monopoly ; or, as it may introduce a monster, too
powerful for us to control, or contend with, and too rapacious
and destructive, to be trusted, or even seen without horror, that
may be able to devour every branch of our commerce, drain
us of all our property and substance, and wantonly leave us to
perish by thousands . . }
All ambiguity as to the true meaning of the statute was
removed by the lucid pen of John Dickinson and others and
finally by a reported opinion of His Majesty's attorney and
solicitor general. It was shown, by careful analysis of the
act, that the East India Company were merely exempted
from the payment of all duties and customs chargeable in
England and that the American import duty remained as
j before.^ Even after this time, the New Yorkers were afraid
^ that Parliament might heed the American protest against
taxation and proceed to repeal the threepenny duty without
rescinding the monopoly rights granted to the East India
Company. In a remarkable letter written more than two
months after the Boston Tea Party, the Ne\v York Commit-
tee of Correspondence asserted frankly :
Should the Revenue Act be repealed this Session of Parliament,
as the East India Company by the Act passed the last Session
have liberty to export their own Tea, which is an advantage
they never had before and which their distress will certainly
induce them to embrace, we consider such an event as dan-
gerous to our Commerce, as the execution of the Revenue Act
would be to our Liberties. For as no Merchant who is ac-
quainted with the certain opperation of a Monopoly on that
^ A^. Y. Journal, Nov. 4, 1773.
2 " Y. Z." (Dickinson) in Pa. Journal, Nov. 3, 1773, also in Dickinson's
Writings (Ford, P. L., ed.), vol. i, pp. 457-458; "*Cato" and "A Trades-
man" in iV. Y. Gazetteer, Nov. 4, 18, 1773; "A Citizen" in A''. Y. Journal,
Nov. 4, 1773; letter in Pa. Journal, Nov. 10. 1773.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 273
or this side the Water will send out or order Tea to America
when those who have it at first hand send to the same market,
the Company will have the whole supply in their hands. Hence
it will necessarily follow that we shall ultimately be at their
Mercy to extort from us what price they please for their Tea.
And when they find their success in this Article, they will
obtain liberty to export their Spices, Silk etc. . . . And there-
fore we have had it long in contemplation to endeavor to get
an Agreement signed not to purchase any English tea till so
much of the Act passed the last session of Parliament enabling
the Company to ship their Tea to America be repealed. Noth-
ing short of this will prevent its being sent on their account.^
In view of the subordinate place which the argument of
violated rights held in the minds of the propagandists, pro-
tests against '' taxation without representation " were made
chiefly for rhetorical effect.^ This may be shown by a
few examples. In a letter written by a committee of the
Massachusetts Assembly after the Boston Tea Party, the
new act was characterized as '' introductive of monopolies
which, besides the train of evils that attend them in a com-
mercial view, are forever dangerous to public liberty," also
as " pregnant with new grievances, paving the way to
further impositions, and in its consequences threatening
the final destruction of liberties." ^ "A Consistent Patriot"
1 Letter to Boston Committee of Correspondence, Feb. 28, 1774; Bos.
Com. Cor. Mss., vol. ix, pp. 742-746. The letter added that the committee
would " feel the pulse " of the Philadelphia Committee and the other
committees to the southward and requested the Boston Committee to
urge the matter on the committees at Rhode Island, Philadelphia and
Charleston, S. C. I have found no replies to the New York proposal.
^ The smugglers and dissatisfied merchants " m.ade a notable stalking
horse of the word LIBERTY." declared "A Tradesman of Philadel-
phia," " and many well meaning persons were duped by the specious
colouring of their sinister zeal." Pa. Journal, Aug. 17, 1774.
^ Letter of Dec, 21, 1773, to Arthur Lee, signed by Thomas Cushing.
Samuel Adams, John Hancock and William Phillips ; 4 M. H. S. Colls.,
vol. iv, p. Z77'
274
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
stigmatized the act as '' a plan not only destructive to trade^
in which we are all so deeply interested but . . . designed
to promote and encrease a revenue extorted from us against
our consent." ^ The new statute, declared " Causidicus,"
was a case of
taxation without consent and monopoly of trade establishing
itself together. . . . Let the trade be monopolized in particular
hands or companies, and the privileges of these companies lye
totally at the mercy of a British ministry and how soon will
that ministry command all the power and property of the
empire ? ^
Even the members of the First Continental Congress treated
the matter from an unchanged viewpoint when they declared,
on October 21, 1774, in their Memorial to the Inhabitants of
the British Colonies that ''Administration . . . entered into
a monopolizing combination with the East India Company,
to send to this Continent vast quantities of Tea, an article
on which a Duty was laid. . . ." ^
Protests against the tea act as a violation of a theoretical
right caused a tea commissioner at Boston to remark skep-
tically :
But while there is such a vast quantity [of tea] imported every
Year, by so considerable a number of persons who all pay the
duty thereof on its arrival, I do not see why every importer,
nay every consumer thereof, do not as much contribute to en-
force the Tea act as the India Company themselves, or the
persons to whom they may think proper to consign their Tea
for sale.*
^ Mass. Spy, Oct. 14, 1773.
^ Ibid., Nov. 4. 1773. Vide also "Joshua, the son of Nun," ibid., Oct.
14, 1773, and " Scaevola" in Pa. Chron., Oct. 11, 1773.
^ Journals of the Continental Congress (L. C. edn.), vol. i, p. 98.
^ Drake, op. cit., pp. 261-262.
COLONIAL PROSPERITY
275
The people of New York and Philadelphia might, with
clearer conscience, discuss the tea tax as an invasion of
American liberties ; but, as " Z " pointed out, all Americans
were guilty of a glaring inconsistency in denouncing that
trifling duty whilst silently passing over " the Articles of
Sugar, Molasses, and Wine, from which more than three
quarter parts of the American Revenue has and always will
arise, and when the Acts of Parliament imposing Duties on
these Articles stand on the same Footing as that respecting
Tea and the Moneys collected from them are applied to the
same Purposes." ^
Of the other arguments used to stir up opposition, the
most interesting was the attempt to discredit the present
I undertaking of the East India Company by reason of the
I company's notoriously bad record in India. John Dickin-
son was the most forceful exponent of this view in a broad-
side which had wide popularity in both Philadelphia and
New York. Writing under the signature of '* Rusticus/^
he declared :
Their conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given ample
Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights,
Liberties, or Lives of Men. They have levied War, excited
Rebellions, dethroned Princes, and sacrificed Millions for the
Sake of Gain. The Revenues of mighty Kingdoms have cen-
tered in their Coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut
their Avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled Barbarities,
Extortions and Monopolies, stripped the miserable Inhabitants
of their Property, and reduced whole Provinces to Indigence
and Ruin. Fifteen hundred Thousand, it is said, perished by
Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits,
but this Company and its Servants engrossed all the Necessar-
ies of Life, and set them at so high a Rate, that the Poor could
not purchase them. Thus having drained the Sources of that
* Bos. Eve. Post, Oct. 25, 1773.
276 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
immense Wealth . . . , they now, it seems, cast their Eyes on
America, as a new Theatre, whereon to exercise their Talents
of Rapine, Oppression and Cruelty. The ^Monopoly of Tea,
is, I dare say, but a small Part of the Plan they have formed to
strip us of our Property. But thank God, we are not Sea
Poys, nor Marrattas, but British Subjects, who are born to
Liberty, who know its Worth, and who prize it high.^
v/' The hygienic objections to tea drinking, much agitated at
the time of the colonial opposition to the Townshend duties,
were again called up. It was not altogether without signi-
ficance that one of the leading men to urge this view was
Dr. Thomas Young, a physician who spent more time in
the Boston Committee of Correspondence meditating a rigor-
ous physic for the body politic than in prescribing for private
patients.^ Dr. Young cited Dr. Tissot, professor of physic
at Berne, and other eminent authorities, to prove that the
introduction of tea into Europe had caused the whole face
of disease to change, the prevailing disorders now being
" spasms, vapors, hypochondrias, apoplexies of the serous
kind, palsies, dropsies, rheumatisms, consumptions, low
nervous, miliary and petechial fevers." ^ '' Philo-Alethias "
1 Writings, vol. i, pp. 459-463. According to "A Mechanic," " The
East-India Company, if once they get Footing . . . , will leave no Stone
unturned to become your Masters. . . . They themselves are well versed
in Tyranny, Plunder, Oppression and Bloodshed" and so on. Pa.
Gazette, Dec. 8, 1773. A town meeting at Windham, Conn., on June 23,
1774, denounced the East India Company, declaring: "Let the Spanish
barbarities in Mexico and the name of a Cortez be sunk in everlasting
oblivion, while such more recent, superior cruelties bear away the palm,
in the history of their rapine and cruelty." Mass. Spy, July 7, 1774.
Vide also "A. Z." in Pa. Journal, Oct. 20. 1773, and "Hampden" in
A^ Y. Journal, Oct. 28, 1773-
2 Edes, H. H., " Dr. Thomas Young," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. xi,
pp. 2-54.
^Bos. Eve. Post, Oct. 25, 1773. Vide also his article in the Mass.
Spy, Dec. 30. I773-
I
COLONIAL PROSPERITY 277
added '' the great Boerhaave " and Dr. Cullen, professor of
medicine at Edinburgh, to the authorities already noted, and
suggested seventeen possible substitutes, beneficial in their
effects, that could be brewed from plants of American
growth/ ''An old Mechanic " recalled with a sigh
the time when Tea was not used, nor scarcely known amongst
us, and yet people seemed at that time of day to be happier,
and to enjoy more health in general than they do now. [Since
those days, a sad change has occurred] ... we must be every
day bringing in some new-fangled thing or other from abroad,
till we are really become a luxurious people. No matter how
ugly and deformed a garment is ; nor how insipid or tasteless,
or prejudicial to our healths an eatable or drinkable is, we must
have it, if it is the fashion.^
"A Woman's " intuition suggested the fitting retort to
these alarmist writings when she remarked scornfully that
no one had heard of these " scarecrow stories " until tea
had become a political issue. ^ The little town of Hinsdale,
N. H., undertook to expose the hypocrisy of the health
advocates in a different way. Assembled in town meeting,
the inhabitants resolved unanimously that '' the Conse-
quences attending the use of New England Rum are much
more pernicious to Society than the Consequences attend-
ing the use of Tea," destroying " the Lives and Liberties
of Thousands where Tea hath or ever will One," and that
Hinsdale would banish the use of tea when those towns and
persons who declaimed so loudly against tea should abstain
from the use of rum.*
* Pa. Journal, Dec. 22, 1773 ; also Mass. Spy, Jan. 27, 1774.
2 Pa. Journ., Oct. 20, 1773.
' Mass. Spy, Dec. 23, 1773.
* N. H. Gazette, June 17, 1774.
2^8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
If the colonists stood ready to back their words with
resolute measures, it began to appear that tea would soon be
added to molasses and wine as among those essential ingre-
dients which the historian of later days, in imitation of
John Adams, might record as entering into American inde-
pendence.
CHAPTER VII
The Struggle with the East India Company
(1773-1774)
Due to the animated discussion, public opinion was well
fertilized by the time that news reached America that the
shipments of the East India Company were on their way
across th« Atlantic. The thought of the newspaper writers
was quickly translated into action by mass meetings in the
great trading towns. These meetings spoke the crisp ver-
nacular of popular rights rather than the colorless phrases
of mercantile profit and loss; but their activities were
directed by merchants who believed that their business ex-
istence was jeopardized. In the great trading towns, the
chief object was to form combinations to prevent the land-
ing of the tea, it being well understood that the only way
to prevent consumers from partaking of the forbidden herb
was to remove the temptation.^
The first public meeting of protest was held at Philadel-
phia, partly because the merchant-aristocracy was excep-
tionally strong there, partly because the workingmen had
recently developed a sense of their collective importance,
and, perhaps, partly also because the city had a direct
acquaintance with the unscrupulous methods of the East
India Company. It was none other than Charles Thomson
who declared afterward that " the merchants led the people
into an opposition to the importation of the East India
1 Annua! Register {1774), p. 48; Galloway, Rejections, p. 58.
279
28o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Company's tea." ^ The workingmen had emerged from the
struggle against the Townshend duties conscious for the
first time of their power in the community. At the first
election after the termination of the non-importation, an
article, signed by "A Brother Chip," called upon the me-
chanics and tradesmen to unite in support of one or two
mechanics as members of the assembly.^ This plan appar-
ently met with success in this and the succeeding annual
election ; and the workingmen then effected a formal secret
organization, under the significant name of "' Patriotic
Society," for the purpose of voting en bloc at elections.^
As for the local bitterness toward the East India Company,
only as recently as two years before, the first manufacture
of chinaware had been begun in Pennsylvania ; immediately
the price of imported china fell five shillings in the pound,
through the reputed manipulation of that company; and
the new manufacture survived only through appeals for
popular support.*
1 Stille, Life of Dickinson, p. 345. Vide also Reed, W. B., Life and
Correspondence of Joseph Reed (Philadelphia, 1847), vol. i, pp. 54-55-
^The writer pointed out that the usual custom was for a coterie of
leading men to nominate a ticket of candidates without consulting the
mechanics, who formed the great mass of the population of the city,
and that '' the Assembly of late Years has been chiefly composed of
Merchants, Lawyers and Millers (or Farmers) . . ." The mechanics
were held up as a class with interests which should have representation ;
and it was declared " the greatest Imprudence to elect Men of enor-
mous Estates," who thus added political power to the influence of their
wealth. Pa. Gas., Sept. 27, 1770.
2 Ibid., Aug. 19, 1772.
* " The East-India Company would avail themselves of these Foibles
of Humanity," said this appeal; "if they could demolish one noted
Manufacture, they would certainly clip twenty Years from the Growth
of American Improvements ; and what they lost in the present and fol-
lowing Year by lowering their Prices, they would gain in succeeding
Years, with sufficient Interest." Ibid., Aug. i, 1771.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 281
Shortly after news of the new tea statute reached Phila-
delphia, the inhabitants met at the State House and adopted
a set of eight resolutions which became the model for
similar votes in other cities. The tea duty was branded as
taxation without representation, and the shipment of teas
by the East India Company was denominated an open at-
tempt to enforce the ministerial plan. Anyone in any wise
countenancing this plan was denounced as " an enemy to
his country." Finally, a committee was appointed to wait
on the tea consignees and request them to resign.^ With
some natural reluctance, these latter acquiesced. A second
public meeting was then held, which gave their undivided
voice against the entry of the tea ship upon its arrival at
the custom house and against the landing of the tea.^
Sometime later, dire threats in the form of broadsides
issued forth to the Delaware pilots, asking them to prevent
the arrival of the tea ship or, if that were impossible, to
give the merchants timely notice of the event. ^ In this
posture affairs remained for the time.
At Boston the course of opposition assumed a somewhat
different aspect because of the peculiar situation of things
at that port. As the seat of the Customs Board and the
apex of the revenue system of the continent, there were,
from the outset, grave possibilities of friction and violence
at Boston, although an executive bent upon conciliation
might have avoided disaster. Governor Hutchinson was
not now such a man, notwithstanding his moderation
during non-importation times and his yielding to the pop-
ular demand in withdrawing the troops after the Massacre.
No doubt he was led to overestimate the influence of the
^ October 16, 1773. Pa. Packet, Oct. 18, 1773.
^ Pa. Chron., Jan. 3, 1774.
^ Pa. Mag., vol. xv, pp. 390-391 ; Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Dec. 13, 1773-
2S2 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
conservative elements in the community by reason of the
tranquilHty of recent years ; ^ but he had other reasons for
firmness. Among the beneficiaries of the new law at Bos-
ton were his sons, Thomas and Elisha, and his nephew,
Richard Clarke. He himself, as his correspondence shows,
acted as business mentor to his sons ; and it is probable that
he was also financially interested in the firm. At any rate,
he was in the habit of writing long letters to William Pal-
mer, the great tea merchant, inquiring about the tea market
at London, ordering shipments of the herb for the firm, and
dickering about the prices and quality of the teas sent."
His personal interest in the treatment of the tea, the landing
of which some people in Boston were determined to pre-
vent, could not have been without effect on the bold unyield-
ing course he adopted toward the opposition.
It is not necessary here to recount the oft-repeated tale
of the tea destruction at Boston. The story need not be re-
told until some skilled detective of historical research has
brought to light such elusive facts as the transactions of the
radicals at the home of Edes, publisher of the Boston Ga-
zette; the whispered conferences of the more radical mer-
^ Thus, Hutchinson wrote to the Directors of the East India Com-
pany, Dec. 19, 1773: "As double the quantity of Tea proposed to be
ship'd by Company had been imported in a year and the duty paid
without any disturbance, I flattered myself for several months after I
first heard of the intentions to ship on account of that Company that I
should find no more difficulties than upon Teas [which] have been
ship'd by private merchants." Mass. Arch., vol. xxvii^ pp. 597-59S.
"^ Mass. Arch., vol. xxv, pp. 200, 528, 542; vol. xxvii, pp. 203. 206-207,
234, 274, 317, 413, 460, 483. Bancroft was aware of Hutchinson's per-
sonal interest in the sale of the teas: History of U. S. ^1876), vol. vi,
pp. ^73, 174, 175, 183, 271. Vide also Barry, J. S., History of Massa-
chusetts (Boston, 1855-1857), vol. ii, p. 467. Governor Hutchinson was
criticised by a speaker in Parliament in 1774 for having permitted his
sons to be appointed consignees. Parliamentary History, vol. xvii, p.
1209. Besides those named, the Boston consignees were Benjamin
Faneuil, Jr., and Joshua Winslow,
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 283
chants in their counting-rooms; the infinite craft and re-
sourcefulness of the deus ex machina, Sam Adams. Adams
had his long awaited opportunity. His effort to foster a
continuous discontent throughout the province had failed
of success because it lacked a substantial issue and the
backing of the business classes. The opposition to the East
India Company received a wide support from the mer-
chants ; the clear inference from his course of action is that;
he designed to utilize this discontent to drive the populace
to extreme measures, thereby to commit the province irre-
vocably to the cause of revolution and independence.^
Several features of the Boston transactions need to be
noted.^ From the beginning, the merchants as a class joined
in the popular demand for the resignation of the consignees
and against the landing of the tea. Their vehicle of action
was a legal gathering of the town; further than that the
majority of them, at the beginning, had no desire to go:
popular tumult and the destruction of life and property
were not normally in their program to secure relief from a
commercial grievance.^ The effort, therefore, of the bulk
of the merchant class was, on the one hand, to give effective
expression to the popular will through the town meeting;
on the other hand, to restrain or prevent mob outrages.
They were outmaneuvered by the strategy of Adams and
the obstinacy of Hutchinson.
Almost a month before the arrival of the first of the tea-
* Cf. Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 439-440.
' The principal documents relative to the tea episode may be found in :
Bos. Town Recs. {1770-1777) ; i M.H. S. Procs., vol. xiii, pp. 155-183;
vol. XX, pp. 10-17; Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. viii, pp. 78-89; Boston
newspapers, Nov. and Dec; Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. vi, pp. 452-459.
^ Referring to " the greater part of the merchants," Hutchinson wrote
on Nov. 15, 1773: "though in general they declare against mobs and
violence, yet they as generally wish the teas may not be imported."
I M. H. S. Proc's., vol. xiii, p. 165.
284 I'HE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ships, a mob gathered under Liberty Tree to witness the
consignees resign their commissions ; and when they found
they were to be cheated out of their performance, they
stormed the store of Richard Clarke & Sons and were
driven off only with great difficulty by the consignees and
their friends. It was this exhibition of violence which ap-
parently convinced the more substantial classes that further
developments should be under the visible authority of the
tow^n meeting. Accordingly, two days later, on November
5 and 6, a town meeting assembled over which John Han-
cock presided as moderator. The four hundred tradesmen
among those present took occasion to disavow unanimously
their authorship of a handbill, thrown about Faneuil Hall,
which accused the merchants of fomenting discontent for
purposes of self-aggrandizement. The meeting adopted the
Philadelphia resolutions and further voted their expecta-
tion that no merchant should thereafter import any dutied
tea. A committee of the body was appointed to secure the
resignation of the consignees ; but those gentlemen declined
to comply, upon the ground that they did not yet know
what obligations, moral or pecuniary, they were under to
fulfil their trust. On the seventeenth, the mob once more
took matters into its own hands and attacked the home of
Richard Clarke with bricks and stones. Again the town
meeting was quickly summoned, with Hancock in the
chair; but demands upon the consignees only brought the
response that advices from England now informed them
that their friends there had entered into engagements in
their behalf which put it out of their power to resign.
Adams now called into being a new agency of the pop-
ular will, which was destined to supplant the merchant-
controlled town meeting and which was the natural fruit-
age of the committee of correspondence system. This was
a joint meeting of the committees of Boston, Dorchester,
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 285
Roxbury, Brookline and Cambridge, representing a largely
rural and therefore less conservative constituency than the
Boston committee alone. This new body, meeting on No-
vember 22, resolved unanimously " to use their Joint influ-
ence to prevent the Landing and Sale of the Teas . . . ,"
and the Boston committee was instructed to arouse all the
towns to an " immediate and effectual opposition."
The first tea ship, the Dartmouth, made its appearance
in the harbor on Saturday, November 27, the other two
arriving some days later. This was the signal for the next
progressive step in the development of the radical organ-
ization — a meeting of all the inhabitants of the towns
represented in the joint committee. It was this irrespon-
sible mass-gathering of inhabitants of Boston and the
nearby towns that now assumed direction of events, the
town meeting being entirely superseded.^ The mass meet-
ing sat through Monday and Tuesday and, because of great
numbers, adjourned from Faneuil Hall to Old South Meet-
ing House.- One of the very first votes was a unanimous
resolution that the tea shipped by the East India Company
" shall not only be sent back but that no duty shall be paid
thereon/' and this was later supplemented by a vote apply-
1 " Massachusettensis," writing in the Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Jan. 2,
177s, remarked on this supplanting of the town meeting, observing
that : " A body meeting has great advantages over a town-meeting, as
no law has yet ascertained the qualification of the voters; each person
present, of whatever age, estate or country, may . . . speak or vote at
such an assembly; and that might serve as a skreen to the town where
it originated, in case of any disastrous consequence."
^ " A more determined spirit was conspicuous in this body than in
any of the former assembhes of the people. It was composed of the
lowest as well, and probably in as great proportions, as of the superior
ranks and orders, and all had an equal voice. No eccentric or irreg-
ular motions, however, were suffered to take place. All seemed to
have been the plan of but few, it may be, of a single person." Hutch-
inson, Mass. Bay, vol. iii, p. 433.
y
286 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ing the same principles to private shipments of tea. These
resolves constituted the ultimatum of the radicals, who
were now clearly in the ascendant: the town meeting had
never gone beyond the demand that the tea should be re-
turned unladen. Henceforth the destruction of the tea was
inevitable, unless Hutchinson should weaken. The gover-
nor gave no indications of a faltering resolution, for the
sheriff in his name confronted the assemblage with a proc-
lamation commanding them " to disperse and to surcease
all further unlawful proceedings;" but the only effect was
to arouse '' a loud and very general hiss." The meeting
carried on negotiations with the consignees, and with Rotch,
owner of the Dartmouth, but failed to secure satisfactory
concessions. The meeting adjourned after establishing
watches for the Dartmouth and the other tea ships as they
should arrive. Copies of the transactions were sent to
Philadelphia and New York.
The excitement at Boston prompted the committees of
correspondence in other towns of the province to secure the
passage of resolutions, pledging their support to Boston and
decreeing the non-importation of dutied teas.^
Monday, December 13, arrived — the seventeenth day
after the arrival of the Dartmouth; and Rotch still lin-
gered in his preparations to send the vessel to sea. The
situation had become somewhat complicated through the
fact that the vessel had been entered at the custom house in
order to unload drygoods and other merchandise belonging
to the merchants.^ Under a statute of William HI, this
entry made the vessel liable to seizure at the end of twenty
^ From Nov. 26 to Dec. 16, the following towns acted, in the order
named : Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, Charlestown, Marblehead,
Plymouth, Maiden, Gloucester, Lexington, Groton, Newburyport, Lynn
and Medford. Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vols, vi and vii, passim.
' Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 430 n. ; Pa. Mag., vol. xiv, p. 78.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 287
days by the customs officers for the non-payment of duties.
Affairs had reached a critical stage. On Tuesday afternoon
the mass meeting again assembled and " enjoined " Rotch
to demand a clearance for his ship at the custom house.
The plan was that, in case of refusal, he should enter a pro-
test, and then, securing a permit from the governor, pro-
ceed to sea. Accompanied by a committee of ten, Rotch
made the demand, but the customs collector refused an
answer until he had had time to consult with his colleagues.
Thursday was the last of the twenty-day period; and early
in the morning the country people began to pour into town
by the fifties and the hundreds. Almost eight thousand
people attended the meeting which was to hear the outcome
of the conference. Greatest impatience was manifested
when they were told that a clearance had been refused while
the dutiable articles remained on board. Rotch was or-
dered upon his peril to enter a protest and to demand of the
governor a permit for his ship to pass the Castle.
Hutchinson, meantime, had not been idle.^ He had re-
newed in writing the orders which used to be given to the
commander of the Castle to allow no vessel to pass the
fortress without a permit; and a number of guns were
loaded in anticipation of trouble. Fearing that the vessel
might try to escape through a different channel, two war-
ships, which had been laid up for the winter, were, at his
request, sent to guard the passages out of the harbor. Was
it a portent that, on the very day the storm broke, the
armed brig Gaspee should arrive from Rhode Island for
action? When Rotch made his request of Hutchinson, the
governor, feeling his mastery of the situation, replied that
he " could not give a pass till the ship was cleared by the
^ Hutchinson's own account to Hillsborough; Mass. Arch., vol. xxvii,
pp. 586-587.
288 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Custom-House." ^ The waiting assemblage learned the
news with greatest exasperation. There were angry
speeches in the flickering candle-light. Then Sam Adams
arose to his feet and pronounced clearly the talismanic
words : '' This meeting can do nothing more to save the
country." There was an answering war-whoop out of
doors; and a disciphned mob, disguised as Mohawk In-
dians, hastened to the wharf, and with great expedition
dumped into the harbor not only the tea on board the Dart-
mouth but also that on board the other two ships. No
other property was injured; no person was harm.ed; no tea
was allowed to be carried away; and a great crowd on the
shore looked quietly on.
The mob that worked silently and systematically that
night was evidently no ordinary one. Exhaustive research
many years later brought forth a list of participants; but,
as very few of the men ever cared to avow their connection
with the lawless undertaking, the identity of the persons
will never definitely be known.- However, it is evident that
^ " His granting a pass to a vessel which had not been cleared at the
custom-house, would have been a direct violation of his oath, by mak-
ing himself an accessary in the breach of those laws which he had
sworn to observe." Hutchinson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 436-437. This is
the best defense of Hutchinson's action. Vide also Hutchinson, Diary
and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, vol. i, pp. 103-104; Mass. Arch.,
vol. xxvii, p. 611. Nevertheless, in the preliminary weeks Hutchinson
had every opportunity, through his personal relations with the tea
consignees, to prevent the situation from reaching such an acute
stage. Had the public mind been less inflamed, the merchants as a
class would never have lent their support to the act of destruction. In
view of the dire consequences, which Hutchinson might very well have
foreseen, it would appear that he should have stretched his discretion-
ary powers to the point of permitting Rotch to depart without clear-
ance. In this connection it is worth noting that Lord Mahon in his
History of England (Boston, 1853-1854), vol. vi, p. 2, thought that
Hutchinson was " perhaps unwise " in refusing the permit.
2 Vide Drake, Tea Leaves. Cf. Pierce, E. L., " Recollections as a
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 289
the better class of citizens toiled side by side with carpen-
ters, masons, farmers, blacksmiths and barbers. The names
of fifteen merchants of the more radical stamp, including
William Molineux and Henry Bass, have been included in
the list ; and it is known that Lendall Pitts, brother to John
Pitts, the selectman, had charge of one portion of the mob.
John Hancock was probably speaking the truth when he
disclaimed all knowledge of any detail of the tea destruc-
tion/ But it is clear that many merchants, who went into
the movement against the East India Company with the in-
tention of resorting only to peaceful opposition, were swept
by the surge of popular feeling into measures of which
their best judgment disapproved." Two days after the tea
affair. Governor Hutchinson described in some amazement
the apparent callousness of the public toward the destruc-
tion of £15,000 of property belonging to the English com-
pany. The Stamp Act riots had excited horror and pity,
he declared, because the great loss fell upon two or three
individuals ; but now no pity was expressed for " so great
Source of History," 2 M. H. S. Procs., vol. x, pp. 473-480. Drake's list
includes iii names. Contemporary accounts fixed the number of par-
ticipants variously from 50 to 200. Hutchinson said : " So many of the
actors and abettors were universally known, that a proclamation, with
a reward for discovery, would have been ridiculed." Mass. Bay, vol.
iii, p. 439. Edes, at whose house the " Indians " rested in waiting, was,
according to his son, the only person who had a complete list of par-
ticipants; and after his death the list was taken, it would appear, by
the merchant, Benjamin Austin, as a paper whose contents he wished
not to be publicly known. Thereafter it disappeared, i M. H. S. Procs.,
vol. xii, pp. 174-176.
^ Brown, John Hancock His Book, p. 178. Loyalist contemporaries
claimed insistently that he was one of the mob.
' Hutchinson wrote shortly after the tea destruction : "All this time
nobody suspected they would suffer the tea to be destroyed, there being
so many pien of property active at their meetings, as Hancock, Phillips,
Rowe, Dennie, and others, besides the selectm.en and the town clerk
who was clerk of all the meetings." t M. H. S. Procs., vol. xiii, p. 170.
290 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a body as the East India Company; it is said to be a loss
which will never be felt." ^
At Philadelphia, the eventful day arrived some days later
than at Boston. In the weeks following the public resolu-
tions of October 16 there had seemed for a time serious
danger that the workingmen of Philadelphia would sep-
arate themselves from the opposition to the East India
Company because of the unreasonably high prices which
shopkeepers were demanding for the smuggled tea. E^rly
in December, however, a committee of investigation was
appointed by the inhabitants; and, after some difficulty,
they succeeded in forcing the price of tea down to a level
of six shillings a pound." This allayed the mutterings. On
Saturday evening, December 25, it was learned that the
tea ship, commanded by Captain Ayres, had arrived at
Chester; and armed by this forewarning, the vessel was
stopped the next day at Gloucester Point, about four miles
from the city.^ Captain Ayres, being brought ashore, was
made acquainted with the feeling of the townsmen ; and he
promised that he would go to sea when the people had so
expressed themselves in public meeting. Upon Monday,,
eight thousand people of all ranks assembled in the Square,
and in spirited resolutions directed Captain Ayres not to
enter the vessel at the custom house but to depart imme-
diately for England. So it came about that, within six days
after the tea ship entered the Capes, she was on her way
out again with her cargo undisturbed. By preventing entry
^ Mass. Arch., vol. xxvii, p. 594. A fourth tea-ship, not yet arrived,
was cast ashore on the back of Cape Cod by a storm about this time.
Ihid., p. 587.
*Pa. Gas., Dec. 8, 1773; also Pa. Chron., Dec. 13.
' The principal documents relative to the tea episode in Philadelphia
may be found in Pa. Mag., vol. xv, pp. 385-30'^.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 29 1
at the custom house, the Philadelphians succeeded in avoid-
ing the difficulties which the Bostonians had faced, ahhough
thereby Thomas Wharton found himself deprived tempo-
rarily of the use of a fine chariot which was consigned to
him, and other merchants had to go without their winter
stocks.^
The public meeting, after voting instructions for Ayres's
guidance, resolved their hearty approval of the destruction
of the tea at Boston. The passage of this resolve awoke
the only discord at the meeting, for the committee, which
had prepared the other resolutions in advance, had rejected
this one by a vote of ten to two. The tenor of the resolu-
tion was contrary to the sentiments of *' the substantial
thinking part," and had been carried in open meeting only
through the eloquence of the two advocates and the un-
thinking enthusiasm of the crowd.'
At New York, as elsewhere, the merchants were active r^'\
in stirring up opposition to the East India Company's ship-
ments; but the development of events revealed, more
clearly than elsewhere, the fundamental conflict between
merchants and radicals as to the proper mode of procedure.^
Preparations for the arrival began on November 10, when
a printed notice, signed by '* Legion," directed the pilots to
refuse to guide the tea ship into the harbor. As the vessel
was expected sometime in December, a committee of citi-
zens exerted pressure upon the consignees to resign their
* Pa. Mag., vol. xiv, pp. 78-79.
' Wharton to Walpole; Wharton, Letter-Book (Hist. Soc. of Pa.), pp.
33-34.
* The best accounts of these events are : the narrative by " Brutus "
in A^. Y. Gazetteer, May 12, 1774, reprinted in 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
251-258 n. ; and the modern treatment of Becker, N. Y. Parties, 1760-
^776, PP- 102- 1 1 1. Vide also the New York newspapers during this
period.
292
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
commissions; and this they cheerfully did on December i,
although m.eantime an open threat of violence had been
made against them in a broadside issued by the " Mo-
hawks." It was clearly necessary to reach an agreement as
to the nature of the opposition which should be directed
against the expected tea ship; and for this purpose a docu-
ment, entitled the " Association of the Sons of Liberty,"
was prepared as a common platform for all classes. This
paper denounced all persons who should aid in the intro-
duction of dutied teas as enemies to their country and de-
clared a boycott against them. As an onlooker of the
event put it, this document embodied " the strongest terms
of opposition, without actual violence . . . , leaving [by
implication] the use of force ... to be resolved in some
future time in case any emergency might thereafter render
the measure necessary." ^ The association was general
enough in its terms to be signed by a great number of in-
habitants, including " most of the principal lawyers, mer-
chants, landholders, masters of ships, and mechanics."
The radicals were content with the association as a be-
ginning; and one of the ultra-radicals, Alexander McDou-
gall, assured Sam Adams in a letter of December 13 that:
" The worst that can or will happen here is the landing of
the Tea and storing it in the Fort." - The boldness of the
people grew^ with the news of the early transactions at Bos-
ton; and in order to capitalize the excitement, the Sons of
Liberty and " every other Friend to the Liberties and
Trade of America " were summoned to a mass meeting on
December 16. Two thousand were present notwithstand-
ing the inclement weather, and they readily agreed to the
suggestion of the radical, John Lamb, that a committee of
* " Brutus," loc. cit.
^Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. vi, pp. 472-473.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 293
correspondence be appointed to communicate with the other
provinces. The assemblage formally ratified the associa-
tion ; and when the mayor appeared with a proposition from
the governor that the tea upon its arrival should be stored
in the Fort and not be removed except at noonday, the offer
was greeted with a thrice-repeated negative and indications
of intense indignation. The radicals had advanced beyond
the stage of halfway measures.
This meeting alarmed the more conservative merchants, X
who saw plainly that affairs were drifting in the direction ^^
of mob control. Four days later, a few persons, among
whom Isaac Low and Jacob Walton were most active, cir-
culated a paper, the avowed purpose of which was to pledge
the signers not to resort to force in opposing the introduc-
tion of the tea. The project made some headway, but was
abandoned on the next day because of the excitement;
aroused by the receipt of news of the Boston Tea Party..
From that moment, as Governor Tryon informed Dart-
mouth, all hope of a temperate opposition was gone.^ The
consignees felt no uncertainty as to the peril, and on De-
cember 2y wrote to Captain Lockyer, of the tea- ship, a
letter to be delivered upon his arrival at Sandy Hook,
notifying him of their resignation and advising him to re-
turn to sea '' for the safety of your cargo, your vessel, and
your person . . ." - But the master of the tea ship had
already heard echoes of the clamor at Boston and elsewhere
in far-off Antigua, whither adverse winds had driven him
while making for New York.^ When he arrived at Sandy
^ " The landing, storing and safe keeping of the Tea when stored
could be accomplished, but only under the protection of the Point of
the Bayonet and Muzle of the Cannon . . . /' wrote Tryon. N. Y. Col,
Docs., vol. viii, pp. 407-408.
' Drake, op. cit., p. 358.
' Mass. Spy, Apr. 7, 1774.
294
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Hook on Monday, April i8, 1774, he pursued a most cir-
cumspect course, refusing to betake himself personally to
the city without permission of the committee of correspond-
ence, and promising not to make entry at the custom house
and to continue speedily on his way.
Capain Lockyer saved the property of the East India
Company by his caution; for the populace were alert and
ready for violent measures. This was show^n by an inci-
dent which occurred before Lockyer returned to sea. On
Friday of this week Captain Chambers arrived in the Lon-
don with a personal consignment of eighteen chests of tea,
whose presence on board he attempted in vain to conceal.
The facts were laid before a meeting of citizens and the
" -Mohawks " were prepared for action at a concerted
signal, when some impatient souls thronged on board the
vessel, stove in the chests, and cast the tea into the waters.^
The New Yorkers had now surpassed the Bostonians in
their radicalism, for the latter had exhausted all other ex-
pedients before employing force. The New Yorkers acted
in resentment of the glaring duplicity of Captain Chambers,
who only six months before had received the gratitude
of a New York meeting for having been one of the first
captains to refuse a tea consignment of the East India
Company.
The course of opposition in the commercial centers of the
North thus took the form of an uncompromising refusal to
permit the tea to be landed. In every instance, the move-
ment was crowned with success, because it was engineered
by an alliance of radicals and the generality of the mer-
chants. The fourth port to which the tea was consigned
* "Several persons of reputation were placed below to keep tally and:
about the companion to prevent ill-disposed persons from going below
the deck." " Brutus," loc. cit.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 295
presented a situation in which such a union of forces was
difficult to accomplish ; and therefore the resistance to the
East India Company yielded results only partially suc-
cessful.
When news of the new commercial advantages granted
to the East India Company reached Charleston, the news-
papers hardly did more than to reprint some of the more
trenchant pieces from the northern newspapers. The
Charlestonians in general experienced considerable difficulty
in discovering why they should be alarmed at receiving
dutied tea directly from the East India Company when they
had complaisantly accepted it from merchants who had
themselves bought it of the company. It was some of the '^
more radical planters who began to propagate the doctrine ^""
of an active resistance to the East India Company and in-
vented the pleasant fiction that the private orders of cus-
tomed tea had been imported in the belief that the duty
would soon be repealed by Parliament/ The merchants
were loath to take any part in the movement, many of them
being factors and thus bearing a relationship to their Eng-
lish firms not unlike that of the tea consignees to the East
India Company. Furthermore, a non-importation of dutied
teas would inure to the benefit of a very small smuggling
class, and the merchants had no reason to prefer their wel-
fare to that of a legitimate trading company. The mer-
chants also had large quantities of dutied teas in their stores
and, in any event, desired to dispose of this stock before
opposing the East India Company. The problem of the
radicals was to secure the backing of the mercantile ele-
ment, and to accomplish this end by making as few conces-
sions as possible.
On Thursday morning, December 2, the tea ship London
^"Junius Brutus" in S. C. Gas., Nov. 29, 1773.
296 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
came to anchor before the town, containing the consign-
ment of the East India Company as well as several tea con-
signments to private merchants. At once handbills were
distributed about the streets inviting all inhabitants and
particularly the landholders to assemble at the Exchange
the next day/ The people responded in such numbers as to
cause the main beams of the structure to give way. In the
heated debates, it was urged that the East India Company
had the same right to import dutied teas as the private mer-
chants had been enjoying; but the greater number held
otherwise. They prevailed upon the tea consignees to re-
sign their commissions, and framed an agreement, pledging
the merchants who should sign it to a non-importation of
dutied teas. Captain Curling, of the tea ship, being present,
was instructed to return to England with the tea; but no
action was taken with reference to the private tea orders
on board, which were publicly landed by their owners.
The committee entrusted with the circulation of the
agreement, headed by Chris Gadsden and composed mostly
of planters, met with little success. Even the appearance
of a new agreement, signed by the '' principal planters and
landholders " and threatening boycott against dealers in
dutied teas, had no visible effect on the merchants. Their
objection was that the proposed agreement was aimed
against dutied teas only and would directly enrich and en-
large the smuggling class. ^ The cause of the merchants
was suffering from lack of organization; and in order to
secure a greater solidarity, they established, on December 9,
the " Charles-Town Chamber of Commerce," which there-
after devoted itself to promoting mercantile interests, polit-
^ For the events of Dec, 2 and 3, I'ide S. C. Gaz., Dec. 6, 1773; N. F.
Gazetteer, Dec. 22,', Drayton, Memoirs, vol. i, pp. 97-98.
'Two letters of the Charleston consignees; Pub. Rec. Off., C. 0. 5,
no. 133 (L. C. Transcripts), i. 4od.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 297
ical as well as economic/ The planters met at Mrs. Swal-
low's tavern on Wednesday, the fifteenth, in preparation
for a general meeting which had been called for Friday;
and it was probably more than a coincidence that their nat-
ural allies, the mechanics, held a meeting there at the same
time. The merchants took occasion to hold a secret meet-
ing of preparation on the following day. Under these cir-
cumstances, the crowd assembled at the Exchange on Fri-
day, December 17. The chairman, George Gabriel Powell,
opened the meeting by strongly recommending moderation.
Both radicals and merchants were represented by able
speakers; the former appeared at first to have the upper
hand, and a vote was passed for the non-importation of
dutied teas. The moderates now rallied their forces, and
succeeded in amending the motion to include all teas " from
any Place whatsoever." By this amendment, legitimate
traders and smugglers were placed on an equal footing.
The merchants gained a further point in that six months
were allowed for the consumption of the teas on hand. The
radicals made a final attempt to commit the meeting to the
fundamental principle of "no taxation without representa-
tion;" a motion was made to prohibit from the province
wine, molasses and everything else subject to a revenue
duty imposed by Parliament. On the plea that the hour
was late, the meeting adjourned with a resolution to take up
the matter for consideration at a meeting early in Jan-
uary.^ This, as the sequel showed, proved to be a final
disposition of the matter.^
Meantime the period for the payment of the tea duty
expired on Tuesday night, December 21, As in the case of
^ 6". C. Gas., Dec. 13, 1773; 6". C. Gas. & Coun. Journ., Dec. 28.
' Draj'-ton, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 97-98; S. C. Gas., Dec. 20, 1773; Pub.
Rec. Off., C. O. 5, no. 133 (L. C. Transcripts), f. 4od.
* Drayton, op. cit., vol. i, p. 100.
298
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the Boston tea ship, Captain Curling had entered at the cus-
tom house and landed a part of his cargo. The resolutions
of the two public meetings foreboded a spirited resistance
to the seizure of the tea by the customs officials, but the
lukewarm support given by the merchants was a cold douche
to the hopes of the radicals/ The customs officers began
to land the tea about seven o'clock Wednesday morning,
and by noon all of it was placed on shore and about half of
it in the warehouse. " There was not the least disturbance,*'
wrote the comptroller of the customs ; " the gentlemen that
came on the wharf behaved with their usual complaisance
and good nature to me . . ." ^ The tea remained undis-
turbed in the government warehouse for three years, when
it was auctioned off for the benefit of the new revolutionary
government.
It is apparent from this recital of events that the British
I government and its reluctant ally, the East India Company,
had been foiled in their attempt to effect the sale of dutied
tea, owned by the company, in the colonies. The results
of this politico-business venture were to be far reaching.
Meantime the radicals and merchants of America, having
beheld the fruits of their coalition, found time to reflect on
the situation in which they found themselves. Of the four
instances of opposition to the East India Company, the
Boston Tea Party was best calculated to enkindle the public
mind ; but, to the surprise of the radicals, there was no burst-
ing forth of the flame that had swept over the country at
• the time of the Stamp Act and again during the Townshend
^ Governor Bull believed that, if the merchants had been a little more
aggressive in showing disapprobation of the public meetings and the
consignees had shown a little more backbone, the plan of the East
India Company would have been put peaceably into operation. Drake,
op. cit., pp. 339-341-
' Ibid., p. 342.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 299
Acts, save in Massachusetts where the fuse had been care-
fully laid by the committees of correspondence. The mer-
chant class generally was shocked into remorseful silence
by the anarchy that had laid profane hands upon property
belonging to a private trading company; and many other
people, more liberally inclined, were of their cast of mind.
As a conservative Boston journal quoted with approval :
Whenever a factious set of People rise to such a Pitch of
Insolence, as to prevent the Execution of the Laws, or destroy
the Property of Individuals, just as their Caprice or Humour
leads them; there is an end of all Order and Government,
Riot and Confusion must be the natural Consequence of such
Measures. It is impossible for Trade to flourish where Prop-
erty is insecure : Whether this has not been the Case at Boston
for some time past, you are the best Judge. There is a strange
Spirit of Licentiousness gone forth into the World, which
shelters itself under the venerable and endearing Name of
Liberty, but is as different from it as Folly is from Wisdom.^
Furthermore, what right did the Bostonians have to pose
as the jealous guardians of the principle of local taxation, it
was asked in many parts of British America, when Boston-
ians had been the most notorious importers of dutied teas
during the last two or three years? Even Dr. Franklin,
who from his official position at London represented all
America more nearly than any other one man, called the
tea destruction '' an Act of violent Injustice on our part."
He wrote at length to the Massachusetts Committee of Cor-
respondence :
I am truly concern'd as I believe all considerate Men are with
you, that there should seem to any a Necessity for carrying
Matters to such Extremity, as, in a Dispute about Publick
^ Words of an Englishman writing to an American friend ; Mass.
<^a.::. & News-Letter, Nov. 17, 1774.
300
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Rights, to destroy private Property. ... I cannot but wish
& hope that before any compulsive Measures are thought of
here, our General Court will have shewn a Disposition to re-
pair the Damage and make Compensation to the Company.^
As has been suggested, Sam Adams's committee system
taught the inhabitants of Massachusetts and the nearby^
provinces to react differently, although even here the mari-
time town of Bristol, R. I., saw fit to qualify its resolutions
against the East India Company by declaring :
Some may apprehend there is danger from another quarter,
generally unforeseen and unsuspected; that anarchy and con-
fusion, which may prevail, will as naturally establish tyranny
and arbitrary power, as one extreme leads to another; many
on the side of liberty, when they see it degenerating into an-
archy, fearing their persons are not safe, nor their property
secure, will be likely to verge to the other extreme. . . .^
From the moment of the sinking of the tea at Boston,
public sentiment in Massachusetts entirely escaped any
bounds that the mercantile element could have set for it. It
has been shown how, in the earlier months, the popular de-
mands, originally directed against the dutied shipments of
the British trading monopoly alone, w^ere extended to in-
clude consignments to private merchants as well. Imme-
diately after the tea destruction, the radicals proceeded to
take the logical next step — the boycott of all teas, whether
dutied or smuggled. This may have been done to propitiate
the dealers in legal teas; but it also had the effect of pre-
venting the selling of customed teas to unsuspecting persons
\vho believed they w^ere buying the contraband article."
^ Letter of Feb. 2, 1774; Writings (Smyth), vol. vi, pp. 178-180. Vide
also ihid., p. 223.
2 R. I. Col. Recs., vol. vii, pp. 274-275.
'"Concordia" and "Deborah Doubtful" in Mass. Spy, Jan. 13, 27^
^774.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 301
Many believed this step to be " chimerical;" ^ certainly the
smugglers were robbed of their pecuniary interest in the
struggle, but they were too deeply involved to withdraw
their support now. Within a week after the tea destruc-
tion, the tea dealers of Boston agreed to suspend the sales
of all teas, dutied or otherwise, after January 20, 1774.
When that day arrived, two barrels of Bohea still unsold
were publicly burned in front of the custom house.^
The nearby town of Charlestown co-operated with the
Boston measures ; and the Boston plan was also adopted by
Worcester, Acton, Lunenburgh, and perhaps by other towns. ^
Most Massachusetts towns, however, were content to -de-
cree merely the abstention from dutied teas. Up until the
first of April, 1774, forty towns had passed resolutions;*
most of them affixed a boycott as the sanction of the re-
solves; and several towns appointed belated committees of
correspondence. The height of radical fervor was reached
in a resolution of the town of Windham, which declared :
*' That neither the Parliament of Britain nor th^ Parlia-
ment of France nor any other Parliament but that which
sits supreme in our Province has a Right to lay any Taxes
* Mass. Spy, Jan. 13, 20, 1774.
' Seventy-nine dealers agreed to the resolutions ; nine would oppose
-dutied tea only; and four refused even a qualified assent. Mass. Spy,
Dec. 30, 1773, Jan. 20, 1774; Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. 24, Feb. 7, 1774.
' Mass. Spy, Dec. 30, 1773, Jan. 6, Feb. 10, 1774; Bos. Com. Cor. Mss.,
vol. viii, pp. 644-649, 681-683.
* Abington, Bedford, Berwick, B'everly, Bolton, Boxford, Braintree,
Cape Elisabeth, Colerain, Concord, Dedhani, Dorchester, Eastham, Fal-
mouth, Framingham, Gorham, Grafton, Harvard, Hull, Ipswich, Lin-
coln, MedUeld, Medway, Newton, Newbury, Pembrooke, Salem, Sand-
wich, Scarborough, Shirley, Shrewsbury, Sudbury, TopsHeld, Town-
shend, Truro, Watertown, V/elMeet, Wells, Westford, Windham. For
these resolutions, vide the current newspapers and Bos. Com. Cor.
Mss., vols, vi, vii and viii, passim. The towns italicized included the
boycott.
302
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
on us for the purpose of Raising a Revenue." Only a few
towns took unfavorable action, Marshfield hoping to see the
perpetrators of the Boston violence brought to justice, and
Littleton discharging its committee of correspondence/ At
Sandwich the radicals defeated unfriendly action by re-
fusing to hold a meeting; and at Eastham they succeeded
in rescinding the condemnatory resolves of an earlier meet-
ing.'
The excitement over the tea was utilized by the Boston
radicals, though with only partial success, in an attempt to
stir up the nearby provinces to protest and action. Accord-
ing to Governor Wentworth, of New Hampshire, " the un-
wearied applications from Boston communicated the flame
here." ^ A town meeting met at Portsmouth on December
1 6, 1773, and passed strong resolutions against the impor-
tation of dutied teas similar to the Philadelphia resolutions
of October 16.* Shortly after, several other towns fol-
lowed the example of the capital.^ It was not until the end
^ In both cases the radicals signed their names to published protests.
Mass. Spy, Feb. 10, 24, 1774.
^ Mass. Spy, Apr. 7, 1774; Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. iii, pp. 307-310,
The sincerity of the widespread resolutions was quickly evidenced by
a number of instances of enforcement. E. g., vide Mass. Spy, Jan. 13,
Feb. 17, Mch. 17, 31, Apr. 7, July 21, 1774. The country peddler proved
to be the most persistent offender. At Boston the determination to
prevent the shipment of customed teas to private merchants led to a
second Tea Party on March 8, 1774, when 28]^ chests of tea on board
the brig Fortune were cast into the harbor by the omnipresent '* In-
dians." The Boston Committee declared in a letter that " this event
must convince the Merchants in England that the extorted duty on
that Article is as disagreeable to the good People of this Province as
the intended monopoly of the East India Company." Bos. Com. Cor.
Mss., vol. ix, pp. 726-729; Mass. Spy, Mch. 10, 17, 1774.
^ Brit. Papers {"Sparks Mss."), vol. i, p. 21.
* N. H. Gas., Dec. 24, 1773.
* Barrington, Exeter, Hampton, Haverhill, Newcastle. Mass. Spy,
Jan. 13, 1774; Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Jan. 10; N. H. Gas., Feb. 25^
Mch. 4.
STRUGGLE WITH THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 303
of June, 1774, that the flame, whereof Wentworth had
spoken, showed how defective were its incendiary proper-
ties. On the twenty-fifth, a vessel arrived at Portsmouth
with a consignment of twenty-seven chests of dutied tea for
a private merchant. The tea was landed ; the town meeting
which assembled to consider the situation was temperate
beyond the hope of the governor. A committee, composed
chiefly of ''discreet men who . . . detested every idea of
violating property," was appointed to treat with the con-
signee, while the town meeting chose " a guard of free-
holders to protect and defend the Custom House and the
tea from any attempt or interruption." The merchant
readily accepted the committee's offer to export the tea to
any market he chose at the town's expense; and thereupon
the duty was openly paid and the tea publicly carted back
to the vessel. The whole episode passed off without dis-
turbance, an incipient attempt being quelled by the towns-
men themselves.^
The people at Newport, R. I., were even more belated in
adopting resolutions, although urged to do so by a letter
from the Boston Committee of Correspondence. Finally,
on Saturday, January i, 1774, a notice was mysteriously
posted at the Brick Market, signed by " Legion," and
threatening that the town officials would surely be opposed
in any oflice in town or colony to which they might aspire,
unless a town meeting were called to adopt resolutions like
Boston and the other towns. The notice had its effect : a
town meeting w^as held on the following Tuesday, and at
an adjournment on January 12 the town adopted the Phila-
delphia resolutions verbatim and appointed a committee of
correspondence.^ This prompted the smaller towns to pass
^ .V. H. Gas., July i, 8, 1774; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 512-513.
^ Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Jan. 17, 1774; Bos. Eve. Post, Jan. 24.
304
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
similar resolutions and became a signal for the establish-
ment of the committee of correspondence system through-
out Rhode Island/ Only one New England province re-
mained silent; and no amount of urging from Boston was
sufficient to arouse the people of Connecticut to a sense of
danger."
At New York we have seen that news of the Boston
vandalism had, for the moment, turned the tide in favor of
the radicals, and that at Philadelphia resolutions of ap-
proval had been impulsively adopted contrary to the judg-
ment of the " substantial thinking part." Nevertheless, the
sober judgment of both towns and of the remaining prov-
inces was against the action of the Bostonians. Several
meetings of the people of Charleston, S. C, prompted by
the radicals in January and ]\Iarch, 1774, proved futile in
their outcome.^ The ebbing of the radical movement seemed
apparent on almost every hand.
^ By the end of March, Providence, Bristol, Richmond, New Shore-
ham, Cumberland and Barrington had acted. R. /. Col. Recs., vol. vii,
pp. 272-2^, 283. The town of Scituate chose a committee in Sep-
tember.
' Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. ix, pp. 717-718.
^S. C. Gas., Jan. 24, Mch. 7, 21, 28, 1774; Drayton, Memoirs, vol. i,
p. 100. At the Charleston meeting of Mch. 16, a standing committee
of forty-five was appointed with power to act as executive body and to
call the inhabitants together upon occasion.
CHAPTER VIII
Contest of Merchants and Radicals for Dominance
IN THE Commercial Provinces (March-August,
1774)
The enactment of the coercive acts by Parliament called
forth the union of interests and action in America, which
the opposition to the East India Company in the leading
seaports had failed to evoke. The chief of these laws were
intended to deal with the lawless conditions which had
arisen in the province of Massachusetts Bay out of the tea
commotions. The first of the series, the Boston Port Act,
received the royal assent on the last day of March, 1774.^
This act provided for the closing of the harbor of Boston
to commerce from and after June i and the transfer of the
custom house to Marblehead and the capital to Salem. The
port of Boston was to be re-opened when the East India
Company and the customs officers and others had been re-
imbursed for the losses sustained by them during the riots,
and when the king in privy council was satisfied that trade
might be safely carried on there and the customs duly col-
lected.
After an interval of two months, two other acts were
passed which provided for thorough-going alterations of
the constitution of the province.^ The governor's council,
which, being elective by the Assembly, had hitherto ob-
1 14 George III, c. 19. For the parliamentary debates on this and the
following acts, vide ParUamentary History, vol. xvii, pp. 1 159-1325.
2 14 George III, c. 45, c. 39.
305
3o6
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
structed all efforts to suppress rioting, was now made ap-
pointive by the king, as in all other royal provinces. A
direct blow was aimed at the system of committees of cor-
respondence by the provision placing town meetings under
the immediate control of the governor from and after
August I, and permitting only the annual meeting for the
election of officers to be held without his express authoriza-
tion. The way was prepared for a rigorous execution of
the customs laws by providing that a person might be tried
in another province or in Great Britain, who w^as charged
w^ith a capital crime committed ** either in the execution of
his duty as a magistrate, for the suppression of riots or in
the support of the laws of revenue, or in acting in his duty
as an officer of revenue," or as acting in a subordinate.
capacity in either case. The three acts passed with great
majorities.^ A motion to rescind the tea duty called forth
a remarkable speech in favor of repeal by Edmund Burke ;
but the motion was lost by a large vote.
The receipt of the news of the Boston Port Act put a
new face on public affairs in America. It changed com-
pletely the nature of the contest with Parliament which had
been going on intermittently since 1764. It created the
basis for a realignment of forces and strength, the impor-
tance of which was to be a fundamental factor in the later
development of events. Hitherto the struggle with Parlia-
ment had been, in large part, Inspired and guided by tlu
demand of the mercantile class for trade reforms. Each
new act of Parliament had accentuated or ameliorated busi-
ness distress in the colonies : and in proportion to the reme-
dial character of the legislation, the barometer of American
discontent had risen or fallen. To carry on their propa-
^ In June, the Quebec Act and the Quartering Act were added to the
trilogy- of measures already enacted. These acts merely added fuel to
the blaze that had already started in the colonies.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
307
ganda successfully, the merchants had found it necessary to >
form alliances with their natural enemies in society — with
the intelligent, hopeful radicals who dreamed of a semi-
independent American nation or something better, and with „
'the innumerable and nameless individuals whose brains \ •
111. •
were in their biceps, men who were useful as long as they
coulcl be held in leash. The passage of the Boston Port Act ^'"
and the other laws brought things to an issue between these
two elements, already grown suspicious of each other. ^The ,
question in controversy between Parliament and the colo- ,
nies was changed in an instant from a difference over |
trade reforms to a political dispute, pure and simple, over
the right of Parliament to punish and prevent mob violence
through blockading Boston and expurgating the Massachu- ;
setts constitutional'
^ Gouverneur Morris flippantly described the development of events
in New York in thefse terms : " It is needless to premise, that the lower
orders of mankind are more easily led by specious appearances than
those of a more exalted station. . . . The troubles in America, during
Grenville's administration, put our gentry upon this finesse. They
stimulated some daring coxcombs to rouse the mob into an attack upon
the bounds of order and decency. These fellows became the Jack*
Cades of the day, the leaders in all the riots, the belwethers of the
flock. The reason of the manoeuvre in those who wished to keep fair
with the Government, and at the same time to receive the incense of
popular applause, you will readily perceive. On the whole, the shep-
herds were not much to blame in a politic point of view. The bel-
wethers jingled merrily, and roared out liberty, and property, and re-
ligion, and a multitude of cant terms, which every one thought he un-
derstood, and was egregiously mistaken. For you must know the shep-
herds kept the dictionary of the day; and, like the mysteries of the
ancient mythology, it was not for profane eyes or ears. This answered
many purposes; the simple flock put themselves entirely under the
protection of these most excellent shepherds. By and bye behold a great
metamorphosis, without the help of Ovid or his divinities but entirely
effectuated by two modern Genii, the god of Ambition and the god-
dess of Faction. The first of these prompted the shepherds to shear
some of their flock, and then, in conjunction with the other, converted
the belwethers into shepherds. That we have been in hot water with;
3o8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763.1776
In this new aspect of the controversy the merchants
found themselves instinctively siding with the home gov-
ernment. : No commercial principle was at stake in the co-
ercive acts; and the Boston violence was a manifestation of
mob rule which every self-respecting merchant abhorred
from his very soul. -' Nor could he see any commercial ad-
vantage which might accrue from pursuing the will-o'-the-
wisp ideas of the radicals. The uncertain prospect which
the radical plans held forth was not comparable with the
tangible benefits which came from membership in the British
empire under existing conditions ; even absolute freedom of
trade meant little in view of the restrictive trade systems
of the leading nations of the world, the comparative ease
with which the most objectionable parliamentary regulations
continued to be evaded, and the insecure, if not dangerous,
character of any independent government which the rad-
icals might establish. [^When all was said and done, the mer-
chants knew that their welfare depended upon their con-
nection with Great Britain — upon the protection afforded
by the British navy, upon the acquisition of new markets by
the British Parliament since every body knows. Consequently these
new shepherds had their hands full of employment. The old ones kept
themselves least in sight, and a want of confidence in each other was
not the least evil which followed. The port of Boston has been shut
up. These sheep, simple as they are, cannot be gulled as heretofore.
In short, there is no ruling them; and now, to change the metaphor,
the heads of the mobihty grow dangerous to the gentry, and how to
keep them down is the question." Letter to Penn, May 20, 1774;
Sparks, J., Life of Gouverneur Morris (Boston, 1832), vol. i, pp. 23-26;
also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 342-343. Vide also an unsigned letter in
ibid., 302 n., and Governor Martin's letter in A'. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix,
pp. 1083-1087. In the case of Massachusetts, zide the statement of "A
Converted Whig" who, although a member of the Boston Committee
of Correspondence, began to desert the radical cause after the Boston
Tea Party. 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 103-106. For a similar view in
the case of Pennsylvania, vide Charles Thomson's letter to Drayton,
Stille, Life of Dickinson, p. 345.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 309
British arms, upon legislation which fostered their shipping,
subsidized certain industries and protected the merchants
from foreign competition in British markets/J Many de-
tails of this legislation had proved defective, but Parliament
had shown a disposition to correct the worst features ; and
this disposition would, in all probability, continue, since
British capital invested in American trade had a powerful
representation in Parliament.
I^From the time of the passage of the coercive acts by
Parliament, thus, there became evident a strong drift on the ]
part of the colonial mercantile class to the British view- I
point of the questions at issue. J Many merchants at once
took their stand with the forces of government and law and
order; these men may properly be classed as conserva-
tives, or loyalists, in the same sense that the royal official
class were. Others believed that all was not yet lost and
that, by remaining in the movement, they could restrain its
excesses and give it a distinctly conservative cast. Such
men were, for the time being at least, moderates, being will-
ing, though for partisan reasons, to indulge in extra-legal
activities.
LBut the coercive acts were equally important in making
converts to the radical position. Whereas the mob destruc-
tion of the tea had antagonized many people, the enactment
of the severe punitive acts served, in the judgment of many
of them, to place the greater guilt on the other side. A sig-
nificant instance was the case of Dr. Franklin, who in Feb-
ruary, 1774, had denounced the Boston Tea Party as an un-
justifiable act of violence. Writing after the passage of the
acts, he declared to his loyalist son :
^ For contemporary expositions of this view, vide The Interest of the
Merchants and Manufacturers of Great Britain in the Present Contest
with the Colonies Stated and Considered (London, 1774) ; broadside,
"To the Inhabitants of New- York," 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 886-888;
"Mercurius" in Ga. Gas., Sept. 28, 1774.
3IO THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
I do not so much as you do wonder that the Massachusetts
[Assembly] have not offered Payment for the Tea . . .
[Parliament and the ministry] have extorted many Thousand
Pounds from America unconstitutionally, under Colour of
Acts of Parliament, and with an armed Force. Of this Money
they ought to miake Restitution. They might first have taken
out Payment for the Tea, &c. and returned the rest.^
Another conspicuous and important instance of conver-
sion was that of William Henry Dra}1:on, the wealthy
young South Carolinian who, wdth fiery zeal, had excoriated
Chris Gadsden and the non-importers in 1769. A nephew
of Governor Bull and favored by appointment to various
offices in the gift of the king, he now turned definitely to
tlie side of the popular party. To use his own words :
The same spirit of indignation which animated me to condemn
popular measures in the year 1769, because although avowedly
in defence of liberty, they absolutely violated the freedom of
society, by demanding men, under pain of being stigmatized,
and of sustaining detriment in property, to accede to resolu-
tions, which, however well meant, could not . . . but be . . .
very grating to a freeman, so, the same spirit of indignation
. . . actuates me in like manner, now to assert my freedom
against the malignant nature of the late five Acts of Parliament.^
His course was consistent, he asserted : '' I opposed suc-
ceeding violations of my rights, then, by a temporary democ-
racy, now, by an established monarchy." "
Governor Penn described the transformation of opinion
at Philadelphia. " They look upon the chastisement of
^ Letter of Sept. 7, I774; Writings (Smyth), vol. vi, p. 241.
'"Letter from Freeman" Aug. 10, 1774; Gibbes, Documentary His-
tory, vol. ii, pp. 12-13. Drayton felt it necessary to deny the aspersion
of his enemies that his change of faith was occasioned by disap-
pointment at falling to receive a permanent appointment as assistant
judge. Indeed, this charge will not bear serious analysis.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 311
Boston to be purposely rigorous, and held up by way of
intimidation to all America . . . ," he wrote. "Their
delinquency in destroying the East India Company's tea is
lost in the attention given to what is here called the too /
severe punishment of shutting up the port, altering the Con-
stitution, and making an Act, as they term it, screening the
officers and soldiers shedding American blood." .^ In Vir-
ginia a similar change of opinion was revealed in the reso-
lutions adopted by county meetings. Patrick Henry's own
county of Hanover acknowledged in its resolutions :
Whether the people there [at Boston] were warranted by
justice when they destroyed the tea, we know not; but this we
know, that the Parliament by their proceedings have made us
and all North America parties in the present dispute . . .
insomuch that, if our sister Colony of Massachusetts Bay is
enslaved, we cannot long remain free.^
The counties of Middlesex and Dinwiddle condemned with-
out qualification the Boston Tea Party as an '' outrage,"
and added their determined protest and opposition to the
force acts of Parliament.^
The Boston Port Act reached Boston on May 10, 1774.
The people realized at once that the prosperity of the great
port hung in the balance, and two groups were quickly
* Letter to Dartmouth, July 5, 1774; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 514.
' Ihid., vol. i, p. 616. Vide the similar resolutions of a mass meeting
of Granville County, N. C. N. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1034-1036.
'4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. SSi-553. Equally significant is the fact that
the passage of the coercive acts served as a signal for the people of
r the tobacco provinces to manifest their first opposition to private ship-
I ments of dutied tea. Vide the affair of the Mary and Jane in Mary-
Wand and Virginia; Md. Gas., Aug. 11, 18, 1774, and Rind's Va. Gaz.,
^Aug. 25; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 703-705, 727-728.
91^ THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776 ,
J
formed as to the course which should be pursued.^ The
•extremists, including the more radical merchants, opposed
any restitution to the East India Company and insisted on
an immediate commercial opposition, which should go to
lengths hitherto unattempted, including not only non-impor-
tation but also non-exportation, and affecting not only Great
Britain but also every part of the West Indies, British and
foreign.- This party believed that the salvation of Boston
and the province depended upon swift and effective coer-
cion of Great Britain, and they were entirely willing to
sacrifice temporary business benefits for what they esteemed
a larger political good. The other party, composed of mer-
chants and of conservatives generally, held that the Tea
Party had been an unjustifiable act of mob violence, and
that the best good of port and province would be served by
paying for the tea and conforming to the conditions im-
posed by the act.^-' A member of this group analyzed the
division in public affairs in this manner : " the merchants
who either will not or cannot make remittances, the smug-
glers, the mechanicks, and those who are facinated with the
extravagant notion of independency, all join to counteract
the majority of the merchants, and the lovers of peace and
good order." "
^ '* The present dispute," wrote one of the radicals, " seems confined
to these two sentiments : either to pay, or not to pay for the tea.'*
Ibid., vol. i, pp. 487-489.
^ They wished to include the British West Indies in the boycott be-
cause an important group in Parliament owned sugar plantations
there; and they demanded that the foreign islands should likewise be
placed beyond the pale in order to make the boycott easier to admin-
ister and also to cause the French, Danish and Dutch governments to
protest to Great Britain. Thomas Young to John Lamb, May 13, i774',
Leake, L O., Memoir of the Life' and Times of General John Lamb
(Albany, 1850), p. 85.
'4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 506-508.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 313
On Friday, May 13, 1774, the town meeting of Boston
adopted a resolution which was designed to arouse the
united opposition of the continent to the act threatening
Boston. The resolution was worded to attract the support
of moderate folk throughout the commercial provinces, but
in general, though not absolutely, it advocated the meas-
ures desired by the Boston radicals. It was resolved that
" if the other colonies come into a joint resolution to stop
all importations from Great Britain, and exportations to
Great Britain, and every part of the West Indies, till the
Act for blocking up this harbour be repealed, the same will
prove the salvation of North America and her Liberties;"
otherwise " there is high reason to fear that fraud, power
and the most odious oppression will rise triumphant over
right, justice, social happiness and freedom." ^ A commit-
tee was appointed to carry the resolutions in person to
Salem and Marblehead, both towns being beneficiaries of
the odious law^* and the committee of correspondence was
ordered to dispatch messengers with the vote to the other
towns of Massachusetts and to the other provinces.
The resolution of May 13, soon to become famous
throughout British America, was seconded by a circular
letter sent forth the same day by the Boston Committee of
Correspondence with the concurrence of the committees of
eight adjoining towns." The single question, according to
this letter, was : do you consider Boston as now suffering
in the common cause of America? if so, may we not " rely
on your suspending Trade with Great Britain at least . . ."
A few days later the town meeting resolved :
^Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, May 16, 1774; also Bos. Town Recs. {1770-
J777), pp. 172-174.
' Charlestown, Cambridge, Brookline, Dorchester, Lexington, Lynn,
Newton and Roxbury. Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. x, pp. 810-81 1.
314
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
That the trade of the town of Boston has been one essential
link in that vast chain of commerce, which,- in the course of a
few ages, has raised New England to be what it is, the
Southern provinces to be what they are, the West Indies to
their wealth, and, in one word, the British Empire to that
heighth of oppulence, power, pride and splendor, at which it
now stands/
The radicals waited to hear the response to the Boston ap-
peal before pushing for more extreme measures.
Town meetings at Salem and ]\Iarblehead rose splendidly
to the occasion in spite of their privileged position under the
act, and endorsed the Boston resolutions.^ Their benefits
from the act \vere indeed more imaginary than actual,
" Boston being the grand engine that gives motion to all the
wheels of commerce " in the province and supplying in par-
ticular an entrepot for the West Indian imports of those
ports." Tw^enty-eight merchants of Marblehead invited the
merchants of Boston to use their storerooms and wharves
free of charge.* Without at present considering the atti-
tude of the seaports in other provinces, other towns in
Massachusetts responded favorably to the appeal of Boston.^
The town of Boston faced a difficult problem, that of
^ May i8. Mass. Spy, May 19, I774; also Bos. Town Recs. {1770-
1777), pp. 174-175.
^ Essex Gas., May 24, 17741 Bos. Gaz., May 30. The Marblehead
resolutions omitted mention of non-intercourse but expressed willing-
ness to enter any " rational " agreement that might be generally
adopted.
'Letter of John Scollay, 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 369-370; address of
Salem merchants, Mass. Spy, June 23, 1774.
* Ibid.
' E. g., the towns of Gloucester, Lunenburgh, Salisbury and Glassen-
burg and the merchants of Newburyport acted before the end of June.
Ibid., May 19, 1774; Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. ii, pp. 155, 233; Bos.
Com. Cor. Mss., vol. viii. p. 713 ; vol. x, p. 802.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 315
providing labor and sustenance for the hundreds of work-
ingmen thrown out of employment by the closing of the
port. The task of feeding the poor was somewhat simpli-
fied by the generous donations of food and money which
poured in from neighboring towns and from provinces as
far away as South Carolina/ But this outside aid entailed
a responsibiHty for administering the donations equitably;
and the inevitable, though ill-founded, charges of corrup-
tion appeared.' The committee appointed to deal with the
unemployment question resorted to all sorts of expedients
(such as, for instance, the building of a wharf with capital
furnished by the wealthier citizens) ; but the best results
were gotten from the employing of men to repair pave-
ments, clean public docks, dig public wells, etc., from the
establishment of a brickyard on town land, and the subsi-
dizing of cotton and flax spinning.^
While the first anger aroused by the receipt of the Boston
Port x\ct was still high, the merchants of the town were
prevailed upon by the committee of correspondence to sign
an agreement for severing all trade relations with Great
Britain upon condition that their brethren in the other com-
mercial provinces should embrace the same measure.* But
of what they did in haste they soon repented at leisure.
At a town meeting on May 30, the merchants and trades-
^ For the correspondence of the Boston committee with the contrib-
utors of the donations, vide 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, pp. 1-278.
2'* A Friend to Boston" in A^ Y. Journ., Sept. 15, 1774; refutation
of the committee, 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, pp. 277-278.
* Bos. Town Recs. {1770-1777^, pp. 174-175, 181, 185-189; 4 M. H. S.
Colls., vol. iv, pp. 275-277.
* May 21, 1774. Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. iii, p. 187. This action
was pressed through in face of the zealous opposition of merchants
whom the committee of correspondence characterized as "the tools of
Hutchinson and of the Commissioners." Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. x,
pp. 808-810.
3i6 THE COLOXIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
men attended two or three hundred strong, most of them
determined to use their endeavors to secure payment for
the tea.
But [if a contemporary may be beHeved] so artful and in-
dustrious were the principal heads of the opposition to gov-
ernment, that they placed themselves at the doors of the hall
and told the tradesmen as they entered that now was the time
to save our country. That if they gave their voice in favor
of paying for the tea, we should be undone, and the chains of
slavery- rivitted upon us ! which so terrified many honest well
meaning persons, that they thought it prudent not to act at all
in the affair . . .^
The meeting succeeded in adopting a mild non-consumption
agreement, the signers whereof agreed not to purchase any
British manufactures that could be obtained in the province
and to boycott those who conspired against the measures
of the town."
The impending departure of Governor Hutchinson for
England and the arrival of the new governor, Thomas
Gage, gave the merchants and conserv^atives an opportunity
to make a quasi-official statement of their principles in public
form. An address from " the Merchants and Traders of
the town of Boston and others '' was presented to Hutch-
inson on May 30. This document, shrewdly enough, con-
tained a well-reasoned criticism of the Boston Port Act at
the same time that it pledged the signers in opposition to
the plans of the radicals. It praised the " wise, zealous,
and faithful Administration " of Hutchinson, expressed a
belief that the Boston Port Act would have been more just
•^ Gray, H., A Few Remarks upon Some of the Votes and Resolutions
of the Continental Congress . . . (Boston, 1775), pp. 6-7. Reprinted
in Mag. N. Engl. Hist., vol. ii, pp. 42-58.
^Bos. Town Recs. {1770-177/'), pp. 175-176.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES qt-
if Boston had been given the alternative of conforming to
its conditions within a specified period or of suffering the
harsh consequences, bore solemn testimony against popular
tumults, and asked Hutchinson to inform the king that the
signers of the address would gladly pay their share of the
<iamages suffered by the East India Company/ The paper
was signed by one hundred and twenty-four men, of w^hom
sixty-three were merchants and shopkeepers by admission
of the radicals themselves and four others were employees
of merchants." According to the lawyer, Daniel Leonard,
the signers consisted " principally of men of property,
large family connections, and several were independant in
their circumstances and lived wholly upon the income of
their estates. ... A very considerable proportion were
persons that had of choice kept themselves from the polit-
ical vortex . . . while the community remained safe " but
now rallied to the cause of law and order. ^ When five
gentlemen went to Governor Gage and inquired what the
value of the tea destroyed was, he intimated that they would
^ Mass. Spy, June 2, 1774; also i M. H. S. Procs., vol. xii, pp. 43-44- •
The address of welcome of the merchants, traders and others to the
new governor expressed substantially the same sentiments, condemning
" lawless violences " and promising support in reimbursing the East
India Company. Bos. Ere. Post, June 13, 1774. One hundred and
twenty-seven signatures were attached. Loyal addresses, purporting to
•come from the merchants, traders and other inhabitants of Marblehead
and of Salem, were hkewise sent to the two gentlemen. Curwen,
Journal, pp. 426-427, 431-432.
' A complete tabulation shows 37 merchants and factors, 4 employees,
26 shopkeepers, 7 distillers, 12 royal officials, 6 retired or professional
men. 20 artisans or mechanics, 5 farmers, 7 uncertain, i M. H. S.
Procs.. vol. xi, pp. 392-394. A number of the merchants had made
themselves unpopular in the earlier non-importation movement, such as
William Jackson, Benjamin Greene & Son, Colburn Barrell, Theophilus
Lillie, James Selkrig, and J. & P. McMasters.
* " Massachusettensis " in Mass. Ga::. & Post-Boy, Jan. 2, 1775.
3i8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1768-1776
learn when either the town of Boston in its corporate
capacity or the General Court appHed to him.^
Fortunately for the merchants, an opportunity came to
them to retrace the step they had taken in proposing a joint
agreement of non-intercourse to the other merchants of the
commercial provinces. In the early days of June, word
arrived that the merchants in the leading ports outside of
Massachusetts were not willing to join in this measure.^
The members of the trading body at Boston considered
themselves absolved from their conditional pact, and refused
absolutely to accept the repeated suggestions of Sam Adams
and the radicals to go ahead independently in the matter.
The Reverend Charles Chauncy, of Boston, voiced radical
opinion, when he wrote on May 30, 1774, with reference to
the merchants :
so many of them are so mercenary as to find within themselves
a readiness to become slaves themselves, as well as to be
accessory to the slavery of others, if they imagine they may by
this means serve their own private separate interest. Our de-
pendence, under God, is upon the landed interest, upon our free-
holders and yeomonry. By not buying of the merchants what
they may as well do without, they may keep in their own
pockets two or three millions sterling a year, which would
otherwise be exported to Great-Brittain. I have reasons to
think the effect of this barbarous Port-act will be [such] an
agreement . . .^
Such indeed was the strategy of which the radicals now
availed themselves. Convinced that the merchants could
^ Letter to Philadelphia friend; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 380. The mer-
chant, George Erving, for instance, was willing to subscribe £2000
sterling toward a reimbursement fund for the East India Company.
/ M. H. S. Procs., vol. viii, p. 329.
2"Y. Z." in Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, June 27, 1774; " Candidus '^
(Sam Adams) in Bos. Gaz., June 27, and Mass. Spy, July 7.
^ 2 M. H. S. Procs., vol. xvii., pp. 2^-2^.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 319
not be relied upon to adopt the policy of non-intercourse,
they decided to appeal to the people directly, over, their /
heads. fOn June 5, 1774, the Boston Committee of Cor-
respondence adopted a form of agreement for country
circulation and adoption, which, in the fulness of their
political sagacity, they named the '' Solemn League and
Covenant." i^ It was hoped, no doubt, that the country
people would be inspired by recollections of the doughty
pact which their Cromwellian progenitors had made against
King Charles more than a century before. The object of the
agreement was not the reform of commercial legislation but /
the repeal of punitive laws '' tending to the entire subver-
sion of our natural and charter rights." / For this purpose,
the subscribers, who might be of either sex, covenanted
with each other " in the presence of God, solemnly and in
good faith " to suspend all commercial intercourse with
Great Britain thencelofth, and" herther'Io~pufchase nor use
any British imports whatsoever after October i. All per-
sons who refused to sign this or a similar covenant were to
be boycotted forever, and their names made public to the
world.
i In fathering the Covenant, the Boston Committee of
Correspondence acted secretly, without authorization of
the town, and without intending to circulate the Covenant
among the people of Boston. In truth, it was the purpose
of the committee to have the Covenant appear to be the
spontaneous action of the non-mercantile population of the
^ On June 2 a sub-committee, consisting of Dr. Joseph Warren, Dr.
Benjamin Church and Mr. Greenleaf, had been instructed "to draw up
a Solemn League and Covenant." Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. ix, pp.
763-764. According to Sam Adams, the committee bestowed " care,
pains, repeated and continued consideration upon a subject confessedly
the most difficult that ever came before them." " Candidus " in Mass.
^Py, July 7, 1774. For text of the Covenant, vide Mass. Gas. & Post-
Boy, June 27; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 397-398.
320
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
province. Thus the radical organ, the Boston Gazette, de-
clared on June 13 :
We learn from divers Parts of the Country that the People in
general, having become quite impatient by not hearing a Non-
Importation Agreement has yet been come into by the Mer-
chants, are now taking the good Work into their own Hands,
and have and are solemnly engaging not to purchase any Goods
imported from Great-Britain, or to trade with those who do
import or purchase such Goods. • • -T
A few days later, the committee felt no. qualms in declaring
unequivocally in their correspondence : ;,"-this Effectual Plan
has been origanated and been thus far carried thro' by the
two venerable orders of men stiled Mechanicks & husband-
men, the strength of every community." ^
The merchants importing goods from England were,
almost without exception, totally opposed to the Covenant
when they learned of its circulation in the country towns. ^
A formal protest, signed by many merchants, declared that
the Covenant was '' a base, wicked and illegal measure, cal-
culated to distress and ruin many merchants, shopkeepers
and others in this metropolis, and affect the whole commer-
cial interest of this Province." " The argument w-as taken
^ Letter to X. Y, Committee. June iS, 1774; Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol.
X, pp. 819-820. Vide also Mass. Spy, June 30, 1774; "Candidus" in
ibid., July 7, and in Bos. Gas., June 27. When concealment of the
truth was no longer possible, the committee simpl}'- claimed that the
plan had been " intimated to them by their brethren in the country."
Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. x, pp. 822-824.
'Adams, S., Writings (Gushing), vol. iii, p. 145; letters of John An-
drews in / M. H. S. Procs.s vol. viii, pp. 329-332 ; " An Old INIan " in
Mass. Spy, July 21, 1774.
' They declared that the staple articles of trade would cease, such as
oil, pot and pearlash, flax seed, naval stores and lumber, and that ship-
building would be seriously affected. Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, July 4,
1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 490-491.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
321
up by many newspaper writers in the mercantile interest,
who declaimed against the harebrained scheme and under-
handed methods of the committee of correspondence/ ; The
very legality of the existence of the committee of coirres-
pondence was questioned in view of the fact that it had
been appointed in November, 1772, to perform a particular
task and its tenure could not continue longer than the end
of that year at the furthest."
In anticipation of the gathering storm, the radicals has-
tened to call a town meeting on June 17, which furnished
the committee of correspondence with the formal legal
sanction which its existence had lacked. The committee
were thanked for the faithful discharge of their trust and
desired to continue their vigilance and activity.^ Though
taken by surprise, the merchants and conservatives deter-
mined to bring about the discharge of the committee of
correspondence. xA.fter a number of secret conferences,
they decided that the effort shotdd be made at a town meet-
ing on Monday, June 2y^ Great numbers of both parties
^ The whale fishery and the- cod fishery, which employed so many,
would be ruined, declared some, and without these profits merchants
would be unable to pay debts owing to entirely blameless persons in
England. Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, June 23, July 4, 1774. How could
tw'o-thirds of the traders in the seaports live ? queried " Zach Free-
man." Ibid., July 18. "Y. Z." spoke tearfully of his "sweet little
prattling Innocents " who were now being threatened with " all the
Horrors of Poverty, Beggary and Misery." Ibid., June 27. Others
pointed out that the boycott feature made the Covenant " as tyrannical as
the Spanish inquisition." Ibid., July 4, 18.
' Vide particularly the protest signed by John Andrews, Thomas
Amory, John Amory, Caleb Blanchard, Samuel Eliot and four others.
Ibid., July 4, 1774-
^ Ibid., June 20, 1774; also Bos. Town Recs. {i770-i777), PP- 17^-177-
4 The official account of this meeting is in ibid., pp. 177-178; also
Mass. Spy, June 30, 1774. For other contemporary accounts, vide
^' Candidus " in Mass. Spy, July 7; Gage's account, 4 Am. Arch., vol. i,
pp. S14-515; letter of William Barrell, M. H. S. Mss., 41 F 66; anony-
mous account in Mass. Spy, June 30.
322
THE COLOXIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
attended, and Sam Adams was chosen moderator. A mo-
tion was passed for the reading of all letters sent by the
committee of correspondence since the receipt of the Boston
Port Act; and when this performance promised to be too
lengthy, another motion w^as carried for confining the read-
ing to the Covenant and letters particularly called for. This
done, Mr. [Harrison?] Gray offered the momentous motion
that the committee of correspondence be censured and dis-
missed from further service. Adams now voluntarily
vacated the chair until the subject of the committee, whereof
he was chairman, should be disposed of; and a moderate
radical, Thomas Gushing, was chosen in his stead. The
debates which ensued lasted far into dusk ; and the meeting
was adjourned to the following morning to continue the
discussion. The speakers on the mercantile side marshaled
forth all the arguments which had been ventilated in the
newspapers ; and even some of the more radical merchants
complained against the shortness of time allowed for re-
ceiving goods from England before the Govenant went into
effect. Ardent enthusiasm and a well-knitted organization
now served well the purposes of the radicals; the motion
for censure was lost by a large majority, not more than
fifty or sixty hands being in favor. The town then voted
their approval of " the upright Intentions and . . . honest
Zeal of the Committee of Correspondence . . ." To Gov-
ernor Gage the whole affair appeared to be clearly a case
of '' the better sort of people " being " out voted by a great
majority of the lower class."
Defeated in their main purpose, the merchants now used
\ such means as were yet at hand to discredit the Covenant.
» One hundred and twenty-nine inhabitants of the town signed
a protest against the doings of the town meeting, and a
second protest, dift'ering but slightly, appeared with eight
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 323
signatures/ Governor Gage also issued a proclamation
which denounced '' certain persons calling themselves a
Committee of Correspondence for the town of Boston,"
for attempting to excite the people of the province '' to
enter into an unwarrantable, hostile and traitorous com-
bination," and which commanded all magistrates to arrest
all persons who circulated the so-called Covenant.^
The disapproval of the Boston merchants and of the
government served only to increase the popularity of the
Covenant in the rural districts. At Hardwicke, a magis-
trate, brave old Brigadier Ruggles, announced that he would
conform to Gage's proclamation and jail any man who
signed the paper; w^hereupon almost one hundred men
signed and left him powerless/ Worcester adopted a modi-
fied form of the Covenant, inserting the date August i in
place of October i as the time after which all British im-
ports should be boycotted/ The Worcester alteration soon
superseded the Boston plan in popular favor. Exclusive of
the places already named, the Covenant in one form or
other was adopted by at least thirteen towns, before the
meeting of the Continental Congress in September, 1774/
Many other towns sympathized with the intent of the Cove-
nant but postponed action because of the certainty that an
^ Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, July 4, 1774; also i M. H. S. Procs., vol. xi,
PP- 394-395.
^ Mass. Spy, June 30, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 491-492. The
justices of the County of Plymouth also adopted an address, in which
they promised to maintain order and justice in face of all illegal com-
binations. Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, July 18, 1774; also Am. Arch., vol.
i, pp. 515-516.
2 Bos. Gas., July 4, 1774.
* Pickering Papers, vol. xxxix, p. 54.
^ Athol, Bernardston. Billerica, Braintree, Brimneld, Cape Elizabeth,
Charlton, Colerain, Gloucester, Gorham, Hopkinton, Lincoln, Shrews-
bury. Vide correspondence of Bos. Com. Cor. and current newspapers.
324
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
interprovincial congress would assemble to deal with the
whole question/ Of serious opposition, there was little or
none.^
The covenant movement gained further impetus by reason
of the fact that various county conventions took an in-
terest in the matter ; and when the provincial convention of
Massachusetts met in October, that body resolved, on the
twenty-eighth of the month, that whereas no explicit direc-
tions had yet arrived from the Continental Congress (which
had adjourned but two days before), and as the great
majority of the people of the province had entered into
agreements of non-importation and non-consumption, they
earnestly recommended to all the inhabitants of Massachu-
setts to conform to these regulations until the Continental
Congress or the provincial convention should direct other-
wise. The convention recommended that all recalcitrant
importers be boycotted, and declared the non-consumption
of " all kinds of East India teas," urging the local commit-
tees to post the names of violators.^ The action of the pro-
^ The committees of the maritime towns of Marblehead and Salem
named this as the cause of their inactivity, and entered the further
objection that Boston herself had not adopted the Covenant. Bos. Com.
Cor. Papers, vol. iii, pp. 475-477, 491-492 ; Pickering Papers, vol. xxxiii,
p. 96. At least six other towns announced themselves in favor of the
principles of the Covenant, but declared they would await the outcome
of the Continental Congress : Acton, Charlemont, Charlestown, Fal-
m.outh, Palm.er, Springfield. Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. iii, passim;
Pickering Papers, vol. xxxiii, passim.
^ Forty-six traders and freeholders of Easton announced to Governor
Gage, under their signatures, that they were opposed to the Covenant
and to riots and routs. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 613-614; also Mass.
Gas. & Post-Boy, July 25, 1774. At Worcester, the conservatives made
an abortive attempt to unseat the local committee of correspondence.
Ibid., July 4. Vide also Mass. Spy, Dec. 8.
'4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 840, 848; also Mass. Spy, Oct. 27, Nov. 3,
1774. County conventions in Berkshire, Suffolk, Plymouth and Bristol
had gone furthest in their resolutions of non-importation and non-
consumption. Ibid., July 28, Sept. 15, Oct. 6, 13.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES ci2s
vincial convention capped the movement that had begun in
a small way through locally adapted covenants. Because
of the lateness of the occurrence, however, the event had
no practical importance.
Outside of Massachusetts the Solemn League and Cove-
nant failed to make headway, although the Boston Com-
mittee urged it on all the New England provinces. The
Portsmouth, N. H., Committee sent out a covenant for
adoption closely modeled on the Worcester plan, but it was
apparently adopted nowhere.^ The towns of Rhode Island
and Connecticut objected to the measure as inexpedient.
As Silas Deane wrote to the Boston Committee in behalf of
the Connecticut General Assembly, it was the general opin-
ion that :
A congress is absolutely necessary previous to almost every
other measure . . . The resolves of merchants of any indi-
vidual town or province, however generously designed, must
be partial when considered in respect to the whole Colonies
in one general view ; while, on the other hand, every measure
recommended, every resolve come into by the whole united
colonies must carry weight and influence with it on the mind
of the people and tend effectually to silence those base insinu-
ations ... of interested motives, sinister views, unfair prac-
tices and the like, for the vile purposes of sowing seeds of
jealousy between the Colonies . . r
In Rhode Island the towns of Providence, Newport and
Westerly expressed their willingness to enter into a plan of
^ 2 M. H. S. Procs., vol. ii, pp. 481-486. Vide also 4 Am. Arch.^ vol. i,
pp. 745-746.
'Letter of June 3, 1774; A^. F. Journ., Mch. 9, 1775; also 4 Am.
Arch., vol. i, pp. 303-304. Vide also Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. ii, pp.
111-112, 251-253; Conn. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ii, pp. 129-130; Adams, S.,
Writings (Gushing), vol. iii, pp. 114-116, 125-126.
326 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
joint non-intercourse, as proposed in the Boston circular
letter of May 13; and Providence instructed her deputies
in the General Assembly to propose a continental congress
as the best means of devising an effective plan/ In Con-
necticut New Haven responded favorably to the Boston
circular letter on May 23; and in June, town meetings in
at least fourteen towns pledged their support to any reason-
able plan of non-intercourse drawn up by a general con-
gress." In almost every case committees of correspond-
ence were appointed; and thus this occasion marks the ex-
tension to Connecticut of the plan of municipal committees
for radical propaganda.
The truth was that the Covenant was a device that was
particularly well adapted to the purposes of the radicals of
Massachusetts, where there had been imminent danger that
the conservative merchants would stem the tide of opposi-
tion. But there was no very good reason why other New
England provinces should join in the measure; the Boston
^ These instructions, adopted ]\'Iay 17, were the first instance of agi-
tation for a continental congress by a pubHc body. R. L Col. Recs., vol.
vii, pp. 280-281, 289-290; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 343-344-
' Canterbury, Farmington, Glastenbury, Groton, Hartford, Lyme,
Middletown, New Haven, New London. Norfolk, Norwich, Preston,
Wethersfield, Windham. Five towns adopted similar resolves later:
Bolton, Enfield, Goshen, Greenwich, Windsor. Vide files of Conn. Ga::;.,
Conn. Cour. and Conn. Joiirn. in this period. Only two communities,
Brooklyti parish in Pomfret and the town of Stonington, entered an
immediate agreement of non-consumption along the lines of the Cove-
nant. Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. ii, 199-200, 215-218, 237-239. As late
as September an effort was made by the Hartford Committee, while
Silas Deane was absent at the Continental Congress, to call a provin-
cial convention in order to adopt a general non-consumption agreement
for the province. On September 15, delegates from four counties
gathered to consider the matter, but concluded upon vigorous resolu-
tions in support of the anticipated measures of the Continental Con-
gress. Conn. Cour., Sept. 19, I774; Conn. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ii, pp.
151-152.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 327
invitation of May 13 for co-operative measures among the
provinces commended itself as a more feasible mode of pro-
cedure. As the movement for a continental congress gained
ground in other provinces, the New England provinces did
not lag in taking effective action in that direction. The
radicals used the instruments which came readiest to hand.
On June 15 the General Assembly of Rhode Island chose
delegates to the Continental Congress.^ In Connecticut the
House of Representatives delegated the function to the
legislative committee of correspondence, which designated
delegates to the congress on July 13.^ The path of the
radicals in New Hampshire was beset with greater difficul-
ties. Early in July the legislative committee of correspond-
ence called a meeting of the late members of the House of
Representatives at Portsmouth for the selection of dele-
gates to Congress ; but when the gentlemen convened. Gov-
ernor Wentworth confronted them with doughty speech
and deterrent proclamation, and they betook themselves to
the tavern where, over the warming victuals, they agreed to
call a provincial convention to accomplish what they had
failed to do. This convention, composed of representatives
from many towns, met on July 21 and duly chose delegates
to the congress.^
The Boston circular letter of May 13 was carried to the
main ports throughout the commercial provinces by Paul
Revere. Before the swift rider had started for New York,
however, a copy of the Port Act had arrived there; and
Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall, acting, it would
appear, for the ultra-radical committee of correspondence
appointed during the anti-tea commotions, transmitted to
^ Mass. Spy, June 23, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 416-417.
^ Conn. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ii, p. 138 n.
' Letters of Wentworth, 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 516, 536, 745-746-
328 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the Boston Committee a promise of ardent support. The
writers stated that they had '* stimulated " the merchants to
meet on the next evening in order to agree upon non-inter-
course with England and a limited non-exportation to the
West Indies.^ Apparently they had no suspicion that they
would not be able to carry things their own way; but they
had strangely misapprehended the situation. For their task,
the radicals, confronted with heavy odds, needed a leader
of the caliber of Sam Adams. Could their forces have been
directed by a man of dominant personality, with a mind
skilled in political artifice and a single-minded devotion to
a great idea, the story of the subsequent two months might
have been different. Instead, these qualities were possessed
by the moderate party; and the fate of the radical cause
was in the hands of men of second-rate ability, who sought
to promote their ends by a species of indirection and who
were, in the disappointing sense of the word, opportunists.
McDougall was regarded by the moderates as "the Wilkes
of New York," " Sears as " a political cracker " and a
" quidnunc in politics ;" ^ and they experienced '' great
pain ... to see a number of persons [such as John Morin
Scott and John Lamb, no doubt] who have not a shilling to
lose in the contest, taking advantage of the present dispute
and forcing themselves into public notice." * As for the
committee of correspondence, it was composed ''of eight
or ten flaming patriots without property or anything else
but impudence." ^ Colden correctly pictured the reaction
^ Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. ii, pp. 343-346. Letter of ]\Iay 15.
' Colden to Dartmouth, Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 346-347.
^"A Merchant of New York" in A'. Y. Gazetteer, Aug. 18, 1774.
*"Mercator" in ihid., Aug. 11, 1774.
^ Letter from New York in London Morning Post, reprinted in .V. Y.
Journ., Aug. 25, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 299-302 n. Vide
also Colden's characterization, Letter Books, vol. ii. pp. 339-340.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 329
which had set in since the destruction of the tea at New
York, when he wrote on September 7, 1774 :_^'' the Gentle-
men of Property and principal Merchants attended the
meetings of the populace, when called together by their
former Demagogues, who thereby have lost their Influence
and are neglected. The Populace are now directed by Men
of different Principles & who have much at stake." ^
The merchants' meeting was duly held on Monday eve-
ning. May 16, and the radicals who attended found that,
instead of having their own way, the existing committee
was discharged, their slate for a new committee of twenty-
five was rejected, and a new committee of fifty, proposed
by the men of property, was nominated.^ The committee
thus nominated included in its membership such men as
Sears and McDougall as a concession to the radicals, but
the majority of the members were " the most considerable
Merchts and Men of cool Tempers w^ho would endeavour
to avoid all extravagant and dangerous Measures." ^ Some
of them had never before " join'd in the public proceedings
of the Opposition and were induced to appear in what they
are sensible is an illegal Character, from a Consideration
that if they did not the business would be left in the same
rash Hands as before."* Others, such as the chairman,
Isaac Low, had been the prime movers in the earlier con-
tests for remedial trade legislation, and were now deter-
mined to master the whirlwind which they had then so
recklessly sown. At least twenty-five of the fifty committee-
1 Letter to Dartmouth ; Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 359-360.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 393-394. In this and all later accounts of
New York politics, the author has frequently and gratefully consulted
Professor Becker's History of Political Parties in the Province of
New York, 1760-1776.
* Colden, Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 346-347.
* Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 339-341. Vide also unsigned letter, 4 Am. Arch.^
vol. i, p. 302 n.
330
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
men had been among those merchants and traders who had
" exerted themselves in a most extraordinary manner " to
cause New York to break through the non-importation
agreement in July, 1770/
A mass meeting of the city and county was called for
Thursday, May 19, to confirm the nominations made at the
merchants' meeting." When the citizens assembled, Gouv-
erneur Morris stood watching them from the balcony of the
Coffee House. "On my right hand," he wrote later, "were
ranged all the people of property, with some poor depend-
ants, and on the other all the tradesmen, &c., who thought
it worth their while to leave daily labour for the good of
the country." ^ The merchants quickly showed their supe-
rior strength by the selection of Isaac Low as chairman of
the meeting. The merchants' slate was confirmed with little
difficulty; as an eleventh-hour and unimportant concession
to the radicals, the name of Francis Lewis was added to the
committee by unanimous consent, making the membership
fifty-one.* At the very first meeting of the Fifty-One, the
Committee of Mechanics, which had now superseded the
Sons of Liberty as the radical organization, sent in a letter,
according their concurrence in the election of the new com-
mittee.®
^ J^ide list of the latter in Bos. Gas., July 23, 1770. Nineteen members
of the committee later became avowed loyalists. Becker, op. cit., p.
116, n. 16.
2 The notice of the meeting declared, by way of reassurance, that
" the gentlemen appointed are of the body of merchants ; men of
property, probity, and understanding, whose zeal for the public good
cannot be doubted, their own several private interests being so inti-
mately connected with that of the whole community . . ." 4 Am. Arch.,
vol. i, p. 293 n.
' Sparks, Goiivernenr Morris, vol. i, pp. 23-26.
*4 Am-. Arch., vol. i, pp. 294-295. For names of the original fifty,
vide ibid., p. 293.
' Ibid., vol. i, p. 295.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 331
Gouvemeur Morris, who himself possessed strong mod-
erate sympathies, reflected upon the election of the Fifty-
One in this wise :
The spirit of the English Constitution has yet a little influence
left, and but a little. . . . The mob begin to think and to
reason. Poor reptiles ! it is with them a vernal morning ; they
are struggling to cast off their winter's slough, they bask in
the sunshine, and ere noon they will bite, depend upon it. The
gentry begin to fear this. Their Committee will . . . deceive
the people, and again forfeit a share of their confidence. And
if these instances of what with one side is policy, and with
the other perfidy, shall continue to increase, and become more
frequent, farewell aristocracy.^
At their very first meeting on May 23, the Committee of
Fifty-One, thus constituted and controlled, drew up a reply
to the Boston circular letter of May 13. Phrased with ex-
cessive caution, this answer expressed deep concern at the
dilemma of Boston, but declared in favor of postponing all
active measures until an interprovincial congress should be
held." On June 3, they sent a letter to the supervisors of all
the counties, proposing the appointment of committees of
^ Sparks, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 23-26.
*4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 297-298. No course could have been more
unsatisfactory to the leaders of the popular party at Boston, as they at
once made clear. The Boston Committee responded that, even if the
congress assembled with the greatest possible expedition, it would be
many months before a non-intercourse could become effective, whereas
an immediate suspension of trade would have " a speedy and irresis-
table operation " upon the British government. Bos. Com. Cor. Papers,
vol. X, pp. 807-808. Furthermore, the Bostonians were aware, even if
they were silent on the point, that the postponement opened a wide
door for the importation of British goods at New York in anticipation
of a possible non-intercourse later. The New York Committee remained
unmoved. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 303-304; A^- ^- Journ., June 2, 1774
332 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776-
correspondence in the various towns. ^ The motive of the
Fifty-One seems to have been to adapt the Massachusetts
plan of radical agitation to the sterling purposes of con-
servative indoctrination. They took this step with the
greater assurance, because the rural towns, except Albany,
had been notoriously apathetic, if not unsympathetic, dur-
ing the troubles over the Stamp Act and the Townshend
duties. The instinctive conservatism of the great land-
owners, and the natural intellectual torpidity of the small
farmers, undisturbed by the yeast of a constant exercise in
local government or by the machinations of a group of city
politicians (as in Massachusetts), seemed in this ..instance
to make the rural population the natural allies of the great
merchants. The latter failed to perceive, however, that the
mass of inland people, engaged in the pressing task of mak-
ing a livelihood, would be inclined to be unresponsive to any
approaches from outside, whether from the one side or the
other; either that, or, as the canny Golden feared, "the
Business in the Counties will be left to a few fonvard in-
temperate Men, who will undertake to speak for the whole
}} 2
Both eventualities seem to have occurred. The invita-
tion of the Fifty-One met wnth little response, only four
towns, it would appear, appointing committees of corres-
pondence in the subsequent two months ; and three of these
towns belonged to Suffolk County at the eastern end of
Long Island, which had been founded by natives of Con-
necticut. The resolutions of these towns were more ex-
treme than the Fifty-One wished, all of them favoring
some form of non-intercourse along the lines proposed by
1 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 300-301.
' " Could their sentiments be fairly known I make no doubt a large
Majority would be for the most Moderate & Prudent Measures." Col-
den to Tryon, June 2, 1^74; Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 345.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 333
Eoston/ In Cumberland County, the supervisors deliber-
ately withheld the letters from the towns ; but when in Sep-
tember the existence of the letters became known, delega-
tions from two towns insisted that the instructions of the
Fifty-One be carried out, and in October a county conven-
tion was held at Westminster, which adopted vigorous reso-
lutions of a radical character."
Defeated in their original fight for a friendly committee
of correspondence, the radical leaders at New York City
now undertook to turn the tables "on the moderates by de-
vising a method of selecting delegates to the impending
congress, who would go pledged to carry out radical ideas.
Realizing their inability to attain their ends through the aid
of the moderate majority of the Fifty-One, the radicals ,
now began to claim for the Committee of Mechanics a co-
ordinate authority in nominating a ticket of delegates to the
congress.^ On June 29, McDougall made a motion that a
ticket of five names should be proposed by the Fifty-One,
sent to the Committee of Mechanics for their concurrence,
and then submitted to the freeholders and freemen of city
and county for their ratification. When the discussion be-
cam.e protracted, a vote on the question was postponed until
the next meeting on July 4, when the radical plan was
swamped by a vote of 24 to 13.* A motion providing for
^ Southhaven, Easthampton and Huntington in Suffolk County;
Orange Town in Orange County. Becker, op. cit., pp. 136-138 and
references. Other towns may have acted.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 218-219, 1064-1066.
' It will be recalled that the election of the Fifty- One had been for-
mally assented to by the Committee of Mechanics, though this action
came without any solicitation from the moderates.
* This vote reveals the personnel of the radical minority, as follows :
Abraham Brasher, John Broome, Peter T. Curtenius, Joseph Hallett,
Francis Lewis, Leonard Lispenard, P. V. B. Livingston, Abraham P.
Lott, Alexander McDougall, John Moore, Thomas Randall, Isaac Sears,
Jacobus Van Zandt. However, on later votes Moore sided with the
majority. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 307-308.
334 ^^^ COLOXIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
exclusive nomination by the Fifty-One and later ratification
by the freeholders and freemen was at once adopted by
nearly the same numbers. Sears immediately placed in
nomination the names of Isaac Low, James Duane, Philip
Livingston, John Morin Scott and Alexander McDougall
for the coveted positions. This list was offered by the
radicals with a genuine hope of its adoption, for it was
composed of two confirmed moderates, Low and Duane,
merchant and lawyer; the merchant, Livingston, who pos-
sessed inclinations both ways ; ^ and the two out-and-out
radicals. But the majority failed to see any occasion for
compromise; and they substituted the moderates, John Jay
and John Alsop, lawyer and merchant, for the two radical
nominees. They then passed a motion calling a public meet-
ing for Thursday, July 7, to concur in their nominations or
to choose others in their stead."
The radicals had an interv^al of two days before the meet-
ing of the seventh in which to retrieve the disaster which
had again been visited upon them, and they set to work to
accomplish this through the agency of the Committee of
Mechanics. On Tuesday, July 5, that body took under
consideration the nominations made by the " Committee of
Merchants," as they preferred to style the Fifty-One, and
placed a negative on Duane and Alsop, substituting Mc-
Dougall and Lispenard in their stead. They issued an ap-
peal to the public, explaining that " the Committee of ^ler-
chants did refuse the ^Mechanics a representation on their
body, or to consult with their committee, or offer the names
of the persons nominated to them for their concurrence,"
and they exhorted '' the mechanics . . . and every other
friend to the liberty of his country " to rally to the support
^ Vide Becker's note on Livingston, op. cit., p. 122, n. 29.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 308-309.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 335
of the new ticket at the Thursday's meeting/ The radicals
next arranged a pubHc demonstration in the Fields on the
following evening, July 6, the night before the meeting
called by the Fifty-One. Naturally no moderates attended;
and the '' numerous meeting " under the chairmanship of
the energetic McDougall adopted unanimous resolutions in
support of Boston, and forthwith " instructed, empowered
and directed " the New York delegates to the congress to
agree for the city to a non-importation and to " all such
other measures " as Congress should deem necessary for a
redress of American grievances.^ The radicals expected to
accomplish a coup d'etat; obviously the giving of instruc-
tions properly belonged to the public meeting regularly
called by the Fifty-One.
The labors of the radicals were not without effect, al-
though the results fell short of what they desired to accom-
plish. When the public meeting assembled Thursday noon,
it was unanimously voted that a canvass of the freeholders,
freemen and taxpayers of the city should be made on the
two tickets, under the joint supervision of the Fifty-One
and the Committee of Mechanics.^ The moderate majority
had thus been forced to recognize the Committee of Me-
chanics and to extend the franchise beyond the freeholders
and freemen ; indeed, all later canvasses of the city, with a
single unimportant exception, were on the basis of this ex-
^ Advertisement of July 6; Broadsides (N. Y. Hist. Soc), vol. i.
' A^ Y. Gas., July 11, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 312-313.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 309-310. Freemen were those who had purchased
the privilege of engaging in certain occupations within the corporations
of New York and Albany. The electoral freeholders were those who
possessed, free of incumbrance, an estate in fee, for life, or by cour-
tesy, of the value of £40. The proportion of electors to the total popu-
lation was about 12 per cent in 1790, and no doubt smaller in the earlier
years. Becker, op. cit., pp. lo-ii.
336 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
tended suffrage. But in a session the same evening, the
Fifty-One formally disavowed, by the usual majority, the
proceedings of the irregular meeting of the night before on
the ground that they were intended to reflect on the Fifty-
One and create divisions among the citizens; and they ap-
pointed a committee of their own to draw up proper in-
structions/ While a motion was being made to depart
from the usual custom of secrecy maintained by the Fifty-
One and to publish this vote of disavowal, a number of the
radicals withdrew in a rage, ordering their names to be
struck from the committee roster and shouting along the
streets, " The Committee is dissolved, the Committee is dis-
solved." ^
On the next day matters between the radicals and the
moderates came to a head. The conference between the
sub-committees of the Fifty-One and the Committee of Me-
chanics reached an absolute deadlock over the manner of
conducting the canvass of the city; ^ arrangements for a
vote thus came to a halt. Later in the day eleven radical
members of the Fifty-One announced their resignation in a
public statement, alleging as their chief reason the vote of
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 310-312.
■^ " One of the Committee" in ibid., vol. i, pp. 314-315; also N. Y.
Gazetteer, July 14, 1774.
' The former insisted that the voters must make a blanket choice
between the two lists. The latter held that the voters should select any
five of the seven candidates. (It will be recalled that, although the two
tickets contained ten names, the names of Low, Livingston and Jay
appeared on both tickets.) As the real contest lay between Duane and
Alsop of the moderate slate and McDougall and Lispenard of the
radical slate, the voting of a spht ticket, it was believed, would work
to the benefit of McDougall, who was a man of considerable popularity;
while it was not thought that many voters would be willing to sacrifice
both Duane and Alsop in order to vote for him. McDougall withdrew
his candidacy, alleging the unfairness of the plan of the Fifty-One.
McDougall to the Freeholders, July 9, 1774; Broadsides, vol. i.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 337
disavowal and censure passed by the committee on the pre-
vious evening/ Until July 13, matters remained at a
deadlock, each side apparently awaiting some move of the
other. On the evening of July 13, the "Fifty-One"
adopted a set of resolutions, which defined their platform
of public policy in sharp contrast with that of the radicals.
They called a public meeting at the Coffee House for Tues-
day, July 19, in order to act on these resolutions and to
ratify the committee's nominations for, Congress. As a ;^
matter of fact, these resolutions marked little or no ad-
vance beyond the non-committal letter written by the Fifty-
One on May 23 in answer to the Boston circular letter.
On the issues of primary concern, they asserted that, while ^
all delegates ought to go to .Congress empowered to bind a
the provinces they represented, it would be premature for
any one province to anticipate,,Congress's conduct by giving -U^x
instructions; that only dire necessity would justify commer-
cial opposition; and that a non-importation, only partially
observed like the last one, would be worse than none at all.^
Of the public meeting of July 19 no satisfactory account
remains ; but it is clear that the generalship of the moder-
ates proved temporarily inadequate. The resolutions pro-
posed by the " Fifty-One " were rejected as '' void of
vigour, sense and integrity;" and the meeting, determined
to decentralize the power of the " Fifty-One," entrusted
the formulation of new resolutions to a specially-created
committee, consisting of ten radicals and five moderates.
As for the ticket of delegates submitted to the meeting, it
would appear that three of the nominations (Low, Alsop
and Jay) were ratified and two " unexceptionable friends
^ Brasher, Broome, Hallett, Lewis, Lispenard. P. V. B. Livingston,
Lott, McDougall, Randall, Sears and Van Zandt. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i,
pp. 313-314.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 315; Broadsides, vol. i.
338 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763.1776
of liberty " were added. ^ The moderates at once bent
every energy to discredit completely the doings of the public
gathering. At a session in the evening the " Fifty-One "
wrote into their minutes their opinion that " as only a, small
proportion of the citizens attended the meeting " at noon
and "the sentiments of the majority" continued "uncer-
tain," a canvass of the town should be made to ascertain
the opinion of the people on this matter and also on the
ticket of delegates nominated by the Fifty-One.^ In other
words, they repudiated entirely the public meeting which
they themselves had called. Their action gained moral
weight the next day when Low, Alsop and Jay declared
that they could not deem themselves or any others as prop-
erly nominated as delegates until the sentiments of the town
had been ascertained with greater precision. Likewise, four
of the five moderates, appointed on the new committee of
fifteen for drawing up resolutions, resigned their appoint-
ments.^ This committee, however, with depleted member-
ship, went ahead with its w^ork and prepared resolutions
for public ratification which, in substance if not in spirit,
resembled the radical platform of July 6.* But the mod-
erates were again in control of the situation ; and when the
^ N. Y. Gas., July 25, 1774; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 315, 3i7-3i8-
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 315-317. For this purpose the resolutions of the
" Fifty-One " were slightly modified but in no important respect. Vide
summary in Becker, op. cit., p. 133, n. 57.
' Duane, the fifth moderate, was not in town. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i,
pp. 317-318-
* The tenth resolution promised obedience to the conclusions of the
Continental Congress, and the twelfth declared that it was " highly
necessary" that Congress should adopt a non-importation with Great
Britain. An innovation was the eleventh resolution, which proposed a
provincial convention as the proper mode of electing delegates. A''. Y..
Gaz., July 25, 1774.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 339
meeting, called to endorse the radical resolutions, assembled
on July 25, " nothing decisive was resolved upon." ^
The subsequent events leading to the election of delegates ^x
"can be explained only on the theory that the radicals real-
ized that the moderates were the dominant factor in mold-
ing public opinion, and that therefore they felt, in order to
save any part of their platform, they must resort to oppor-
tunism.^ The " Fifty-One " at their meeting of July 25 y
voted that a poll be opened on Thursday, July 28, at the
usual places of election in each ward to elect delegates to
Congress ; and the Committee of Mechanics were invited to
co-operate with them in helping to superintend the election.^
On the following day a group of radicals sent a communi-
cation to the delegates nominated by the Fifty-One, prom- y
ising their support in case the candidates pledged their
" utmost endeavours " at the congress in support of a non-
importation agreement; that otherwise a rival ticket would:
be nominated. The candidates responded that they would:
use their " utmost endeavours " to promote every measure-
at the congress that might " then " be thought conducive to-
the general welfare, and that '' at present " they believed:
that a " general non-importation faithfully observed "
would prove the best means for procuring redress.^ This
reply clearly failed to make the concession which the inter-
rogators had demanded and which had been the sine qua non
of the radical position all along. Indeed the only detail in
which the reply differed from the resolutions proposed by
^ N. Y. Gaz., Aug. i, 1774.
^ As late as Oct. 5 Colden believed that "in the City a large Majority
of the People" were against a non-importation agreement. Letter
Books, vol. ii, pp. 366-368.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 318.
* Only four of the candidates repHed, as Duane was still absent fr^m,
the city. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 319-320; also A^. Y. Gazetteer, Aug. 4, 1774.
340 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the " Fifty-One " was that the delegates entertained a
present opinion that a non-importation faithfully observed
would prove the most effective measure. This slight con-
cession was apparently sufficient to save the self-respect of
the radicals, and they acquiesced in the moderate ticket.
Accordingly, at the Thursday's poll. Low, Jay, Livingston,
Alsop and Duane were unanimously chosen for the city and
county of New York.
The " Fifty-One " lost no time in informing the rural
counties of the action of New York and requested them
either to appoint delegates of their own or to give express
authorization to the New York delegates to act for them.^
This appeal brought somewhat better results than the earlier
request for the formation of committees of correspondence,
although it is clear that, as before, affairs were carried
through " by a very few Persons, who took upon them-
selves to act for the Freeholders." ^ Nevertheless, the pro-
posal went to the counties with the seal of approval of the
wholly moderate committee at New York and thus elicited
interest from the large landholders as well as the more
volatile elements in the population. Only three counties
elected delegates of their own — the New-England-infected
county of Suffolk and the nearby counties of Kings and
Orange. Golden was informed by a person present at the
Orange County meeting that not twenty men were present
for the election, though the county contained more than
one thousand freeholders.^ In Kings, it would appear that
two congenial souls gathered; one was chosen chairman.
the other clerk ; and the latter certified to Congress that the
former, Simon Boerum, was unanimously elected to repre-
^ July 29, 1774. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 322. For the action of the
counties, vide Becker, op. cit, pp. 139-141, and references.
' Golden, Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 366-36S.
^Ibid.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES o^I
sent the county/ Four counties — Albany, Dutchess, Ulster
and Westchester — adopted the alternative plan proposed by
the " Fifty-One," and in a more or less regular fashion
authorized the city delegates to act for them. Thus, includ-
ing New York County, eight counties in all, *' representing
a great majority of this Colony, whether this is determined
by Counties, inhabitants, wealth or the number of members
they send to the General Assembly," took action favorable
to the congress, of a more or less representative character.^
Six counties remained unresponsive to the appeal of the
" Fifty-One."
The progress of events at Philadelphia, when news of the
Boston Port Act arrived there, resembled that which had
occurred at New York. The moderate element, which had
/ always had a strong hold on the city and province, was
/ composed chiefly of the great importers of British goods \
I and the generality of the Quaker sect to which most of
r them belonged. This party, heartily condemning the de-
struction of the tea at Boston and likewise disapproving of
the punitive measures of Parliament, believed that the only
proper method of opposition was a memorial or remon-
strance drawn up by the Assembly; a few of them were
willing to favor an interprovincial congress if its activities
were limited to the single function of presenting a petition
of grievances. The radicals, on the other hand, led by the
resourceful Charles Thomson, were determined to make
immediate common cause with Boston, and, through pop-
ular meetings, to force Philadelphia as far in that direction
as they could. John Dickinson, by his earlier leadership of
^ Joseph Galloway repeated this tale on the authority of " almost all
the Delegates of New York." The Examination of Joseph Galloway,
. . . before the House of Commons . . . (London, 1780), pp. 11, 66.
2 "To the Publick," Jan. 18, 1775; 4 ^m. Arch., vol. i, pp. 11&8-1189.
342 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763.1776
the trade-reform movement and his more recent abstention
from pubhc affairs, possessed the confidence of both sides.
Being the most influential man then in the province, his
presence at a meeting of protest was deemed highly desir-
able by the radicals, his support of their measures infinitely
more so.
\Vhen Paul Revere arrived on May 19 with the Boston
circular letter, Thomson and two fellow-spirits, Joseph Reed
and Thomas MiiBin, proceeded at once to get in touch with
Dickinson/ A public meeting having been called for the
next evening (May 20), the three men took dinner with
Dickinson at his country home earlier in the same day, a
politico-gastronomic device which has always been found
to be of great utility by politicians. As they sat over their
cups and conversed afterward, the men urged Dickinson to
attend the meeting and take an active part in behalf of op-
pressed Boston, reminding him that the present hostility to
parliamentary encroachment had been largely created by his
own earlier efforts. Dickinson offered sundry excuses,
having himself disapproved of the Boston Tea Party and
appearing to feel uncertain as to what lengths they wished
to carry opposition. At last he seemed to consent to attend,
provided that he would be allowed to carry through mod-
erate measures. Thomson, suspecting that Dickinson was
reluctant to play only ^' a second pa.rt," proposed that Reed,
more conservatively inclined than the others, should open
the meeting, Mififlin and he would follow with fervid
* This account is based chiefly on Thomson's letter to Drayton, writ-
ten many years later, which purported to reveal "the secret springs
and reality of actions " at this time. Stille, Life of Dickinson, pp. 340-
344. However, the lapse of years before the letter was written has
made it necessary to utiHze other narratives to correct errors of view
and fact, particularly : Reed, W. B., Life and Correspondence of Joseph
Reed (Philadelphia, 1847), vol. i, pp. 65-67; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
340-341; Pa. Mag., vol. xxxiii, pp. 336-339; Stille, op. cit., pp. 107-108.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 343
Speeches advocating co-operation with Boston, and Dick-
inson should close with a plea for temperate measures.
Whether indeed vanity was the cause of Dickinson's hesi-
tation, or a suspicion of the good faith of the intriguers, is
not clear. At any rate, this plan being agreed upon, Dick-
inson accompanied Thomson that evening, the other men
having gone ahead in order to avoid the appearance of col-
lusion.
A relatively small number, not more than two or three
hundred inhabitants, were in attendance at the meeting;
and the prearranged program was carried through as
planned. After reading the Boston circular letter, Reed
addressed the body with ''moderation but in pathetic terms,'^
proposing that the governor be asked to call the Assembly
to petition for a redress of grievances; Mifflin spoke next
with " warmth & fire;" Thomson followed with an ardent
plea " for an immediate declaration in favour of Boston &
making common cause with her." ^ " Great clamour was
raised against the violence of the measures proposed."
Dickinson now rose and lent his efforts in support of Reed's
motion, speaking with " great coolness, calmness, modera-
tion and good sense." Dickinson's motives are not clear;
but Governor Penn was probably right when he averred
that : " the movers of this extraordinary measure had not
the most distant expectation of succeeding in it [because of
the certainty of the governor's refusal], but that their real
scheme was to gain time by it to see what part the other
Colonies will take in so critical a conjuncture." ^
A number of persons were present who had never before
attended public meetings, among them the importer, Thomas
Wharton, and Dr. Smith, provost of the College of Phila-
* Thomson fainted in the midst of his speech, " for he had scarce
slept an hour two nights past."
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. ^y-z^'^-
344 '^^^^ COLOXIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
delpkia; and these men helped to carry the day for the
Reed-Dickinson motion. If Thomson was surprised at the
outcome of his scheme, he at least tried to recover such
ground as he could by moving that a committee be ap-
pointed to answer the Boston letter ; and when that carried,
a slate of radicals was handed to the chair for submission
to the meeting. A list representing the other party was
submitted at the same time; and great confusion ensued as
to which list should be voted on first. At length it was
proposed that the two lists be combined to compose the com-
mittee; and this was accordingly done, with the under-
standing that the committee should be altered at a later
meeting of inhabitants.
The committee of nineteen, thus selected, v/as dominated
by the moderates, and fairly represented the sentiment of
the city.^ The letter sent to Boston on May 21 frankly re-
flected this cautious spirit. With circumspect phrase, the
committee conceded that Boston was suffering in the com-
mon cause but hesitated to venture further expressions in-
asmuch as " the sense of this large city " had not yet been
ascertained, and even when this were done, the " populous
province " had yet to express itself. They took occasion
to express their distaste for the Boston Tea Party by de-
claring that if compensating the East India Company
'' would put an end to this unhappy controversy, and leave
us on the footing of constitutional liberty for the future, it
is presumed that neither you nor we could continue a mo-
ment in doubt what part to act." Finally, they had " reason
to think " that it would be most agreeable to the people of
Pennsylvania to summon a general congress to send a peti-
tion of rights to the king, and that the Boston plan of non-
intercourse should be reserved as '' the last resource." "
1 Vide letter of George C^'mer; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 406-407.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 341-342; also Pa. Gaz., June 8, 1774. The letter was
CONTEST IX COMMERCIAL PROVINCES oa -
The radical leaders backed the petition for calling the
Assembly in apparent good faith, in order " to convince the
pacific [Thomson confessed afterward] that it was not the
intention of the warm spirits to involve the province in the
dispute without the consent of the representatives of the
people." As they expected, the governor refused the peti-
tion, though it was signed by almost nine hundred people/
They now urged a large meeting of the Philadelphia public
to choose a new committee and to take further action. As
the Nineteen showed no disposition to proceed to that step,
notices were posted for a meeting of the mechanics of the
city and suburbs on the evening of June 9 in order to
organize themselves and to appoint a committee of their
own. This maneuver had the desired efifect. When the
twelve hundred workingmen assembled on Thursday night,
the chairman was able to inform them that the Nineteen
had sent word that a mass meeting of the city and county
would be called in the near future to choose " one Grand
Joint Committee." Whereupon, the gathering decided to
take no action '' at present." ^
The moderates determined to control the action of the
mass meeting; and in order to do this it was necessary to
written by Dr. Smith. The Boston Committee of Correspondence re-
sponded in much the same spirit they did to the New York epistle,
which had been written about the same time. Bos. Com. Cor. Papers,
vol. ii, pp. 417-420. Sam Adams wrote privately to Thomson : " The
Trade will forever be divided when a Sacrifice of their Interest is
called for. ... Is it not necessary to push for a Suspension of Trade
with Great Britain as far as it will go, and let the yeomanry ... re-
solve to desert those altogether who will not come into the Measure?"
Writings (Cushing), vol. iii, p. 124. Note the approving attitude of
the N. Y. Committee with reference to the Philadelphia letter. 4 Am.
Arch., vol. i, p. 2^.
^ Stille, op. cit., pp. 344-345; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 391-392.
^ Pa. Gaz., June 15, 1774; also 4 Am.. Arch., vol. i, pp. 405-406.
346 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
gain the support of the body of the Quakers who '' had an
aversion to town meetings & always opposed them." There-
fore the Nineteen called into an informal caucus six repre-
sentatives of each religious society in the city; and this
body agreed upon the presidents of the meeting, the speak-
ers " who were obliged to write down what they intended
to say & submit their several speeches to the revision of the
presidents," the nature of the resolutions to be adopted,
and, finally, the personnel of the new committee.^ Upon
their ticket they thoughtfully placed seventeen members of
the existing committee,^ including Dickinson as chairman,
and chose twenty-seven others from their respective relig-
ious organizations. From another point of view, the list
contained a clear majority of moderate merchants and pro-
fessional men, but the radical leaders still held membership
and at least six mechanics were included. The spirit con-
trolling the proposed membership was well expressed by
Thomas Wharton when he explained that the reason he
permitted his name to be used was " a sincere desire in
myself to keep the transactions of our city within the limits
of moderation and not indecent or offensive to our parent
state." '
In view of these preparations, the meeting of the city
and county on June i8 was hardly more than a formality,
although probably only a handful of the great throng real-
^ Thomson's account in Stille, op. cit., p. 344; Thomas Wharton's
account, Pa. Mag., vol. xxxiii, pp. 436-437; Dr. Smith's Notes and
Papers (Hist. Soc. Pa. Mss.), pp. 9-1 1.
^ Joseph Fox and John Cox were left out.
^ Pa. Mag., vol. xxxiii, pp. 436, 439. Likewise, Dr. Smith declared,
on a later occasion, that he would remain on the committee as long as
he could be " of any Use in advising Measures consistent with the
Principles I profess and that Allegiance and subordination which we
owe to the Crown and Empire of Great Britain." Notes and Papers,
pp. 17-18.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 347
ized it. Two resolutions were adopted, declaring that Bos-
ton was suffering in the common cause and that a congress
of deputies from the colonies was the proper way of ob-
taining redress of grievances. No mention was made of
the Boston proposal for non-intercourse. The ticket of
forty-four names, prepared by the caucus, was elected with
little difficulty, although it would appear that James Pem-
berton, a pillar of the Society of Friends, withdrew his
name at once, thus leaving forty-three.^ This committee
was instructed to correspond with the rural counties and
with the sister provinces, and to devise a means of choosing
delegates to the Continental Congress. The next few weeks
saw the establishment of committees of correspondence in
most of the counties and the adoption of resolutions for an
interprovincial congress as proposed by the Forty-Three at
Philadelphia.'
The Forty-Three were as moderate in temper as the
Fifty-One of New York and strove for the same objects.
But under the gracious leadership of the chairman, John
Dickinson, a sharp clash was avoided between the radical
minority of the committee and the dominant element; and
indeed the two factions found it to their interest to unite
forces, upon most occasions, against a common enemy.
This common foe, of which there was no exact counterpart
in New York, was the strongly consolidated conservative
group entrenched in the lower house of the Assembly under
the leadership of Joseph Galloway, the speaker. Galloway
^ His name is included in 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 426-428, but not in
the newspaper accounts: Pa. Gaz., June 22, 1774; Pa. Journ., June 22;
Pa. Packet, June 27. For Pemberton's sentiments, vide statement of
Quakers, May 30, 1774; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 365-3^, and his letter
in Sharpless, Quakers in Revolution, pp. 107-109.
^ From June 18 to July 13 committees were appointed in the counties
of Chester, Northampton, Berks, York, Bucks, Lancaster, Bedford,
Cumberland and Chester. Vide files of Pa. Gas., and Pa. Journ.
348 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
had long been an opponent of Dickinson in provincial poli-
tics over the issue of proprietary vs. royal government for
Pennsylvania; he had upon one occasion declined a chal-
lenge from Dickinson, but the two men fought many a
wordy duel in broadside and newspaper/ Like many an-
other gentleman of wealth and prestige who chose the
British side when the war broke out, Galloway believed in
the justice of many of the American demands. He was a
constructive critic of the colonial policy of the home gov-
ernment and believed that alleviation could, and should
properly, come only through the traditional and legal chan-
nel of legislative memorials to Parliament. Efforts at pop-
ular control through extra-legal action were to him a species
of anarchy, and he held himself aloof from all popular
movements whatever their purpose.^ Confronted with a
popular movement of continental proportions and alarmed
by the vigorous and unusual measures of Parliament against
^ Baldwin, E. H., " Joseph Galloway, the Loyalist Politician," Pa.
Mag., vol. xxvi, particularly pp. 161-191.
' Says Galloway's biographer : " With a conservatism natural to
wealth, and with inherited aristocratic tendencies, Mr. Galloway ob-
served with no small concern the growth of republican ideas. That
there could be any true liberty, or any safety even, under a democracy,
or what he considered was nearly, if not quite, the same thing, mob
rule, he beheved impossible. It was with no small degree of appre-
hension, therefore, that he viewed the growing differences between
Great Britain and her Colonies. With a property-holder's natural
aversion to taxation, and with a realization of the injustice which
might result from measures of taxation by ParHament, he aided in all
ways that he considered proper to remove the causes of complaint.
The very suggestion that the remedy for the troubles lay in independ-
ence was repugnant to him. The remedy lay rather in a closer union
with the mother country. The poHtical experiences of Mr. Galloway in
Pennsylvania made him naturally suspicious of the intentions of the
noisy elements am.ong the people, and he soon came to the conclusion
that ultimate independence was their aim; at least their conduct could
lead to nothing else. Hence he determined to exert his best efforts
to prevent such a deplorable occurrence." Ibid., p. 440.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 349
Boston, Galloway was now willing to favor an interprovin-
cial congress if it should be composed of delegates chosen
by the members composing the popular branches of the sev-
eral provincial legislatures. Such a congress, he believed,
might formulate a plan of " political union between the two
countries, with the assent of both, which would effectually
secure to Americans their future rights and privileges." ^
The policy of the Forty-Three was to conciliate and unite
all factions in the province in support of the approaching
congress. Therefore, although the mere existence of an
extra-legal committee represented a principle hateful to the
Galloway party, the Forty-Three adopted a plan of action
which enlisted the co-operation of Galloway almost in spite
of himself. The Forty-Three had been instructed by the
public meeting to devise a means of ascertaining the sense
of the province and of electing delegates to the Continental
Congress. At a meeting on June 2y, they decided that they
would ask Speaker Gallow^ay to call the members of the
House together for an unofficial session to consider the
alarming situation, and that they would summon, for the
same time, a convention of county committees '' to consult
and advise on the most expedient mode of appointing dele-
gates for the general congress and to give their weight to
such as may be adopted."" This latter body, the radical
leaders had already learned '' under colour of an excursion
of pleasure," ^ would be definitely radical in its composition,
for in it the w^estern counties would have a much larger
voice than under the unfair system of representation main-
^ Vide letter signed by Galloway and three others as members of the
committee of correspondence of the Assembly. Pa. Gas., July 13, I774;
also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 485-486. Cf. the scathing comment of a
New York newspaper writer. Ibid., vol. i, p. 486 n.
^ Pa. Gaz., June 29, July 6, 1774; Lincoln, Revolutionary Movement
in Pa., pp. 173-175.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 434. Vide also ibid., p. "726.
350
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
tained by the House of Representatives/ Thus, their ob-
ject was to leave the actual appointment of the delegates to
the members of the House, as the Galloway party wished,
but, through the popular convention, to dictate the terms
upon which the delegates should be chosen.
The governor made unnecessary the informal assembling
of the House by summoning a legislative session for Mon-
day, July 1 8, on the pretext of some Indian disturbances.
When, therefore, the Forty-Three sent their circular letter
to the counties, they noted this fact, and asked the provin-
cial convention to assemble on July 15 "in order to assist
in framing instructions, and preparing such matters, as
may be proper to recommend " to the members of the
House." ^ For the next several weeks, newspaper articles
served to keep alive the public interest and to indicate the
trend of public opinion. ''A Philadelphian" argued against
non-importation as a mode of opposition because the bur-
den would fall wholly on the drygoods importers whereas
the interests of all were involved.^ " Brutus " believed
that the plan, proposed by the Boston circular letter, was
dictated more by " heated zeal than by approved reason and
moderation," and maintained that the proper course would
be for Congress to petition the British government for re-
dress.* But, according to '' Sidney," those who espoused
the method of petition were "' men who prefer one cargo
of British goods to the salvation of America," and he de-
manded an immediate non-importation.^ "Anglus Ameri-
canus " would also include a non-exportation, particularly
^ For the " rotten borough " system in Pennsylvania, vide Adams, J.,
Works, vol. X, pp. 74-75 ; Lincoln, op. cit., pp. 40-52.
2 Pa. Gas., July 6, 1774. 2 /^j^_^ Aug. 17, 1774.
4 Ihid., July 20, 1774. ^ Pa. Journ., Aug. 31, 1774.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 351
to the West Indies.^ Rural opinion was well expressed by
Edward Shippen when he advocated a total non-importa-
tion and non-exportation, insisting that the Boston Port
Act contained the names of all the provinces, " only they
are written in lime juice and want the heat of fire to make
them legible." ^ On July 1 1 the mechanics and small
tradesmen of Philadelphia held a meeting to urge another
mass meeting of the city and county, at which the Penn-
sylvania delegates should be given unrestricted power to
agree to a trade suspension by the congress. But the
Forty-Three saw in this gathering a design to undermine
their authority, and nothing came of the matter.^
The provincial convention assembled at Carpenters' Hall
on Friday, July 15, with one or more deputies from every
county in the province/ Thomas Willing was chosen chair-
man, Charles Thomson, clerk. The dominant voice of the
rural members was at once insured by an agreement that
the voting should be by counties. The work of the first day
consisted in the adoption of a platform, or set of resolu-
tions, which voiced the opinion of the convention in a sig-
nificant way. " Unanimously " the convention resolved
that it was their " earnest desire that the Congress should
first try the gentler mode "of petitioning for redress be-
fore resorting to '' a suspension of the commerce of this
large trading province." " By a great majority " it was
voted that, notwithstanding, if Congress should deem a
^ Pa. Journ., June 29, 1774.
2 Balch, T., Letters and Papers Relating Chieiiy to the Provincial
History of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1855), pp. 238-239.
3"Russel" in Pa. Gas., July 20, 1774. "An Artisan" in ihid., Aug.
31, and "A Mechanic" in Pa. Packet, Sept. 5, argued boldly for a new
committee.
* For the proceedings of the convention, vide Pa. Gas., July 27, 17741
also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 555-593-
352 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
non-importation and non-exportation against Great Britain
expedient, the people of the province would join the other
leading provinces in that measure. " By a majority " it
was resolved that, if any further proceedings of Parliament
should cause Congress to take more drastic steps than a
suspension of trade with Great Britain, the inhabitants
would do all in their power to support the action of Con-
gress. The convention agreed unanimously upon resolves
for the maintenance of the customary prices during a non-
importation, and for a boycott of any province, town or
individual failing to adopt the plan agreed upon by Con-
gress.
Most of the next four days was consumed in consider-
ing and amending a draft of instructions for the delegates,
which had been prepared in advance by a sub-committee of
the Forty-Three, of which Dickinson was the leading spirit.
Finally, on Wednesday, the twentieth, a set of resolutions
was agreed upon, which displayed many internal evidences
of a conflict of interest among the members. The lengthy
document was addressed to the House of Representatives,
and commenced with a Dickinsonian essay on the rights of
the colonies and a request that the House should appoint
delegates to the impending congress.^ The draft of instruc-
tions was transmitted '' in pursuance of the trust imposed "
on them by the inhabitants of the several counties qualified
to vote — a delicate intimation of the common source of
authority of the two bodies. The instructions themselves
bear comparison with the resolutions adopted on the first
day of the convention. After naming a comprehensive list
of grievances extending back into the years, it was de-
^ According to Thomson's account, the convention resolved " at the
same time, in case the Assembly refused, to take upon themselves to
appoint deputies." Stille, op. cit., p. 346. This does not appear in the
extract of the proceedings accessible; but in any case it undoubtedly
represented the temper of the convention.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 353
clared that the minimum demands of Congress should in-
clude the repeal of British measures '' relating to [the
quartering of] the troops; internal legislation; imposition
of taxes or duties hereafter; the thirty-fifth of Henry the
Eighth, chapter the second; the extension of Admiralty
Courts ; the port of Boston and Province of Massachusetts
Bay." In return for these concessions, the Americans
should agree to settle a certain annual revenue on the king
and " to satisfy all damages done to the East India Com-
pany."
With regard to the best method of obtaining redress, the
delegates were advised to advocate a petition to the British
government; but if Congress should decide upon an imme-
diate severance of all trade, " we have determined, in the
present situation of publick affairs, to consent to a stop-
page of our commerce' with Great Britain only." Should a
partial redress be granted, the boycott should be modified
in proportion to the degree of relief afforded ; on the other
hand, should Parliament pass further oppressive acts, the
inhabitants of the province would support such action as
Congress might adopt more drastic than a suspension of
trade. Finally, the convention informed the House of
Representatives that, " though we have, for the satisfaction
of the good people of this Province, who have chosen us
for this express purpose, offered to you such instructions as
have appeared expedient to us, yet it is not our meaning
that, by these or by any you may think proper to give them,
the Deputies appointed by you should be restrained from
agreeing to any measures that shall be approved by the
Congress." It was this last clause which, no doubt, recon-
ciled the radicals in the convention to a pseudo-endorsement
of half-way expedients, which the experience of former
years had, in their judgment, decisively discredited. As
for the personnel of the delegates, the convention contented
354
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
itself with proposing the names of three of its members,
Dickinson, Willing and James Wilson, with the suggestion
that the House should select these three together with four
of its own members/
On the next day, Thursday the twenty first, the conven-
tion went in a body to the chamber of the House of Repre-
sentatives and presented their resolutions and instructions/
Without according any further formal recognition to the
doings of the convention, the House resolved to take under
consideration on the following day the letters received in
behalf of a general congress from the committees of cor-
respondence of the assemblies of Massachusetts, Rhode
Island and Virginia. On the eve of the morrow's session, a
broadside emanating from the Galloway party was handed
to the members of the House. The paper drew its inspira-
tion from the quotation of Hume's with which it opened :
" All numerous iVssemblies, however composed, are mere
mobs, and swayed in their debates by the least motive . . .
An absurdity strikes a member, he conveys it to his neigh-
bours and the whole is infected. . . . The only way of
making people wise, is to keep them from uniting into large
Assemblies." By what legal authority, it w^as asked, has
the convention assembled ? " We know not where such
precedents may terminate; setting up a power to controul
you, is setting up anarchy above order — it is the begin-
^ This transaction does not appear in the familiar extract of the pro-
ceedings, but it is sufficiently well authenticated ; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p.
607 n. ; "Censor" in Pa. Eve. Post, Mch. 5, 1776; Thomson's narrative^
Stille, op. cif., p. 346.
' 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 557, 606.
* The writer, who signed himself " A Freeman/' also denounced the
rule of voting in the convention, by which the vote of a frontier
county was equal to that of "this opulent and populous city and
county." Ibid., vol. i, pp. 607-608 n.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 355
On the next day, the House resolved, in words very
similar to the vote of the convention, that a congress was
" an absolute necessity." They did not follow the cue
given them by the convention as to the personnel of the
delegates, and selected seven members out of their own
body, including Galloway himself. A day later, instruc-
tions were voted to " the Committee of Assembly appointed
to attend the General Congress." These instructions, com-
posed by Galloway, were drawn with a frank disregard of
the elaborate directions submitted by the convention. In
brief form, they stated that the trust reposed in the dele-
gates was of such a nature and the modes of performance
might be so diversified in the course of the deliberations of
Congress that detailed instructions were impossible; that
the delegates should strive their utmost to adopt measures
for redress and the establishment of union and harmony
with Great Britain while avoiding " every thing indecent
or disrespectful to the mother state." ^
Had the personnel of the delegates been different, the
radicals would have been well pleased with this blanket
delegation of authority. But under the circumstances, Gal-
loway expected to control the action of the delegates; and
his own judgment called for the sending of commissioners to
England to adjust differences and for the scrupulous absten-
tion from measures of non-intercourse.^ Governor Penn
could well assure the Earl of Dartmouth that " the steps
taken by the Assembly are rather a check than an encour-
agement to the proceedings of the Committee [conven-
tion]." ^ The radicals improved their situation somewhat
by securing the addition of Dickinson to the delegates by
1 4 Am. Arch,, vol. i, pp. 606-6095 also Pa. Gas., July 27, 1774.
2 Letter to William Franklin ; i N. J. Arch., vol. x, pp. 475-477-
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 661. ;.
356
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763.1776
the roundabout process of electing him to the House on
October 15, and he took his seat in Congress after it had
been in session six weeks. From a broader point of view,
the victory lay with the radicals; for, although the House
had professed to act of their own independent will through-
out, there had been, in a real sense of the term, a '' setting
up [of] a power to controul " them, a " setting up [of]
anarchy above order." Galloway himself had decided, as a
lesser of evils, to take part in a great continental assem-
blage elected in most irregular and informal ways.^
The trend of sentiment in New Jersey was dominated, it
would appear, by the course of the two great trading towns
that controlled her commercial destinies." On May 21 and
23 the Philadelphia and New York committees had in-
formed the Boston Committee of Correspondence of their
unwillingness for positive action until the meeting of a
general congress ; and news of their position became known
at once in New Jersey. On the last day of the month, the
committee of correspondence of the New Jersey Assembly
transmitted to the Boston committee their endorsement of
a congress, as proposed by the neighboring provinces, to
draw up " a Non-Importation and perhaps a Non-Exporta-
^ The resolution of the House appointing Galloway and his coleagues
described the congress as composed of committees or delegates ap-
pointed by provincial " Houses of Representatives, or by Convention,
or by the Provincial or Colony Committees." Galloway jus it^ed his
conduct upon the ground that the assemblies had not been permitted to
meet in some provinces. Pa. Mag., vol. xxvi, p. 339.
' This was hinted at in the first set of resolutions issued by a public
body in New Jersey — a meeting of the inhabitants of Lower Freehold
township in Monmouth County. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 390; alo N. Y.
Journ., June 7, 1774. The radicalism which characterized the rural
population in most provinces was in New Jersey subdued by the pres-
ence of large numbers of Quakers, particularly in the western portion.
CONTEST IN COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 337
tion Agreement." ^ This was the signal for a series of
county meetings throughout the province, which adopted
resolutions expressing the same view." They also ap-
pointed committees of correspondence, who were instructed
to meet with the other committees in a provincial convention
for the purpose of choosing delegates to the general con-
gress. This convention of committees gathered at New
Brunswick on July 21, and seventy-two delegates took part
in the three days' deliberations. Their resolutions denied
the right of Parliament to impose revenue taxes and de-
nounced the coercive acts recently passed. A continental
congress was endorsed as the best means of uniting oppo-
sition ; and a general non-importation and non-consumption
agreement was recommended as the best course for the
congress to adopt. Delegates were appointed to the con-
gress ; but an effort to procure an instruction that the East
India Company should not be reimbursed met with failure.^
The action of the Delaware counties was, on the whole,
less restrained than that taken at Philadelphia. Published
appeals for arousing public resentment raked over the
embers of past disputes with Parliament in a bitterly par-
tisan way.* The first mass meeting, held in Newcastle
^ Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. viii, pp. 709-710.
^ From June 8 to July 20, it is recorded that eleven of the thirteen
counties acted ; in chronological order : Essex, Bergen, Morris, Somer-
set, Hunterdon, Salem, Middlesex, Sussex, Gloucester, Monmouth and
Burlington. 4 Ant. Arch., vol. i, 403-404, 450, 524-525, 553-554, 594, 610-
613; Pa. Journ., July 20, 1774. These meetings endorsed a suspens'on
of trade contingent upon the approval of the congress, most of them
preferring non-importation and non-consumption alone. Salem County
showed some individuality in introducing the act of Parliament aga'nst
slitting and plating mills as a grievance and denouncing it as " an
absolute infringement of the natural rights of the subject."
^ Pa. Gaz., July 27, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 624-625. Vide
also Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 356.
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 419-420, 658-661.
358 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
County on June 29, recommended a continental congress
as the proper agency for securing redress, and appointed a
committee to correspond with the other counties and prov-
inces with reference to the matter. One resolve requested
the speaker of the House of Assembly to convene the mem-
bers of that body not later than August i, in order to ap-
point delegates to the congress, no request being made of
the governor because of his refusal in the case of the Phila-
delphia petition/ A few weeks later county meetings in
Kent and Sussex took similar action.^ The convention as-
sembled at Newcastle on August i. Its resolutions ar-
raigned the British Parliament for restricting manufactures
in the colonies, for taking away the property of the colonists
without their consent, for introducing the arbitrary powers
of the excise into the customs in America, for making all
revenue causes tryable without a jury and under a single
dependent judge, and for passing the coercive acts. Dele-
gates v/ere chosen to the approaching congress.^
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 664; also Pa. Gaz. July 6, 1774.
^ Ibid., Aug. 3, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 664-666.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 666-667.
CHAPTER IX
Contest of Merchants and Radicals for Dominance
IN THE Plantation Provinces (May-
October,, 1774)
-It is apparent that a revolution of sentiment had oc-
curred among the merchants of the northern seaports.
Those who had promoted movements of protest against
earlier acts of Parliament now sought to stop or restrain
the present popular uprising. By this reversal of front,
they occupied the same position of obstruction in 1774
that the merchants and factors of the plantation pro-
vinces had maintained on all occasions since the begin-
ning of the commotions ten years before. For this
reason, the course of the plantation provinces in response
to the circular letter of the Boston town meeting of
May 13, 1774, does not show the marked contrast to the
events in the commercial provinces that had characterized
the earlier occasions.
r The nature of the contest in 1774 struck closer home
to the Southern planters than the earlier quarrels over
trade reforms, for the issue was more clearly one of per-
Lsonal liberty and constitutional right, and in the school
of dialectic the plantation provinces acknowledged no
superiors. The long-standing indebtedness of the
planters to the British merchants was a source of irrita-
tion that undoubtedly induced radical action, in the
tobacco provinces and in North Carolina in particular.
The demand for a suspension of debt collections played
359
360 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a part in the popular movement in these provinces, and,
at a later time, in South Carolina as well. On the pre-
sent occasion, the merchants of Charleston and Savannah
were able to command support from the rural districts
of their provinces, due to peculiar local conditions ; but
in Virginia and North Carolina, vv^here the merchants
were forced to stand alone, the planters adopted the
most radical measures of commercial opposition that
were to be found anywhere in British America. Mary-
land was only less extreme in the measures adopted.
The movement to take action in response to the Bos-
ton circular letter received its initial impulse in Mary-
-^ land at a meeting of the inhabitants of Annapolis on
May 25, 1774. The resolutions were an advance be-
yond anything that had been adopted elsewhere up to
this time. The meeting declared that all provinces
should unite in effectual measures to obtain the repeal of
the Boston Port Act and that the inhabitants of Annapolis
would join in an oath-bound association in conjunction
with the other Maryland counties and the other principal
, provinces for an immediate non-importation with Great
Britain and a suspended non-exportation. The inhabit-
ants would immediately boycott any province that re-
fused to enter similar resolutions with a majority of the
provinces. The meeting further resolved that no lawyer
.^' should bring suit for the recovery of any debt due from
a Marylander to any inhabitant of Great Britain until
the Port Act should be repealed. A committee of cor-
Irespondence was appointed, with instructions to join
'^with similar committees to be appointed elsewhere in
the province to form one grand committee.' The dec-
^Md. Gaz., May 26, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 352-353.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 361
laration about the payment of debts at once aroused pro-
test in the city ; and two days later a second meeting
was held to re-consider the question, and the resolution
was carried again, forty-seven to thirty-one.' Daniel
Dulany, Jr., was one of those opposed to the resolution
but later he admitted: '' I would have agreed to it if it
had extended to merchants in this country as well as
foreign merchants."^
/" All the subsequent meetings in Maryland were county
i assemblages, thus reducing the opportunities for mer-
cantile influence. Within three weeks eight of the six-
S^een counties were recorded as following the example
of the town of Annapolis. ^ Six of these meetings fav-
ored a non-exportation and non-importation, simultane-
ous or successive ; Caroline preferred a modified non-im-
portation only; and Kent was silent on the subject. A
suspension of debt collections, foreign and domestic, was
advocated by four counties, in case of complete non-
intercourse.'^ Six counties declared that all provinces
failing to adopt the general plan should be boycotted.
All the meetings organized committees of correspon-
dence and appointed delegates to the forthcoming pro-
vince convention.
The convention of committees assembled at Annapolis
on Wednesday, June 22, for a four days' sitting, with
ninety-two members representing every county in the
^ Md. Gaz., June 2, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 353-
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 354-355. A formal protest against the resolution,
signed by one hundred sixty-three names, mostly of stay-at-home
citizens, appeared a few days later. Ibid,, pp. 353-354-
''In chronological order: Queen Anne's. Baltimore, Kent, Anne
Arundel, Harford, lov/er part of Frederick, Charles, Caroline, Fred-
erick. Ibid., vol. i. pp. 366-367, 379. 384-386, 402-403, 409, 425-426,
433-434: also Md. Gaz., June 9, 16, 30, 1774.
*Anne Arundel, Caroline, Frederick, Harford.
362 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
province. It was agreed that every county should cast
, one vote. The resolutions denounced the punitive acts
^ /of Parliament and declared the willingness of the pro-
/ vince to join in a retaliatory association, in company
\ with the principal provinces of the continent, to stop
all, or almost all, commercial intercourse with the
mother country, at a date to be fixed by the general
congress. This latter resolve occasioned long debates
on Friday, lasting from ten in the morning until nine at
night. The division, it would appear, was on the ques-
Y~tion whether the non-intercourse should be absolute, as
I proposed by the preliminary county meetings, or quali-
ty fied. The moderates forced a compromise by which it
was agreed that the non-exportation of tobacco should
/not take place without a similar restraint in force in
I Virginia and North Carolina, and that articles should be
I excepted from the non-importation in case a majority of
the provinces should so decide. Further resolutions
\ declared that merchants must not raise prices, on pain
of boycott ; and that the province would sever all rela-
tions with any province or town which declined the plan
recommended by the congress.' Apparently there was
little thought of adopting an association which should go
into effect independently of Congress; the resolutions
were in the nature of instructions to the delegates to
Congress, who were forthwith chosen.
The Virginia House of Burgesses was in session when
news was received at Williamsburg of the passage of the
Boston Port Act. Richard Henry Lee, one of the mem-
bers, urged that an im.mediate declaration be made in
behalf of Boston, but was dissuaded by some '' worthy
^ Md. Gaz., June 30, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 439-440.
Vide a letter from Annapolis in Pa. Journ., June 29.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 363
members " who desired first to dispose of necessary
provincial business/ '' Whatever resolves or measures
are intended for the preservation of our rights and lib-
erties," wrote George Mason, who was a spectator of
these events, " will be reserved for the conclusion of the
session. Matters of that sort here are conducted and
prepared with a great deal of privacy, and by very few
members ; of whom Patrick Henry is the principal."
Finally, on Tuesday, May 24, the House resolved that
the first of June, the day on which the harbor of Boston
was to be closed, should be set aside as a **day of fast-
ing, humiliation and prayer." Governor Dunmore, sus-
pecting rightly that the fast was intended to prepare the
minds of the people to receive other and more inflam-
matory resolutions, dissolved the House two days later.
Not to be foiled, eighty-nine burgesses met in their
private capacities in the Long Room of the Raleigh
Tavern on Friday morning, with Peyton Randolph as .
chairman, and adopted an association in which they
declared war on the East India Company by recommend-
ing the disuse of dutied tea and of all East India com-
modities, save saltpetre and spices. It was further recom-
mended to the legislative committee of correspondence
to invite the various provinces to meet in annual congress
for the sake of deliberating on measures of common con-
cern. In point of time, this was the first pronounce-
ment by a meeting representing a whole province in
favor of an interprovincial congress ; but, as we have
seen, the proposal had already been made by many town
gatherings in various other provinces.
^ This account is based chiefly on: 4 Atn. Arch., vol. i, pp. 350-352,
387-388, 445-446; Washington, Writings (Ford), vol. ii, pp. 412-415,
n. 2; letter of a burgess in Rind's la. Gaz., Sept. 22, 1774; Rowland,
George Mason, vol. i, pp. 1 68-1 71.
364 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
These measures, which Richard Henry Lee denomin-
ated as "much too feeble," were entered into indepen-
dently of any knowledge of what had been done else-
where. When the Boston circular letter arrived, with
other letters from the north, on Sunday, May 29, most
of the ex-burgesses had departed for their homes; but
Peyton Randolph succeeded in collecting tvv^enty five of
them for a meeting on Monday morning. Most of those
present believed it absolutely necessary to enlarge the
association to include a general non-importation, but
they were badly divided as to the expediency of stopping
exportation. Furthermore, they felt that, in any case,
their number was too small to permit them to alter the
association. Therefore they addressed a circular letter
to the absent gentlemen, explaining the situation, ask-
ing them to collect the sense of their constituents, and
to assemble in Williamsburg on August i to take final
action.
This referendum to the people, occupying a space of
Uwo months, showed conclusively that the temper of the
I rural constituencies was far more radical than the action
;of their representatives at the Williamsburg meeting in-
'dicated. The chief source of opposition to the popular
measures was disclosed by James Madison, when he
wrote that '' the Europeans, especially the Scotch, and
some interested merchants among the natives, discounte-
nance such proceedings as far as they dare; alledging
the injustice aud perfidy of refusing to pay our debts to
our generous creditors at home. This consideration
induces some honest, moderate folks to prefer a partial
prohibition, extending only to the importation, of
goods." ^ It was reported in London newspapers that
^Madison, Writings (Hunt), vol. i, p. 26.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 365
when a meeting of merchants at Norfolk, the chief trad-
ing centre, had the Boston circular letter under consid-
eration, a wag present observed that "the request put
him in mind of the old fable of the fox that had lost his
tail and who would have persuaded his brethren to cut
off theirs." He believed that '' as amputation is a dan-
gerous operation ... it will be better to take time to
consider of it." The meeting accordingly adjourned
without action.'
The first county meeting was held at Dumfries in
Prince William County on June 6. One resolution de-
clared boldly: "that as our late Representatives have
not fallen upon means sufficiently efficacious to secure
to us the enjoyment of our civil rights and liberties, it
is the undoubted privilege of each respective county (as
the fountain of power from whence their delegation
arises) to take such proper and salutary measures as will
essentially conduce to a repeal " of the coercive acts.^
This resolve marked the tempo with which all the count-
ies acted. In the period up to the time of the provincial
convention on August i, thirty-one, perhaps more,
counties gave expression to their sentiments as to a
proper mode of opposition to the mother country.^
' Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Sept. 12, 1774. Vide also Pa. Gaz., Aug.
24. This no doubt expressed the views of the merchants; but the in-
habitants of the borough in general were ready to adopt measures of
protest. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 370-372.
-Rind's Va. Gaz., June 9, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 388.
Vide also the Stafford resolutions, ibid., p. 617.
•^In chronological order: Prince William, Frederick, Dunmore,
Westmoreland, Spotsylvania, Richmond, Prince George's, James
City, Norfolk, Culpepper, Essex, Fauquier, Nansemond, New Kent,
Chesterfield, Caroline, Gloucester, Henrico, Middlesex, Dinwiddie,
Surry, York, Fairfax, Hanover, Stafford, Isle of Wight, Elizabeth
City, Albemarle, Accomack, Princess Anne, Buckingham. Ibid.,
vol. i, pp. 388-644 passim. The resolutions of Isle of Wight County
appeared in Rind's Va. Gaz., July 28, 1774.
366
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
/f'^^W meetings agreed that Parliament lacked power ta
/ impose taxes collectable in America, and denounced the
(Boston Port Act. Twenty counties announced them-
selves in favor of the extreme measure of commercial
non-intercourse with Great Britain, in conjunction with
the other provinces, although eight of these preferred to
have non -exportation go into effect at a stated interval
I after non-importation. The three counties recommended
merely the adoption of an unqualified non-importation ; ^
and five others proposed a non-importation with certain
articles excepted, as in former associations.* The re-
maining three counties indicated their willingness to
accept any conclusions reached at the provincial conven-
tion.3 A declaration in favor of the suspension of judicial
processes for the collection of debts during non-exporta-
tion was made by eight counties, on the ground that the
people, under such circumstances, had not the means of
paying.-* Gloucester County resolved that, if Maryland
and North Carolina withheld the exportation of tobacco
to Great Britain, Virginia should adopt the same measure.
Ten counties scrupulously said that they would follow
the advice of the former burgesses and boycott goods
handled by the East India Company, with certain ex-
ceptions. Six counties denounced the importation of
slaves as an economic fallacy, saying, in the words of
\1 Nansemond, "the African trade is injurious to this
yColony, obstructs the population of it by freemen, pre-
sents manufacturers and other useful emigrants from
' Buckingham. Caroline, Nansemond.
^Chesterfield, Culpepper, Middlesex, Prince George's, York.
•^Accomack, Dinwiddie, Isle of Wight.
* Essex, Fairfax, Fauquier, Gloucester, Prince William, Stafford,
Richmond, Westmoreland.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 367
Europe from settling among us, and occasions an annual
increase of the balance of trade against this Colony."'
The resolutions of three counties contained a declaration
against the advancing of prices by merchants. Several
counties recommended the abandonment of extravagance
and display. Albemarle favored the repeal, not only of
the Boston Port Act, but also of all laws levying duties
in America, restricting American trade and restraining
colonial manufacturing. It was proposed by Fairfax
that, after an interprovincial association had been drawn
up, its enforcement should be left to committees in every
county on the continent, with instructions to publish all
violators as traitorsJ^ Norfolk County thought it neces-
sary to suggest, with a view perhaps of discrediting the
moral of the fable about the fox, that the Virginia com-
mittees be composed '' of respectable men, fixed and
settled inhabitants of their respective counties." Nine
counties announced the boycott as the proper penalty
for individuals who failed to adopt the agreed plan of
opposition ; and seven counties urged a boycott of de-
linquent provinces.
The meeting of the provincial convention was pre-
ceded by several spirited appeals, the most important
being the series, published by the planter, Thomson
Mason,_under the pseudonym, ''British American," in
six issues of Rind's Virginia Gazette, beginning June 16.^
These articles were particularly aimed to stimulate to rad-
ical action those " countrymen w^hose own industry, or
the frugality of their ancestors, have blessed . . . [them]
^ Caroline, Culpepper, Nansemond, Prince George's, Princess Anne,
Surry. Slavery was condemned by Fairfax and Hanover as a moral
evil.
^Reprinted in 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 418-419, 495-498, 519-522,
541-544, 620-624, 648-654. Vide also ibid., p. 647.
368 'THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
with immense wealth;'' and to this end, great stress
was laid on the dano^er of submitting '*to a double taxa-
tion and to two supreme Legislatures," in one of which
the legislative power was waelded by men who, **from
their situation, will reap the advantages but cannot share
in the inconveniences " of their oppressive laws. With
much ingenuity, the writer argued that Parliament lacked
power to legislate for the colonies, and then turned to
consider the possible methods of opposition. Rejecting
non-intercourse as a temporizing measure and imprac-
ticable, he urged that the delegates to the Continental
Congress be instructed to refuse flatly to obey all laws,
including the acts of navigation and trade, made by Par-
liament since the first settlements, and in defense of this
position, to resort to armed resistance and secession, if
necessary. After the convention had gotten under way,
another article appeared in favor of the policy of non-
intercouse, contending that *'we need not on the present
occasion shed our blood to secure our rights . . . " '
This latter article and the series of county resolutions
preliminary to the convention struck the true keynote of
the convention's deliberations.
The Virginia convention began its work promptly on
August I and completed its deliberations on the sixth.^
Of the debates that occurred we know nothing; but
delegates were chosen to the Continental Congress, and
the association adopted marked the crest of the^fadfcal
wave set in motion by the late acts of Parliament. In
view of the striking similarity between the Virginia As-
sociation and the later Continental Association, there
can be no doubt that the former paper was the model
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, op. 685-686.
-Ibid., vol. i, pp. 686-690; also Md. Gaz., Aug. 18, 1774.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 369
for the latter. The action of the delegates faithfully re-
flected the sentiments of their constituents. The dele-
gates boldly set the dates at which the various parts of
the association were to go into effect, subject to such
changes as might be assented to by the Virginia dele-
gates in the Continental Congress ; and the association
was to be religiously adhered to '' before God and the
world" until the redress of all grievances which might
be named by Congress.' The immediate non-importa-*
tion and disuse of ^a " of any kind whatever " was agreed/ "^
upon,' with the understanding that if Boston were com-
pelled to reimburse the East India Company, the boycott
should be extended to all articles handled by the com-
pany till the money was returned. On November i,
1774, an absolute boycott of all goods (except medi- ^^
cines) imported thereafter, directly or indirectly, from /^
Great Britain was to become eft'ective ; ^ and the agree- /
ment was to extend likewise to negroes imported from
Africa, the West Indies or elsewhere* If colonial griev-
ances were not redressed by August 10, 1775, an abso-
lute non-exportation was to be declared, of all articles
intended to be sent, directly or indirectly, to Great
Britain. 5 This postponement was granted in order to
enable as quick and full payment of debts to Britain as
possible and in order to get the profits on the present
tobacco crop. As non-exportation would be a blow to
tobacco culture, planter's'we're advised thereafter to de-
' Or until the association should be amended or abrogated by a later
provincial convention.
^Cf. Continental Association, Arts, i and iii. Appendix, present
volume.
'Cf. ibid.. Art, i.
''CI. ibid., Art. ii.
^Cf. ibid.. Art. iv.
i^^
370 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
vote their fields to the growing of raw materials for
manufacturing; and a pledge was given to improve the
breed of sheep and to increase their number.' Mer-
chants were warned to maintain the prices usual during
the past year on pain of boycott.^ In order to super-
vise the execution of the association and to correspond
(/with the general committee of correspondence at Wil-
liamsburg, it was recommended that a committee be
chosen in each county.^ T Merchants and Iraders were
required, on threat of boycott, to obtain certificates from
the committee that they had signed the association. If
any merchant or other person received forbidden im-
portations, the goods should be forthwith re-shipped or
stored under supervision of the committee ;'^ otherwise
"the truth of the case" should be published in the ga-
zettes and all dealings severed with the offender. A
similar treatment should await the violator of non-
exportation. ^
North Carolina followed in the train of the Virginia
movement', ' and "thus won the distinction of being the
second most radical province in the measures adopted.
Under stimulus of the succession of county meetings in
Virginia, a meeting of six counties in the district of
Wilmington was held on July 21 under the chairmanship
of William Hooper, a transplanted Bostonian who had
studied law under James Otis at the zenith of his rad-
icaHsm. A committee was appointed to send a circular
^ Cf. Continental Association, Art. vii.
2 Cf. ibid. , Art. ix.
^Cf. ibid.. Art. xi.
^Cf. ibid., Art. X.
'C/. ibid., Art. xi.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 371
to all the counties, proposing a general meeting in the
latter part of August to adopt measures in concert with
the other provinces; and it was voted that a general
congress was the best way to effect a uniform plan for
all America/ Before the date of the provincial meeting,
most of the counties and two of the towns had responded
by adopting resolutions and choosing delegates.^ The
resolutions still extant varied in tone. Only Anson
County went so far as to counsel the stoppage of all
trade with Great Britain (save in a few necessary articles),
Granville declaring that it was a " measure not to be en-
tered into with precipitation." Rowan County and Hali-
fax expressed a preference for a modified non-importation;
Chowan favored economy and the promotion of manu-
factures ; while Johnston simply indicated a willingness
to abide by the findings of the Continental Congress.
The necessity of suspending debt collections on some
equitable principle, in case of non-intercourse, was noted
by Anson ; but Granville County and Halifax showed a
distinct repugnance to the policy which had attained
considerable local popularity in Virginia and Maryland,
and declared themselves explicitly in favor of keeping all
courts open. Anson and Rowan announced themselves
in favor of a boycott of such provinces as declined to
enter the general measures, the latter county also in-
veighing against the slave trade as an obstacle to a free
immigration and the development of manufacturing.
^ S. C. Gaz., Sept. 12, 1774; also N. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1016-
1017.
2 Only six sets of resolutions have been examined; in chronological
order: Rowan, Johnston, Granville, Anson and Chowan counties, and
the town of Halifax. Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1024-1026, 1029-1038.
372
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763^1776
When Governor Martin got wind of these proceedings,
he issued a proclamation on August 13, forbidding such
" illegal Meetings " and particularly the provincial meet-
ing, which was soon to occur/ The pronunciamento had
the same effect as the executive interdicts, in other prov-
inces, of the right of the people to organize and act. The
provincial convention of August 25 assembled at Newbern
with a representation from thirty-two of the thirty-eight
counties and two of the six towns, while the governor and
his council sat futilely by. Governor Martin noted the
readiness with which the " intemperate resolutions '* of the
Virginia convention were "re-echoed;"^ but it is possible
that a complete collection of county resolutions would show
that the Newbern meeting merely reflected the views of the
county gatherings.^ The convention chose delegates to the
Continental Congress and adopted a modified form of the
Virginia Association.* In one respect the association ex-
ceeded the Virginia plan, for a threat of boycott was held
up over any province, or any town or individual within the
'5. C. Gaz., Sept. 12, 1774; also A'. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1029-
1030.
"^4 Am. Arch.y vol. i, pp. 761-762.
' However, it is impossible to know what weight to give, at this time,
to the old Regulator antipathy to the personnel of the tidewater radi-
cals. Vide Bassett, J. S., "The Regulators of North Carolina," Am.
Hist. Assn. Rep. 1894), pp. 209-210.
*No " East India tea" was to be used after September 10, 1774. Be-
ginning v/ith January i, 1775, there should be a total stoppage of all
East Indian and all British importations, by way of Great Britain or the
West Indies, except medicines; after November i, 1774, no slaves should
be imported from any part of the world. Unless American grievances
were redressed before October i, 1775, a non-exportation to Great
Britain was to become effective. Merchants were warned to continue
their customary prices. Committees were to be chosen to supervise
the execution of the association and to correspond v/ith the provincial
committee of correspondence. Pa. Gaz., Sept. 16, 1774; also N. C.
Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1041-1049.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 373
province, which failed to adopt the plan formulated by the
Continental Congress.
The first news of the Boston Port Act reached Charleston
on May ^JT^Tfna Tefter "f forn the Philadelphia committee
transmitting the Boston circular letter/ Peter Timothy's
newspaper took the lead in declaring that America had
never faced a more critical time, that South Carolina, like
Boston, had obstructed the tea act, and that the time had
come to sacrifice private interest, to abolish all parties and
distinctions and combine in a general non-importation and,
if necessary, non-exportation.^_. But in spite of the best
efforts of Timothy and Chris Gadsden,^ private interest
continued to assert itself and economic groups and distinc-
tions became more clearly defined than on any earlier occa-
sion.
The opposition to a total suspension of trade centered
very largely in the merchants and factors, on the one hand,
and the rice planters, on the other. The Norfolk story of
the Boston fox that had lost his tail gained currency with
^ 5. C. Gaz., June 6, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 370.
-S. C. Gaz., June 13, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 382-384.
* As has already been pointed out, Gadsden himself, though possessing
important mercantile interests as well as planting connections, acted
politically with an entire disregard of self-interest. This is shown
strikingly in a letter he wrote to vSamuel Adams on June 5, 1774: "I
have been above Seven Years at hard Labour and the Utmost Risk of
my Constitution about One of the most extensive Quays in America
... at which thirty of the Largest Ships that can come over our Barr
can be Loading at the Same time . . . and have exceeding good and
Convenient Stores already Erected thereon Sufficient to Contain 16000
Teirces of Rice; in Short in this Aflfair, all my Fortune is embarked
. . no motives whatever will make me neglect or Slacken in the
Common Cause, as I hope I would sooner see every inch of my Quay
(my whole Fortune) totally destroyed Rather than be even Silent . . .
let the ministry change our Ports of Entrey to what distance from
Charleston and as Often as the Devil shall put it in their heads." Bos.
Com. Cor. Papers, vol. ii, pp. 509-511.
374 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the trading body/ The merchants faced losses in case
either importation or exportation should be stopped; they
preferred the former measure to the latter, if necessity
pressed, but were determined to delay a decision on either
as long as possible. x\s for the rice planters, they were
\ opposed to a stoppage of exports, at least until November i
I when the rice from the present crop had been shipped off
^and the time for a new planting had arrived.^_,The mer-
cantile and planting interests found it easy to develop a
public opinion in favor of a postponement of all positive
measures until a general congress, because the people in
general were inclined to look askance at a northern invita-
tion to enter a non-intercourse regulation when they re-
membered " the Overhasty breaking through and forsaking
the first Resolution [four years earlier] without previously
Consulting or so much as Acquainting our Committee,"
and when they observed that no commercial province had
entered the measure which the South Carolinians were
asked to adopt by Boston.^
On June 13 the General Committee at Charleston sum-
moned a " General Meeting of the inhabitants of this
Colony " for Wednesday, July 6, at Charleston, and dis-
patched circular letters to leading men throughout the prov-
ince urging them to send representatives.* Timothy's
^ " Non Quis sed Quid " in 5. C. Gaz., July 4, 1774.
^ Letter of Gadsden to Hancock and others, Bos. Com. Cor. Papers,
vol. ii, pp, 517-518. The planters had another motive for temporizing
in that Parliament had under advisement a renewal of the act authoriz-
ing the shipment of rice from South Carolina to the West Indies and
the southern parts of Europe. The renewal was granted for seven years
on June 2 (14 George III, c. 67), but the fact was probably not known
in South Carolina until some weeks later.
^Letters of Gadsden and Timothy to S. Adams. Bos. Com. Cor.
Papers, vol. ii, pp. 509-511, 529-532.
^4 Afn. Arch., vol. i, p. 408; also 5. C. Gaz., June 13, 1774.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 375
Gazette contained articles arguing for decisive measures at
the coming meeting. ''A Carolinian" insisted on specific
instructions to the delegates to the Continental Congress
for a very general suspension of trade with Great Britain,
the West Indies and Africa, and exhorted that *' one com-
mon Soul animate the Merchant, the Planter and the Trades-
man." ^ " Non Ouis sed Quid " gave his pen to the advo-
cacy of a modified non-importation, and told the planters
and merchants that this expedient would give them a chance
to extricate themselves from debt." Meantime, the newly-
formed Chamber of Commerce had become the center of
discussion as to what should be the proper course for the
body of merchants to take. 'On July 6, before the meeting
assembled in the Exchange, the Chamber of Commerce de-
cided not to accede to any measure of non-importation or
non-exportation, and, in order to contribute to the defeat
of the same proposition in the Continental Congress, they
drew up a slate of candidates who held the same view and
pledged their support to them.^ ;
The Charleston meeting, comprising one hundred and
four members, was the largest public assemblage that had
ever been held in that town. From^.the standpoint of the
representative principle, it was defective in many respects,
for some counties elected ten delegates, others less, two
counties and one parish sent no representation, and the Gen-
eral Committee of forty-five represented Charleston. But
the leaders of all factions were well pleased with the mis-
'5. C. Gaz., June 20, 27, 1774.
^Ibid., July 4, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 508-512.
^This account of the general meeting is based chiefly on: Drayton,
Memoirs, vol. i, pp. 112-132; official record in 6". C. Gaz., July 11,
1774, z\so4 Am. Arch. vol. i, pp, 525-527; three epistolary accounts,
ibid., pp. 525, 531-534; Edward Rutledge's account, Izard, R., Corres-
pondence, vol. i, pp. 2-5.
Zl^
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
cellaneous gathering, for it afforded an excellent opportun-
ity for political manipulation. Indeed, one of the very first
resolutions adopted provided that votes should be given by
each person present and not by parishes, and that '' whoever
came there might give his vote." After the adoption of
resolutions for asserting American rights, the debates of
the first two days turned upon a consideration of a prac-
tical application of the declaration of the meeting : " to
leave no justifiable means untried to procure a repeal " of
the oppressive acts of Parliament. The one party favored
the sending of delegates to Congress with unconditional in-
structions, and the adoption in the meantime of the Boston
proposal of a non-importation and non-exportation. The
other party favored restricted instructions and the post-
ponement of all measures until the Congress.
In favor of the Boston circular letter, the radical speakers
resorted to sensati9flg.l delineations of the fate awaiting
>oiith Carolma from British tyranny, and repeated the
telling arguments which had become hackneyed in similar
controversies in other provinces. By the opposing party, it
I was maintained that non-intercourse would ruin thousands
[in the province; that if South Carolina entered into it, there
I was no assurance that other provinces would follow, and
indeed much evidence to the contrary. It was further
argued that the formulation of a uniform plan was the
proper function of a general congress, and that even that
body ought not adopt the measure until after petitions and
remonstrances had failed of effect. When the vote was
taken on the second day, it was found that the proposal for
an immediate non-intercourse was rejected.
The fight was warmly renewed, in altered form, over the
question of what instructions the delegates to the Congress
should be given, the radicals contending that the powers of
the delegates should be unrestricted. By a close vote it was
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES
377
decided that the delegates should be granted '' full power
and authority *' to agree to " legal measures " for obtaining
a redress of grievances, and the moderates found solace in
the clause declaring that the South Carolina delegates must
concur in any measure of the Congress before it became
binding on the province. Victor}^ now lay clearly with the
party that could control the personnel of the delegation.
It was provided that a vote for this purpose should be
taken that very day from two o'clock to six, and that every
free white in the whole province should be entitled to vote —
an arrangement that was a thin covering for a strategem
concocted in the Chamber of Commerce. The merchants
had in mind to elect Henry Middleton, John Rutledge,
Charles Pinckney, Miles Brewton and Rawlins Lowndes,
men who stood for moderate measures and opposed non-
intercourse except as an ultimate resort.^ The radicals con-
centrated their strength on Gadsden, Thomas Lynch and
Edward Rutledge, and concurred, it would appear, in the
nominations of Middleton and John Rutledge. Just what
the object of the radicals was it is difficult to comprehend
now, as Edward Rutledge, one of their nominees, had
clearly identified himself with the moderate element in the
debates of the meeting. However, he was Gadsden's son-
in-law. The merchants went to the poll in a body, and also
.--^ent for their clerks to come and vote. But they had over-
reached themselves ; the radicals took alarm at such mobil-
izing of voters, "ran to all parts of the town to collect
people and bring them to the poll." In consequence, the
1^ slate of the Chamber of Commerce suffered defeat, save the
^ For the opinions held by John and Edward Rutledge, vide Izard,.
Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 2-5; by Miles Brewton, 4 Am. Arch., vol.
i, p. 534. The South Carolina delegates shifted their position some-
what when they reached the Continental Congress, but their new posi-
tion, as we shall see, served the purposes of their friends at home as
well as their original one.
3^8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
two candidates upon whom both factions had joined; and
Gadsden, Lynch and Edward Rutledge were chosen in ad-
dition, by a majority of almost four hundred. Notwith-
standing, Edward R-utledge's presence on the delegation
assured the moderates a safe majority.
On the third and last day, the meeting resolved to ap-
point a general committee for the province in place of the
existing committee of forty-five. The new committee was
authorized to correspond with the other provinces and to
''do all matters and things necessary " to carry the resolu-
tions into execution, a phraseology which virtually vested
the committee with unlimited power during its existence.
The committee was then carefully constituted to exercise
this power in an approved manner. The memxbership was
fixed at ninety-nine ; fifteen merchants and fifteen nia:iignics
represented Charleston, and sixty-nine planters, chosen
forthwith by the meeting and not by the rural districts, were
designated to represent the rest of the province.^
The moderates had cause for rejoicing; but the radicals
were not dismayed. They could claim excellent salvage
from the wreckage : the " Sam Adams of South Carolina "
was one of the delegates to the Continental Congress; the
delegates had powers to agree to the measures supported by
the great and magnetic personages of the sister provinces;
and, finally, the merchants by their active participation in
the meeting were pledged to support such action as Con-
gress might take. Indeed, some of the people were so
" uneasy " over the obstructive tactics of the merchants
that several of the latter felt it was expedient to declare
that the merchants in general would countermand their
orders until the results of the Congress were known.
^ Charles Pinckney and Miles Brewton were given places on the com-
mittee, and Peter Timothy was chosen as one of the mechanic mem-
bers. Pinckney was chosen chairman, and Timothy secretary. For
list of the Charleston members, vide 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 526-527.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES
379
Greater semblance of legality was given to the election of
delegates when the Commons House of Assembly met on
August 2. All but five of the members had participated in
the Charleston meeting; and by assembling privately at the
unusual hour of eight in the morning, while the governor
still reclined in the arms of Morpheus, they succeeded in
ratifying the election and voting money for the delegates'
expenses/ In the succeeding weeks, the General Committee
found little else to do than to guard against tea importa-
tions. Two incidents occurring in late July and early
f^August showed that the committee believed in only the most
I moderate methods of resistance. Two vessels arrived with
private consignments of tea for Charleston merchants. In
each instance, the committee assured themselves that the
tea would not be received in Charleston, and then quietly
waited for its seizure by the customs officials at the termina-
tion of the twenty-day period.^
If the radicals of South Carolina had a difficult time in
maneuvering their province into line, the small group of
radicals in Georgia may be said to have had a practically
insurmountable task. The sparse population of that infant
province had every reason to be pleased with the home gov-
ernment and none to be displeased.! Not yet self-supporting
as a colony, Georgia received an annual subsidy from Par-
liament, besides money and presents intended for the In-
dians.^ This condition served to give Georgia " as many
^ 4 Am. Arch,, vol. i, pp. 532. 671-672; Drayton, 3Iemoirs, vol. i, pp.
137-141. Governor Bull wrote to Dartmouth the next day: "Your
Lordship will see by this instance with what perseverance, secrecy and
unanimity, they form and conduct their designs; how obedient the body
is to the heads, and how faithful in their secrets." 4 Am. Arch., vol.
i, p. 672.
"^Th.^ Magna Charta and the Briton. S. C. Gaz., June 27, July 4
25, Sept. 19, 1774-
^ Letter from a Georgian, 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. ']ZZ'
380 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763.1776
place-men and publick officers with their connections, as the
largest and most populous Government on the Continent,
and those with independent salaries from Government/^^
Furthermore, the inhabitants were in constant peril of an
attack from the Creeks, who threatened to wipe out the
back-country settlements. " We have an enemy at our backs,
who but very lately put us into the utmost consternation,''
wrote a Georgian. *' We fled at their approach; we left
our property at their mercy; and we have implored the
assistance of Great-Britain to humble these haughty Creeks.
. . . Our entering into resolutions against the Government,
in the present case, can answer no end but to injure our in-
fant province, by provoking the Mother Country to desert
us." ^ It is not surprising that the frontier parishes were
unsympathetic to the propaganda against Parliament.
In view of these facts, the radicals were unsuccessful in
arousing indignation by references to past injustices, especi-
ally as they had failed signally in the earlier years in ob-
taining effective action from Georgia. There was only a
handful of radicals in the province — a few active ones in
Christ Church Parish, wherein lay the coast town of Savan-
nah, and a compact group, of New England nativity, in St.
John's Parish, immediately to the south. ^ Late in July, at
the instance of the South Carolina radicals,^ appeals began
'Letter from Savannah correspondent in Pa. Gas., Dec. 28, 1774;
also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1033-1034.
■'"* Mercurius " in Ga. Gaz., Aug. 10, 1774.
•'St. John's Parish was appropriately named " Liberty County" at a
later time. Medway, the chief settlement, was founded by people from
Dorchester, Mass., after they had failed in a similar enterprise in South
Carolina. These folks "still retain a strong tincture of Republican or
Oliverian principles," wrote Governor Wright to Dartmouth. White,
Ga. Hist. Colls., p. 523.
* Letter of Wright to Dartmouth, 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 633-634.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES
381
to appear in the Georgia Gazette exhorting the inhabitants
to make common cause with Boston/ In " The Case
stated," it was declared that the single question was: had
Parliament a right to levy what sums of money on the
^Americans they pleased and in what manner they pleased;
I for " they that have a right or power to put a duty on my
\^ tea have an equal right to put a duty on my bread, and why
not on my breath, why not on my daylight and smoak, why
not on everything?" The answer of the moderates rang
i clear and true : the real issue was not one of taxation but
/ '* whether Americans have a right to destroy private prop-
/ erty with impunity." " That the India Company did send
tea to Boston on their own account is undeniable," declared
the writer. " That they had a right so to do and to under- '
sell the Merchants there (or rather the Smugglers) is
equally undeniable," and the destructive act of the Boston-
ians "' must, in the judgment of sober reason, be highly
criminal and worthy of exemplary punishment." ^
On July 20 the Gazette contained an unsigned call for a
provincial meeting of delegates at Savannah. A meeting
was accordingly held at the Watch-House on Wednesday,
July 2y.^ It is impossible to ascertain how many persons
were present, but a radical account claimed that " upwards
of an hundred from one Parish [St. John's] came resolved
on an agreement not to import or use British manufactures
till America shall be restored to her constitutional rights."
It is clear that the great body of the province was unrepre-
sented. After several had declined the doubtful honor,
* " The Case stated " and '* A Georgian" in issue of July 27, 1774.
"'Mercurius" in ibid., Aug. 10, 1774.
^This narrative is based chiefly on the radical accounts in 4 Am.
Arch., vol. i, pp. 638-639; the moderate version in a protest of Savan-
nah inhabitants, Ga. Gaz., Sept. 7, 1774; and the radical rejoinder in
ibid., Sept. 21.
382
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
John Glenn was chosen chairman. A motion was made to
appoint a committee to draft resolutions " nearly similar
to those of the Northern Provinces," but it was lost by " a
large majority of the respectable inhabitants." Letters
were then read from the General Committee of South Caro-
lina and other northern committees; and while the reading
was going on, many moderates, believing that the main issue
had been settled, withdrew from the meeting. The radicals
quietly swelled their own numbers by gathering in '' several
transients and other inconsiderate people;" and a motion
for a committee was put a second time and announced as
carried, in face of the protest of several gentlemen that, if
the names of the persons on both sides were put down, it
would appear that a majority of the freeholders present
opposed the motion. A committee of thirty-one was forth-
with chosen; but it was deemed wiser, in view of the irreg-
ular composition of the convention and the high indigna-
tion of the moderate party, to postpone the adoption of
resolutions until a convention of regularly-appointed dele-
gates should meet at Savannah on August lo. It was voted,
however, that the resolutions agreed upon at the forthcom-
ing meeting by a majority of those present " should be
deemed the sense of the inhabitants of this Province."
When Governor Wright learned that the committee was
summoning the several parishes and districts to a provincial
convention, he adopted the usual course of royal executives,
and on August 5 interposed a proclamation denouncing the
action as ''unconstitutional, illegal and punishable by law." ^
More indicative of public opinion was a protest against the
coming meeting, signed by forty-six inhabitants of St. Paul,
one of the most populous parishes of the province. The
paper declared that since the Georgians were not involved
^ S. C. Gaz., Sept. 12, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch,., vol. i, pp. 699-700.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 383
in the same guilt as the Bostonians, they could have no
business in making themselves partakers of the ill-conse-
quences of that guilt; and particular stress was laid on the
fact that " the persons who are most active on this occasion
are chiefly those whose property lies in or near Savannah;
and therefore are not so immediately exposed to the bad
effects of an Indian war; whereas the back settlements of
this province, and our parish in particular, would most cer-
tainly be laid waste and depopulated, unless we receive such
powerful aid and assistance as none but Great-Britain can
give." ^
The tenth of August arrived, and, according to the
authorized account published in the Gazette, a " General
Meeting of the Inhabitants of the Province " assembled at
Savannah and " neniine contradicente " adopted resolutions
condemning the coercive acts as illegal and pledging the
concurrence of Georgia '' in every constitutional measure "
for redress adopted by the sister provinces.' The deputies
present were added to the existing committee of thirty-one
to act as a General Committee for the province. This
meager and colorless account intentionally failed to disclose
the tense excitement and unscrupulous methods that pre-
vailed at the meeting, or even the fact, admitted later by a
radical, that a motion to send delegates to the Continental
Congress failed of adoption.^ But the facts, suppressed in
the official version were voluntarily supplied by indignation
meetings in various parts of the province. A protest, signed
by James Habersham, councillor and merchant, and one
hundred and one other inhabitants of Savannah and Christ
^ Now McDuffie County. Ga. Gaz., Oct. 12, 1774; incorrectly
printed m Ga. Rev. Recs., vol. i, pp. 24-26.
^ Ga. Gaz., Aug. 17, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 700-701.
'Letter from St. John's Parish; Pa. Jotirn., Oct. 5, 1774; also 4 Am.
Arch., vol. i, pp 766-767.
384 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Church Parish, recounted the devious practices of the rad-
icals at the meeting of July 27, and charged that the im-
portant parish of St. Paul was not represented at the meet-
ing of August 10 and that several other parishes had been
induced to send deputies through a misrepresentation of the
purpose of the gathering. It was further alleged that, in
absence of notification to the contrary, all but the select
few in the secret supposed that the second meeting would be
held at the same place as the earlier one, but in fact it " was
held in a tavern, with the door shut for a considerable time,
and it is said twenty-six persons answered for the whole
province and undertook to bind them by Resolution; and
when several gentlemen attempted to go in, the tavern-
keeper, who stood at the door with a list in his hand, re-
fused them admittance, because their names were not men-
tioned in that list." ^
These charges w^ere elaborated and confirmed by pro-
tests emanating from three other parishes. The burden of
three different protests from St. Paul Parish, signed in all
by two hundred and eighty-seven names, was that the meet-
ing had been secret, small, unrepresentative, and even, ac-
cording to the belief of the Augusta signers, illegal." From
one portion of St. George Parish came the plaint that,
though many of the subscribers had voted to send deputies
to the Savannah meeting, " it was because we were told that
unless we did send some persons there, we would have the
Stamp Act put in force," while the western district of the
same parish announced that they had known nothing of the
' Ga. Gaz., Sept. 7, 1774; reprinted in incomplete form in Ga. Rev.
Recs., vol. i, pp. 18-21.
'Protests from 126 inhabitants of the Kyoka and Broad River Settle-
ments, 123 inhabitants of the township of Wrightsborough and places
adjacent, and from 38 inhabitants of the town and district of Augusta;
Ga. Gaz., Oct. 12, 1774; also Ga. Rev. Recs., vol. i, pp. 22-24, 27-30,
where the Augusta resolves are given inaccurately.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 385
appointment of deputies/ In similar strain, a protest from
St. Mathew Parish declared that the signers there had been
told that the meeting would petition the king for mercy for
Boston " as a child begs a father when he expects correc-
tion," and that unless they signed, the Stamp Act would be
imposed on them.^
The radicals made no effective answer to these apocryphal
accounts.® A publication of the committee in the Gazette
of September 21 called attention to the fact that only about
one-fifth of the effective men in the parish had signed the
Savannah protest; it justified the presence of ''transient
and inconsiderable persons " at public meetings, and denied
that the doors of the tavern had been closed, although ac-
knowledging that several persons had been denied admit-
tance without the knowledge of the committee. These facts
were, in any case, non-essential, it was declared, for the -
great issue was whether Parliament had the right to tax
America and whether or not Boston was suffering in the
common cause.
The undaunted radicals of St. John's Parish made one
'Protests from 123 inhabitants of St. George Parish and from 53 in-
habitants of Queensborough and the western district of the parish; Ga,
Gaz., Sept. 28, 1774; also S. C. & Am. Gen. Gaz., Oct. 7.
*The protest bore 35 signatures to the body of it and 12 others to an
addendum; Ga. Gaz., Sept. 2, 1774; also Ga. Rev. Recs., vol. i, pp.
32-34.
^Apparently it was left for the patriotic historians writing in after
years to discover that the papers of protest had been "placed in the
hands of the governors' influential friends and sent in different direc-
tions over the country to obtain subscribers, allowing a sum of money
to each of those persons proportioned to the number of subscribers they
obtained," and that in some instances the number of signers exceeded
the population of the parishes or were, in part, recruited from those
who had long since passed away. McCall, H., History of Ga. (i8r6)
vol. ii, pp. 24 25. For Governor Wright's letters to Dartmouth, stat,
ing that the papers of protest had been written by the people themselves,
vide Parliamentary History, vol. xviii, pp. 141-142.
y^
386 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
more effort to secure the election of delegates to the Conti-
nental Congress, and passed resolutions that they would
join with a majority of the parishes for that purpose. A
meeting was held in St. John's Parish on August 30, at
which appeared deputies from the parishes of St. George
and St. David; and this meager gathering went so far as
to nominate a delegate (Dr. Lyman Hall in all probability)
to go to the Congress, if the other parishes assented.^ But
that assent was never forthcoming. Georgia was the only
one of the thirteen provinces that failed to be represented at
the First Continental Congress, j
y In the period intervening between the appointment of
delegates to the Continental Congress in the various prov-
inces and the day of the adjournment of that body, sundry
■ incidents indicated that the activity and influence of the
radicals was increasing with the passage of the weeks. In
the commercial provinces, the most striking development
was the combination of workingmen of two of the chief
\ cities to withhold their labor from the British authorities at
Boston. Early in September, 1774, Governor Gage sought
to hire Boston workingmen for fortifying Boston Neck,
but was met with refusals wherever he turned. The Com.-
■mittee of Mechanics of Boston, learning that the governor
/would now apply at New York, warned their New York
/ brethren of this fact,' Independently of the Boston trans-
./, actions, the radicals at New York had already begun to
I bring pressure to bear on labor contractors to prevent the
exportation of carpenters to Boston, and upon the mer-
chants to prevent the use of their vessels for the transpor-
tation of troops and military stores.^, The Boston warning
^ Pa. Jourfi., Oct. 5, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. jGt-y^y.
^N. Y. Journ., Sept. 29, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 803-804.
^Ibid., vol. i, p. 782; also .V. Y. Journ., Sept. 15, 1774-
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 387
had the desired effect ; and on September 24 the New York
Committee of Mechanics gave a unanimous vote of thanks
to " those worthy Mechanicks of this city who have de-
cHned to aid or assist in the erecting of fortifications on
Boston Neck . . ." '
Aided by the pressure of the widespread unemployment,
Gage was successful, a little later, in getting Boston carpen-
ters and masons to work on barracks for the soldiers for a
few days.^ The apparent change of front caused a joint
committee of the selectmen and members of the committee
of correspondence on September 24 to vote their opinion
that the probable result of such disloyal conduct would be
the withholding of contributions from Boston by other
provinces.^ Two days later the workingmen deserted their
jobs.* In order to seal the labor market of the surrounding
country to the British commander, a meeting, composed of
the committees of thirteen towns, resolved that, should any
inhabitants of Massachusetts or the neighboring provinces
supply the troops at Boston " with labour, lumber, joists,
spars, pickets, straw, bricks, or any materials whatsoever
which may furnish them with requisites to annoy or in any
way distress " the citizens, they should be deemed " most
inveterate enemies " and ought to be prevented and de-
feated. The leading towns represented at the meeting ap-
pointed " Committees of Observation and Prevention '' to
enforce the resolves, and the resolves were communicated
to every town in the province.^ The rural towns took heed ;
^ A^. V. Journ., Sept. 29, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 803-804.
'^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 804.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 802; also Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Sept. 26, 1774.
*Ibid., Oct. 3, 1774; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 814-815, 820.
^The committees in attendance were from Boston, Braintree, Cam-
bridge, Charlestown, Dedham, Dorchester, Maiden, Milton, Mystic,
Roxbury, Stow, Watertown and Woburn. Ibid., vol. i, pp. 807-808;
also N. Y. Journ., Oct. 20, 1774.
388 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
and the labor boycott was made effective/ The troops did
not get into barracks until November, after Gage had sent
to Nova Scotia for fifty carpenters and bricklayers and had
succeeded in obtaining a few additional ones from New
Hampshire through Governor Wentworth's aid.^
Gage was more successful in dealing with merchants.
Although the merchants at Philadelphia refused contracts
for blankets and other supplies for the troops at Boston,
those at New York lent a willing ear. When a mass meet-
ing, called without authority of the " Fifty-One," appointed
a committee to intimidate the merchants in question, the
transactions were repudiated and denounced by the " Fifty-
One," and the merchants completed their orders.^ In the
early months of 1775 the same problem arose in slightly
different form. Certain persons had been induced to supply
the troops at Boston with wagons, entrenching tools and
other equipage for field operations. At the request of the
committees of Boston and numerous other towns, the pro-
vincial congress, then in session, " strongly recommended '*
that all such persons should be deemed " inveterate enemies
to America " and opposed by all reasonable means.*
Equally significant during these months was the trend
toward violent opposition to the tea duty, noticeable in cer-
^ E. g., the committee of the little town of Rochester, N. H., found
Nicholas Austin guilty of acting as a labor contractor for the Boston
military. On his knees the cu'prit was made to pray forgiveness and
to pledge for the future that he would never act " contrary to the Con-
stitution of the country." N. H. Gaz., Nov. 11, 1774; also 4 Am.
Arch,, vol. i, p. 974.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 981, 991-992; Mass. Gaz. & News-Letter, Nov.
10, 1774; A^. Y. Gaz., Nov. 21.
^Ibid., Oct. 3, 1774, also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 326-327, 809;
Golden, Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 366-368.
^Mass. ^pyy Feb. 9, 1775; also 4 Am, Arch., vol. i, pp. 1329-1330.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES
389
tain portions of the plantation provinces. Although the
people had quietly paid the duty since the partial repeal in
1770, the passage of the coercive acts and the attendant ex-
citement in America had wrought a change of opinion;
and with the passage of months the lawless element in the
community was more and more getting the upper hand.
This is best shown in the episode of the brig Peggy Stew-
art.^ This vessel arrived at Annapolis, Maryland, on Fri-
day, October 14, 1774, laden with more than a ton of dutied
tea, consigned to the local firm of T. C. Williams & Com-
pany. The Peggy Stewart was chiefly owned by Anthcny
Stewart, of Annapolis, but his father-in-law, James Dick,
had a financial interest in the venture. These two gentle-
men had achieved unpopularity on a former occasion
when, as importers in the Good Intent, they had sought to
introduce British goods contrary to the will of the people
of Annapolis.^ The orders for the tea had been sent by
Williams & Company in May, 1774, at a time when other
Maryland merchants were doing the same thing without
arousing disfavor.^ Immediately upon the arrival of the
brig, Stewart hastened to pay the duty on the tea. When
news of the affair came to the Anne Arundel County Com-
mittee a few hours later, they convened a public meeting
in the evening to consider what measures should be taken.
The consignees and others concerned in the importation
were called before the meeting; and it was unanimously
^Mr. Richard D. Fisher, of Baltimore, collected the chief source ac-
counts of this episode and published them, with editorial comment, in
the Baltimore News during the years 1905-1907. A scrapbook of these
clippings, entitled The Arson of the Peggy Stewart, is in the Library of
Congress. Some of the less accessible of these papers have been re-
published in the Md. Hist. Mag., vol. v, pp. 235-245.
^ Vtde suf>ra, pp. 200-201.
^ Vide statement of Joseph and James Williams m Md. Gaz., Oct.
27, 1774; also supra, p. 245.
/
390 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 176S.1776
resolved that the tea should not be landed in America. The
meeting adjourned to Wednesday, the nineteenth, and for
the interim a special committee was appointed to attend
the unloading of the other merchandise on board the brig
and to prevent the landing of the tea. Thus far the inci-
dent did not differ from many similar occurrences. Appar-
ently a concession from the importers to the effect that the
tea should be re-shipped at once or, at most, that the tea
should be cast into the sea would close the incident. Stew-
art sought to explain his action in paying the duty, in a
broadside on Monday, in which he told of the leaky condi-
tion of the vessel, the need of the fifty-three souls on board
to land after a three months' voyage, and the impossibility
of entering the vessel without the tea. He expressed his
sorrow for his unintentional transgression.
From the viewpoint of the orderly elements in the com-
munity, the postponement of final action until the public
meeting of Wednesday proved to be a tactical blunder.
During the interval handbills were dispersed through the
nearby counties containing notice of the meeting, and pop-
ular feeling was aroused to a high pitch. To the meeting
on Wednesday came parties of extremists from various
parts of the province determined upon violence : one group
from Prince George's County, headed by Walter Bowie (or
Buior), a planter; one from Baltimore County, led by
Charles Ridgely, Jr., member of the Assembly; one from
the town of Baltimore, led by Mordecai Gist and John
Deavor; one from the head of Severn River, led by Rezen
Hammond; and two from Elk Ridge in Anne Arundel
County, headed respectively by Dr. Ephraim Howard and
Dr. Warfield.^ When the great assemblage were ready
^Affidavit of R. Caldeleugh, manager of Stewart's rope factory; Md.
Hist. Mag., vol. v, pp. 241-244. Of. Galloway's account; Pa. Mag.,
vol. XXV, pp. 248-253.
CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 391
for business, Stewart and the Williamses appeared before
them with an offer to destroy the tea and to make such
other amends as might be desired. The Anne Arundel
Committee advised the meeting that this offer should be
deemed sufficient ; but the boisterous minority in attendance
would not have it that way. " Matters now began to run
very high and the people to get warm," declared a partici-
pant later ; " some of the Gentlemen from Elk Ridge and
Baltimore Town insisted on burning the Vessel " as well
as the tea/ Charles Carroll, the barrister, and Matthias
Hammond proposed, as a compromise, that the tea should
be unloaded and burnt under the gallows ; but the extrem-
ists were beyond halfway measures. " Old Mr. Dick," one
of the owners of the brig and the father of Stewart's wife,
now gave his consent to the destruction of the vessel, for
fear that the rage of the mob would be directed against the
Stewart home where Mrs. Stewart lay in a critical condi-
tion. " Mr. Quyn then stood forth," averred the observer
already quoted, " and said it was not the sense of the
majority of the people that the Vessell should be destroyed,
and made a motion which was seconded that there should
be a vote on the Question. We had a Vote on it and a
Majority of Yz of the people; still the few that was for
destroying the Brigg was Clamorous and insinuated that if
it was not done they would prejudice Mr. Stewart more
than if the vessel was burnt; the Committee then with the
Consent of Mr. Dick declared that the Vessell and Tea
' Galloway's account. " Americanus " declared in the 'LonAon Public
Ledger,] Sin, 4, 1775, that the bitter feeling against the principals in the
affair was caused by Stewart's earlier activity in opposing the resolution
for the suspension of debt collections, and by the jealousy of other merch-
ants because Williams & Co. had a splendid assortment of merchandise
onboard. These charges do not bear close examination. The Anne
Arundel County Committee stigmatized them as "false, scandalous
and malicious." Md. Gaz. (Annapolis), Apr. 13, 1775.
392
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
should be burnt." ^ Stewart and the consignees made a
written acknowledgment of their " most daring insult."
While preparations were being made for burning the ves-
sel, many of the substantial inhabitants began to believe that
undue v/eight had been given to the threats of the violent
minority, and determined to prevent the injustice; but as
they were going to the waterfront, they were met by '' poor
Mr. Dick," who entreated them '' for God sake not to
meddle in the matter " or Mr. Stewart's house would be
burnt, which would be a greater loss. The other program
was therefore duly carried out; and the Peggy Stewart,
with sails and colors flying, was consumed in the presence
of a great crowd of spectators. '' This most infamous
and rascally affair . . . ," commented the observer quoted
before, " makes all men of property reflect with horror on
their present situation to have their lives and propertys at
the disposal & mercy of a Mob . . ."
Such an incident could scarcely have occurred six months,
or even three months, earlier in a plantation province. The
truth was that the leaders of an orderly opposition to Brit-
ish measures were losing their mastery of the situation.
The destruction of the Peggy Stewart involved a monetary
loss of £1896 to owners and consignees. The public meet-
ing had, in effect, refused to accept as adequate an act of
destruction similar to that which had served to make the
Boston Tea Party heinous in the eyes of the British home
government. That the act was forced by an ungovernable
minority subtracts in no degree from the seriousness or
significance of the incident. In a word, Annapolis had out-
Bostoned Boston.
* That this decision was forced by an aggressive minority is also ap-
parent from other contemporary accounts, e. g.: Eddis, Letters from
America, no. xviii; Ringgold's account in Pa. Mag., vol. xxv, pp.
253-254; letter from Annapolis in London Chronicle, Dec. z^') '^774-
The ingeniously-worded official account does not deny it. 4 Am.
Arch., vol. i, pp. 885-886.
CHAPTER X
The Adoption of the Continental Association
(September-October, 1774)
The First Continental Congress was the product of
many minds. ,_2^More than any other occurrence of the
eventful decade, the movement for an interprovincial con-
gress was of spontaneous origin. When the time was ripe,
the thought seemed to leap from the minds of men with
the thrill of an irresistible conclusion^j It would be mis-
leading to give Providence, Rhode Island, the credit of
originating the idea, simply because the town meeting there
proposed a continental congress four days before the Phila-
delphia Committee, six days before the New York Com-
mittee, and ten days before the dissolved burgesses of Vir-
ginia. All these proposals were antedated by suggestions
in private letters and by a newspaper propaganda to the
same end ; ^^ and all advocates drew their inspiration from
a common source — the logic of the times.^
In its inception the project of a general congress was
favored — and feared — by all shades of opinion, govern-
mental and non-governmental, conservative, moderate and
radical, mercantile and non-mercantile. Governor Franklin
and " many of the Friends of Government " in New Jersey
approved of such a congress if it should be authorized by
the Crown and be composed of governors and selected mem-
bers of the provincial legislatures.^ Joseph Galloway
^ For a summary of newspaper writings in support of a general con-
gress, vide Frothingham, Rise of Republic, pp. 314, 329, 331-333 n.
^ I N. J. Arch., vol. x, pp. 464-465.
393
394 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
wanted a congress consisting preferably of delegates
*' chosen either by the Representatives in Assembly or by
them in Convention." ^ Both men desired to forestall a
resort to lawless action and to have the relations of the
mother country and the colonies defined in enlightened
terms. Many conservatives of ^lassachusetts believed that
a general congress would be " eminently serviceable " in
prevailing upon the Bostonians to m.ake restitution to the
East India Company and in formulating a plan of perma-
nent conciliation : " Tories as well as whigs bade the dele-
gates God speed." " The Rhode Island legislators and the
Virginians meeting at RaleighTavem appeared to have in
>^mind a permanent union of the provinces in annual con-
^., gresses, chosen by the several legislatures, for the sake of
the comrnon concerns. The merchants of New York and
Philadelphia wanted a congress, constituted upon almost
any principle, in order to postpone or prevent the adoption
of a plan of non-intercourse, and in order to effect a uni-
form and lenient plan in case non-intercourse could not be
prevented. Dickinson advocated a congress, elected by
assemblies wherever possible, for the purpose of formulat-
ing a uniform boycott against England and avoiding the
,' dreadful necessity of war.^ Sam Adams rendered lip-
ser\4ce to the cause of a congress, but strained every energ}^
to committing the continent to a radical program before the
body could assemble.* Silas Deane criticized the premature
activity of Adams and favored a congress as a preventive
of " narrow, partial and indigested " plans of action.^
On the other hand. Governor Franklin in June feared
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 485-486.
' " Massachusettensis " in Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Mch. 27, IJJS-
^ Pa. Journ., June 15, 1774; also Writings (Ford), vol. i, pp. 499-500.
* Writings (Gushing), vol. iii, pp. 114-116, 125-127.
^ Conn, Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ii, pp. 129-130.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 395
" the Consequences which may result from such a Con-
gress as is now intended in America, chosen by the Assem-
bhes, or by Committees from all the several Counties, in
each of the Provinces;" ^ while, conversely, the radical,
Josiah Ouincy, warned Dickinson two months later that:
" Corruption (which delay gives time to operate) is the de-
stroying angel we have most to fear. ... I fear much that
timid or lukewarm counsels will be considered by our Con-
gress as prudent and politic." ^ And Governor Gage, of
Massachusetts, writing at almost the same moment as Gov-
ernor Franklin, inclined to the opinion of Quincy when he
said : " I believe a Congress, of some sort, may be ob-
tained; but when or how it will be composed is yet at a
distance, and after all, Boston may get little more than
fair words." ^
The original idea of the New England radicals seems to
have been for '' a congress of the Merchants, by d^outies
from among them in every seaport town, . . . with pv. wer
to establish a plan for the whole . . ." ^ Paul Revere,
after a fortnight's trip through the commercial provinces,
reported a sentiment in favor of a congress, so consti-
tuted, in order to place a restriction on the trade to the
West Indigs.^ When the widespread demand seemed to
call for an assemblage of a more general character, the
Boston Committee of Correspondence suggested that :
"There must be both a political and commercial congress." *
^ I N. J. Arch., vol. x, pp. 464-465.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 725.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 451.
* Letter of Boston Committee of Correspondence to Providence Com-
mittee of Correspondence, May 21, 1774; Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. x.
pp. 796-798.
^ Mass. Spy, June 2, 1774.
^ Bos. Com. Cor. Mss., vol. x, pp. 796-798.
396 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
This quickly proved to be unfeasible ; and the Massachu-
setts Spy declared on June i6, 1774: ''A Politico-Mer-
cantile Congress seems now to be the voice of all the
Colonies from Nova-Scctia to Georgia; and New York the
place of meeting proposed by private letters : However,
our generous brethren of that metropolis are pleased to
complement Boston with the appointment both of time
and place; which invitation will undoubtedly be accepted
with grateful alacrity." On the y^vy _m^ dd.yy the Massa-
chusetts House of Representatives actecLwith the promised
" alacrity." While the secretary of the province read the
governor's proclamation of dissolution to a curious audi-
ence on the wrong side of the locked door, the house chose
delegates to the Congress and announced the place of meet-
ing to be Philadelphia on September i.^ Already on June
15 the Rhode Island Assembly had appointed delegates;
and in the subsequent weeks every province of the thirteen
designated representatives, in one fashion or other, except
Georgia."
What was to be the program of the Congress when it
met ? The answer to the question depended upon a proper
evaluation of a number of factors, principally the follow-
ing : the instructions given to the members-elect of the Con-
gress; the crystallization of public opinion in the period
prior to the assembling of that body; the character and
temper of the members and of the interests functioning
through them; the steeplechase of ultimatum and conces-
sion which was certain to occur after the Congress had
assembled.
Although the instructions of the delegates obviously had
a bearing on the action of Congress, it would be mislead-
ing to ascribe to these papers any commanding importance :
^ Mass. Spy, June 23, 1774; also 4 ^w- Arch., vol. i, pp. 421-423.
^ Vide supra, chapters viii and ix, passim.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 397
for the instructions represented not so much what the
dominant elements in a community really wanted, as what
they dared to say that they wanted. These instructions
had originated in divers ways, although in almost every in-
stance they had been issued by the body which had chosen ,
the delegates/ cThe keynote of all instructions was the
injunction that the delegates should adopt proper measures
to extricate the colonies from their difficulties with the'
mother nation, and that they should establish American
rights and liberties upon a just and permanent basis and
so restore harmony and union. Some difference of opinion
was apparent concerning the nature and extent of the colo-
nial grievances which should be redressed. About half the
provinces deemed these too patent, or the occasion prema-
ture, for a particular definition of them in the instructions.
The other provinces were unanimous in naming parlia-
mentary taxation of the colonies as a grievance, and almost
without exception they included the punitive acts of 1774,
particularly the Boston Port Act.^ The Pennsylvania con-
vention had gone so far as to suggest the maximum con-
^ In Massachusetts^ Rhode Island and Connecticut, the lower house of
the legislatures gave the instructions. In New Hampshire, New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, provincial conven-
tions were responsible for the instructions. Both kinds of bodies
participated in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. In the province of
New York, the delegates were uninstructed in the technical sense of the
term, but a majority of them had been forced to announce their plat-
form in response to popular pressure. All the instructions may be
found in 4 Am. Arch., vol. i. Consult index under name of the prov-
ince desired.
^Virginia, Delaware and the Pennsylvania convention added the re-
vived statute of Henry VIII and the extension of the powers of the
admiralty courts. South Carolina included the " unnecessary restraints
and burthens on trade " and the statutes and royal instructions which
made invidious distinctions between subjects in Great Britain and in
America; Delaware, the curtailing of manufacturing; and the Pennsyl-
vania convention, the quartering of troops.
398 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
cessions which Congress should make in return for the
favors desired, i. e., the settlement of an annual revenue
on the king and the reimbursement of the East India
Company.
The widest divergence of opinion appeared on the im-
portant point of the nature of the opposition which should
be directed against Great Britain. Most of the commercial
provinces instructed their delegates to adopt '' proper " or
" prudent " or " lawful " measures without specifying
further details.^ New Jersey and Delaware, provinces
largely agricultural in their economy, were the only ones
of the group to recommend a plan of non-importation and
non-exportation to Congress. In contrast to the commer-
cial provinces, three of the four planting provinces that
took action instructed their delegates for a non-importation
and non-exportation with Great Britain.^
If the absence of such instruction's in the northern
provinces suggested the dominance of the business motive
in that section, the form of the boycott plan proposed in
various parts of the South revealed the presence of power-
ful agricultural interests there. The instructions to the
Maryland delegates carefully specified that that province
would not withhold the exportation of tobacco unless Vir-
ginia and North Carolina did so at the same time. By the
Virginia instructions, the delegates were told uncondition-
ally that non-exportation must not become operative be-
^ There were unimportant exceptions. The New York delegates had
been maneuvered into avowing a present inclination toward a non-
importation regulation. The Pennsylvania Assembly had refused to
give detailed instructions; but the provincial convention had recom-
mended the sending of petitions as a first resort, and had intimated
that Pennsylvania would, under no circumstances, go further than a
non-importation and non-exportation with Great Britain, unless Parlia-
ment should adopt further measures of aggression.
2 Md., Va., N. C. South Carolina was silent on this point.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 39^
fore August 10, 1775, because that date would " avoid the
heavy injury that would arise to this country from an
earlier adoption of the non-exportation plan after the
people have already applied so much of their labour to the
perfecting of the present [tobacco] crop . . ." ^ Probably
,"- from a similar motive, the North Carolina delegates were
I instructed to delay the operation of non-exportation until
I October i, 1775, if possible. Virginia wished the non-
V importation to become effective on November i, 1774;
North Carolina preferred January i, 1775. The instruc-
tions of the South Carolina delegates observed a discreet
silence as to the adoption of a boycott plan; but the rice
planters had safeguarded their interests by inserting a pro-
vision pledging the province only to such measures of the
Congress as commanded the support of the South Carolina
delegates as well as the majority of Congress.
A closer scrutiny of the several sets of instructions
would only serve to enforce the conclusion that, although
the plantation provinces stood rather clearly for a two-
edged plan of commercial opposition, the instructions of no
province contemplated a comprehensive and skilfully artic-
ulated plan such as the Continental Association turned out
to be. Every province, touching on the matter, specifically
limited the proposed suspension of trade to Great Britain,
except Maryland and New Jersey. Onty Mar}dand author-
ized her delegates to agree "to "any restrictions upon ex-
ports to the West Indies which may be deemed necessary
by a majority of the Colonies at the general Congress."
* This instruction provoked a writer in the commercial provinces to
query Mrhether this restraint did not tend to render Congress totally
ineffective, inasmuch as every province had an equal right to safeguard
its material interests; thus Pennsylvania, the importation of cloth.
New York, the importation of hats and tea, New England, the im-
portation of flannels, calicoes, etc. Pa. Journ., Sept. 28, 1774; also
4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 755-756.
400
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The scope, the symmetry, the enforcement provisions of
the Continental Association clearly did not proceed from
the instructions of the delegates.
The development of public opinion in the interval be-
tween the giving of instructions and the assembling of
Congress marked a long stride in advance of the views em-
bodied in the instructions. The direction of the gathering
opinion was influenced, to some, degree, by correspondents
in London, both of native and colonial birth, many of
Whose letters appeared in the colonial press and all of whom
argued that the hard times then prevailing in England
m.ade some form of trade suspension the logical mode of
opposition.^ To a larger degree, the public mind was in-
fluenced by the trenchant articles with which the propa-
gandists filled the newspapers. As one newspaper writer
phrased it : " The Delegates must certainly desire to know
the mind of the country in general. No rational man will
think himself so well acquainted with cur affairs as that he
cannot have a more full and. better view of them." The
questions which would confront Congress, the same writer
declared, were chiefly the following : In what manner and
in what spirit shall we make our application to Great Brit-
ain? ** Shall we stop importation only, or shall we cease
exportation also? Shall this extend only to Great Britain
and Ireland, or shall it comprehend the West India Islands?
At what time shall this cessation begin? Shall we stop
trade till we obtain w^hat we think reasonable and which
shall secure us for time to come ; or shall it be only till we
obtain relief in those particulars which now oppress us?
Shall we first apply for relief and wait for an answer be-
^E. g., vide letters in Pa. Gaz., May i8, June i, Aug. lo, 1774;
N. H. Gaz., May 26, 1775; Mass. Spy, May 12, 1774. Vide also Dr.
Franklin's letters to Gushing, Thomson, Timothy and others in his
Writings (Smyth), vol. vi, pp. 238-244, 249-251, 303-31 1 ; vol. x, pp.
274-275.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 401
fore we stop trade, or shall we stop trade while we are
making application?" In what manner ought we to offer
to bear our proper share of the public expenses? Shall we
offer to pay for the tea that was destroyed ? ^
Press discussion occupied itself very largely with the
problems of commercial warfare here presented. "A Dis-
tressed Bostonian " noted a general disposition to oppose
the oppressive measures of the home government; but, he
added acutely : " We are variously affected, and as each
feels himself more or less distres'd he is proportionately
warm or cool in the opposition." ^ A few typical extracts
Avill indicate the trend of newspaper discussion. "A Letter
from a Virginian to the Members of the Congress " en-
treated the delegates to avoid all forms of the boycott, re-
minding them that the resources of the mother country
were infinite, and asking : " Shall we punish ourselves, like
froward Children, who refuse to eat when they are hungry,
that they may vex their indulgent Mothers ? . . . We may
teize the Mother Country, we cannot ruin her." ^ "A Citi-
zen of Philadelphia " took a slightly more advanced view.
^N. Y. Journ., Aug. 4, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 634-637.
' Bos. Eve. Post, Sept. 5, 1774. A writer in the Pa. Journ., Sept. 28,
1774, expanded the same thought in these words: "The farmer, who
insists that the dry goods merchant shall cease to import, though the
measure should even deprive him of bread ; and yet, through fear
of some frivolous loss to himself, very wisely protests against non-
exportation, certainly merits the utmost contempt. Nor does the
farmer, in this case, stand alone. The miller lays claim to public
spirit; talks loudly for liberty; and also insists upon a non-importation;
and in order to enforce the scheme upon the merchant, will readily
agree to a general non-consumption ; but no sooner is non-exportation
sounded in his ear, than his mighty public spirit, like Milton's devils
at their Pandemonium consultation is instantly dwarfed. * My interest,
sir ! I cannot part with that ! Alas ! if a general non-exportation takes
place, what shall I do with my mill ? ' "
^N. Y. Gas., Aug. 22, 1774.
402
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
I He proclaimed himself in favor of a general non-importa-
Ition with England; but he roundly condemned a non-
I exportation as a weapon which would inflict "a more
{deadly wound" on America than on England, and he op-
' posed a suspension of trade with the West Indies as a pun-
ishment to a people who were innocent of wrong-doing/
" Juba '' addressed himself to '' The honourable Dele-
gates," who were soon to convene in Congress, and advo-
cated a non-importation and non-exportation agreement
which included Great Britain, Ireland and the West Indies
in its operation. " I know many objections to a plan of
this kind will be started by self-interested men," he de-
clared, " but is this a time for us to think of accumulating
fortunes, or even adding to our estates ?" "
A comprehensive plan of trade suspension, such as was
advocated by "Juba," was urged on the colonists by many
American sympathizers in Great Britain," and received the
widest newspaper support in the colonies, although it had
received no sanction in any of the instructions to members-
elect of Congress. The realization dawned upon the rad-
ical writers that the coercive operation of the measures
adopted should be speed}^ and far-reaching, notwithstanding
the severe blow to colonial trading interests and the per-
sonal guiltlessness of the populations affected. By with-
drawing American exports from Great Britain, it was esti-
mated that the public revenue would be reduced nearly one
million pounds sterling per annum, about half of which
sum arose from the single article of tobacco.* Indeed, "the
^Pa. Packet, June 20, 27, I774; also A^ Y. Gas., June 27, July 4.
^ N. Y. Gazetteer, Sept. 2, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 754-755-
^ E. g., vide anonymous letters printed in Pa. Journ., Sept. 14, 21^
1774; Pa. Gas., Sept. 21 ; Mass. Spy, June 2; Md. Gas., May 26.
*"To the People of America" (Boston, Sept., i774), in 4 Am. Arch.,
vol. i, pp. 756-759. Vide also Mass. Spy, Mch. 23, 1775.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION
403
shipping, manufactures and revenue [of England] depend
so much on the Tobacco and CaroHna Colonies that they
alone, by stopping their exports, would force redress." ^
The want of American naval stores, particularly pitch, tar
and turpentine, would also be felt in England immediately.'
By stopping the exportation of colonial flaxseed to Ireland,
the linen manufacturers of England would be deprived of
their raw material and more than three hundred thousand
employees thrown out of work.^
The design of stopping all trade with the West Indies
was even a bolder conception, because of the basic impor-
tance of that branch of commerce to American business
prosperity. The plan derived its inspiration from the fact
that more than seventy members of Parliament owned
plantations in the West Indies and they thus exposed an
Achilles-heel to the darts of the Americans. " Suspending
our trade with the West Indies," declared one writer, '' will
ruin every plantation there. They can neither feed their
negroes without our corn nor save their crops without our
lumber. A stoppage of North American supplies will bring
on a famine and scarcity too ruinous to be risked without
the most stupid madness." "* " If the West India Planters,
who have great influence in Parliament," said another,
" are content to see their estates ruined, and their slaves
perish, if they will quietly resign these their possessions,
let it he, and let the crime be added to the enormous account
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 237-238.
2 Unsigned letter (probably of Dr. Franklin) in Mass. Gaz. & Post-
Boy, Oct. 24, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 701-702.
3 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 756-759-
■^''To the People of America," ihid., vol. i, pp. 756-759- V^de also
letter to Bos. Com. Cor., ibid., p. 347; "Queries," ibid., p. 755; "Camillus"
in .V. H. Ga:j., Aug. 5, 1774; " Plain Dealer" in A^ Y. Journ., July 21;
''A Country Man" in ibid., Dec. 15.
404
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of the British Parliament." ^ " There will be opposers
to this scheme even among our friends (self-interest is
strong)," he added. '' I know it requires a great sacrifice
to stop trade to the West Indies. . . . But / see no justice
that the merchant trading to Great Britain should he the
only sufferer, the V/est-India merchant ought to suffer also,
and especially when his sufferings will absolutely w^ork the
most forceably." A third writer recalled a long-rankUng
grievance of the Americans against the West India plant-
ing element. No less than seventy-four members of Par-
liament " are West India planters and proprietors," he de-
clared. "And I am also credibly informed that they were
the means of fomenting these dif^culties by first getting [in
1764] a duty laid on all sugars, molasses, coffee, &c., not
imported from the English West-India Islands; it will
therefore be necessar)^ to shew them of how much impor-
tance we are, by distressing them for w-ant of our trade." ^
An animated discussion occurred over the question
whether remittances should be withheld from the British
merchants as well as trade connections. If we liquidate
our annual indebtedness of £3,000,000 sterling as usual,
queried "A Plain Dealer," will the British merchants not
be enabled thereby to employ the manufacturers for one
whole year after importation has ceased, a period during
which our measures will be felt only by ourselves ? " While
conceding the theoretical injustice involved in a refusal to
pay debts, a Philadelphia wTiter contended that the case
under consideration was an exception to the rule; for, if
two neighbors shared a lifelong friendship and one of them
took it into his head to kidnap and enslave the child of the
^ "A Distressed Bostonian," Bos. Eve. Post, Sept. 5, 1774,
^ Mass. Spy, Aug. 25, 1774, quoting from Conn. Gas.
^ N. Y. Journ., July 21, 1774.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 405
other at a time when the other owed him money, would it
be unjust for the debtor to withhold payment until the
child was returned? He concluded that, though Britain
had a demand of debt against the colonists, the Americans
had a demand of a different nature, but superior in value,
against her ; and that when Britain granted " liberty, peace
and a free trade," the colonists should repay their debts." ^
The opponents of non-remittance held that it was a dis-
honorable expedient and not necessary under the circum-
stances. Indeed, a " Citizen of Philadelphia " believed
that, if the colonists should suspend the payment of their
debts, the British merchants would retaliate and influence
Parliament to stop all trade connections between American
ports and Europe in order to prevent trade with foreign
nations from being carried on on capital properly theirs.^
As John Adams and his brother delegates of Massachu-
setts traveled the irksome distance from Boston to the
meeting-place of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia
in the latter weeks of August, they received first-hand evi-
dence of the accelerated progress of popular sentiment
toward extreme measures of boycott, and learned better
than through correspondence the character of the opposi-
tion elements in other provinces. Upon his arrival at Hart-
ford, Adams had a talk with Silas Deane and his step-sons
who had come over from Wethersfield to greet the Massa-
chusetts delegates ; and though these men were " largely in
trade," they announced that they were '' willing to re-
nounce all their trade," Deane declaring that the resolu-
tions of Congress would be regarded in Connecticut as,
*' the laws of the Medes and Persians." ^ Stopping at
* Pa. Journ., Sept. 28, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 811-814.
'"A Few Political Reflections," Pa. Packet, June 27, 1774; also
N. Y. Gas., July 4.
'Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 341.
4o6 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Middletown, the members of the local committee of corres-
pondence and many other persons assured the delegates
that " they would abide by whatever should be determined
on, even to a total stoppage of trade to Europe and the
West Indies." ^ Reaching New Haven, a chief trading
town of Connecticut, the chorus of approval was marred
by a false note or two. In one discussion some serious
doubts were cast upon the coercive effect of a total non-
exportation to the West Indies, even if well executed;
while from another source Adams was informed that a
boycott agreement would serve no good purpose because
Congress would lack power to enforce it. He learned from
the tavern keeper that the fine parade which had greeted
the delegates seven miles from the city on their arrival had
been contrived at the last moment by the moderates " in
order to divert the populace from erecting a liberty pole,
&c." '
Arriving in due time in New York city, the delegates
lingered nearly a week, sightseeing and " breakfasting,
dining, drinking coffee, &c.," amidst '' all the opulence and
splendor " of that city. Much of this time was spent in
the company of McDougall, John Morin Scott, Isaac Sears
and other radicals, from whom Adams gained much inti-
mate knowledge of the local political situation. McDou-
gall warned the Massachusetts delegates to moderate their
language in order not to frighten the timorous elements
there that had combined, from various motives, in support
of the Congress.^ While the visiting delegates were yet in
^ Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 342.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, p. 344.
^ These groups, McDougall reported, were chiefly the following : those
men who had been induced to join the movement by assurances that
commercial coercion would secure relief without any danger of civil
commotions; those who were fearful "lest the levelHng spirit of the
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 407
/ .
the city, the U* Fifty-One " held a session to discuss the
business of the approaching Congress for the benefit of the
New York delegates. Three of the latter attended; and a
very clear intimation was given that the best course would
be for Congress to recommend to the Bostonians to reim-
burse the East India Company and that America should
then return to a non-importation of dutied goods; but
should they be reduced to the " last sad alternative of en-
tering into a non-importation agreement," then it should
not be a partial one as before, but should include every
European commodity from all parts of the world. ^
Whether or not this measured advice reached the ears of
John Adams he does not record in his diary ; and he prob-
ably lost his best opportunity of hearing of it a few nights
later when the " Fifty-One " dined the Massachusetts
delegates with " a profusion of rich dishes, &c., &c.," and
Adams spent the evening talking shop with James Duane,
the lawyer of the " sly, surveying eye."
When the Massachusetts delegation rode into Philadel-
phia on Monday, August 29, "dirty, dusty, and fatigued,"
they found a score or more of the delegates already gath-
ered in the city. The few days intervening before the open-
ing of Congress were spent by the waiting delegates in
meeting and appraising each other and in comparing notes
as to recent political developments in various parts of
A.merica.^ Of the fifty-six delegates who' eventually ap-
New England Colonies should propagate itself into New York;" those
who entertained "Episcopalian prejudices" against New England;
" merchants largely concerned in navigation, and therefore afraid of
non-importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreements;"
and those who looked to the governm.ent for favors. Adams, J., Works
(Adams), vol. ii, pp. 345-355-
^ A^. Y. Gazetteer, Sept. 2, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 324 n.
2 Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, pp. ZSy-Z^A', N. Y. Hist. Soc.
Colls., vol. xix, pp. 12-19.
4o8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
peared from the twelve provinces, most of the men met
for the first time/ A large proportion of them had taken
active part in the popular house of the provincial legisla-
tures; ^ six of them had served in the Stamp Act Congress;
practically all of them were members of committees of cor-
respondence. All of them were of American nativity; and
they must have felt a responsibility almost personal for the
critical situation in which America found herself. As lead-
ers of local movements for larger colonial rights and ex-
emptions in the preceding years, their names were, for the
most part, well known to each other. Their present inten-
tions, however, were a matter for conjecture and appre-
hension.
Friends and foes of the Congress alike appreciated the
difficulties of the situation. "An assembly like this," wrote
the Connecticut delegates, ** though it consists of less than
sixty members, yet, coming from remote Colonies, each of
which has some modes of transacting public business pecu-
liar to itself, — some particular Provincial rights and inter-
ests to guard and secure, must take some time tO' become
^John Dickinson, who had earlier been excluded from election
through the efforts of Galloway, took his seat on October 17. Prior
to this time, however, Dickinson was in close touch with the delegates
in small dinner-groups and in other informal ways; e, g., vide Adams,
J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, pp. 360, 2>(>?„ 379, 381, 382, 386, 397- James
Bowdoin, of Massachusetts, had refused his election at the hands of
the Assembly, because his relatives thought his great fortune ought
not to be hazarded. Hazelton, Decl. of hide., p. 9; Hibernian Chronicle
(London), October 27, 1774. William Samuel Johnson, of Connecticut,
had declined his appointment on the ground of an important law case
which required his attendance at Albany, an excuse which produced
no end of skeptical comment. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 895; Conn. Cour.,
Aug. 2, 1774; Journals Cont. Cong. (L. C. Edition), vol. i, p. 18 n.
Wolcott and Law, of the same province, had also declined, pleading
poor health.
' Forty of them had served in provincial legislatures, ten or more
of them in the speakership.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 409
so acquainted with each one's situations and connections, as
to be able to give an united assent to the ways and means
proposed for effecting what all are ardently desirous of
. . . Every one must be heard even on those points or sub-
jects which in themselves are not of the last importance;
and indeed, it often happens, that what is of little or no
consequence to one Colony is of the last to another." ^ In
this Congress, affirmed John x\dams, '' is a diversity of re-
ligions, educations, manners, interests, such as it would
seem impossible to unite in one plan of conduct." ^
The delegates from the plantation provinces were, as we
have seen, for the most part instructed to push for a limited
non-importation and non-exportation agreement; and the
rising tide of radical feeling in the North, as indicated in
the newspapers, gave promise that many delegates from
that section would also join in the movement. Indeed, con-
sidering that /only eleven delegates in the whole Congress
were merchants and these, for the most part, men more
addicted to politics than to trade, some plan of non-impor-
tation and non-exportation was the inevitable outcome of
the Congress. ■J'he agricultural interests clearly possessed,'
the controlling influence ; but it is impossible to give precise
figures, for one-half of the membership were content to
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 854-855.
'Adams. J., Works (Adams), vol. ix, pp. 346-348. Vide also Ward's
view, in Staples, R. I. in Cont. Cong., pp. 16-17. A comment of an
unfriendly observer (probably William Kelly, the New York merchant)
is not without significance in this connection. After predicting that
the Congress would end in confusion, he wrote: "My Reasons for
thinking so are, that Men, 1500 Miles asunder, have very different
interests ; that there will be near a Hundred Deputies assembled, most
of which being Merchants, Shopkeepers, and Attornies, the latter of
them will certainly rule, for no Men are so true to their own Inter-
est as Lawyers, for they will not stick at any Thing in prosecuting
their Interest." He proposed that the ministry should bribe some of
the leading lawyers! London Gasetieer, Sept. 28, 1774; also S. C.
Gac, Dec. 5.
410 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 17b3.1776
classify themselves as lawyers although frequently their in-
comes were derive^d in large part^ if~not~chTeHy, from agri-
cultural holdings/ The ultimate conscious object of the
boycotters in Congress was not merely the repeal of the
punitive acts of 1774 but the goal that had formerly been
so dear to the merchant class — a return to the conditions
of the years before lyG^)^^ Within the ranks of this group
there was a clear understanding of the economic interests
endangered by a suspension of trade and a willingness, on
the part of many of them, to shift the anticipated losses on
their brethren in the other provinces.
I The chief danger to the adoption of a plan of continental
Inon-intercourse came from a determined and plausible
group of moderates, led by Joseph Galloway, who insisted
that the only permanent relief was to be found in an en-
lightened definition of imperial relations and colonial liber-
ties in the form of a plan of union. This group saw in
commercial coercion only a source of irritation to Great
Britain, and wagered their faith on mxcmorializing and
petitioning. Galloway averred, somewhat unjustly, that
the men who favored his plan of union " were men of loyal
principles, and possessed of the greatest fortunes in Amer-
ica; the other were congregational and presbyterian repub-
licans, or men of bankrupt fortunes, overwhelmed in debt
to the British merchants." ^
- The first three weeks of the meeting of the Continental
Congress might furnish an object-lesson for the skilled par-
liamentarian of any age.^ '* We [Massachusetts delegates]
^ E. g., Sullivan of N. H., Dickinson of Pa., Henry of Va. and the
Rutledges of S. C.
^ Historical and Political Reflections on the Rise and Progress of the
American Rebellion (London, 1780), pp. 66-67.
^The sources of information for the proceedings of the First Conti-
nental Congress are meager, however. They are contained in : Journals
of the Continental Congress (L. C. Edition), vol. i; John Adams's notes,
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 411
have had numberless prejudices to remove here," wrote
John Adams on September 27. " We have been obliged to
act with great delicacy and caution. We have been obliged
to keep ourselves out of sight, and to feel pulses and sound
the depths; to insinuate our sentiments, designs, and de-
sires, by means of other persons; sometimes of one Prov-
ince, and sometimes of another." ^ Sam Adams found
himself in his element. " He eats little, drinks little, sleeps
little, thinks much and is most decisive and indefatigable in
the pursuit of his objects," declared the organizing spirit of
the opposite party.^
The first test of strength between the groups came on the
very first day of meeting, Monday, September 5, when
Congress refused the invitation, tendered by Galloway, to
meet in the State House and, in face of negative votes from
Pennsylvania and New York, resolved to hold their sessions
in Carpenters' Hall, a decision naturally *^ highly agreeable
to the mechanics and citizens in general." ^ Congress then
proceeded to the unanimous election of Charles Thomson
as secretary, much to the surprise of Galloway who deemed
him " one of the most violent Sons of Liberty (so called)
in America," and contrary to the expressed desires of Jay
and Duane.* Both measures, according to Galloway, had
Works (Adams), vol. ii, pp. 365-402; Samuel Ward's diary, in Mag.
Am. Hist., vol. i, 438-442, 503-506, 549-561 ; certain pamphlets of Joseph
Galloway; the correspondence of the members; and a few contempor-
ary pamphlets and newspaper articles. On the whole, the pledge of
secrecy was excellently observed.
^ Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 382 n. Vide also ibid., vol. ii, p. 391 n. ;
vol. ix, pp. 342-346.
^ Galloway, Reflections, pp. 66-67.
^Conn. Hist. Sac. Colls., vol. ii, p. 172; Adams, J., Works (Adams),
vol. ii, p. 365.
* I N. J. Arch., vol. x, pp. 477-478; Adams, Works (Adams), vol. ii,
p. 365. Adams dubbed Thomson " the Sam Adams of Philadelphia."
Ibid., p. 358.
412
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
been " privately settled by an Interest made out of Doors. '^
Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, late Speaker of the House
of Burgesses, was chosen president without opposition.
For the next few weeks the proceedings assumed an ap-
pearance of " flattering tranquillity," as Galloway put it.
The radicals were biding their time; ^ and meanwhile the
members established a rule of secrecy (except upon occa-
sion when Congress should direct other^vise), and agreed
that the delegates of each province should cast one vote
collectively. Both regulations later served the purposes of
the radicals by giving to the proceedings a false appearance
of unanimity. The unit rule made it possible to publish
resolutions as having passed unanimously, even when large
minorities in various delegations, amounting sometimes to
one-third of the total membership of Congress, were in
the negative.^
The first committee appointed by the Continental Congress
was one to state the rights and grievances of the colonies
and propose the best means of obtaining redress; and on
the same day another committee was named " to examine
and report the several Statutes which affect the Trade and
Manufactures of the Colonies." The second committee
submitted its report ten days later, when it was thought
proper that the report should be referred to the former
committee for further consideration and action.^ But be-
fore the committee on rights and redress had submitted its
report. Congress had already taken the definite steps which
established the policy of trade coercion.
The radicals threw off their mask on September 17, when
they carried through a vote endorsing a set of resolutions
Galloway, Reiiection^, pp. 66-67; Cooper, What Think Ye of Co*t-
gress Nowf (New York, 1775), p. 13.
^Galloway, Examination (London, 1780), p. 61.
' Journals Cont. Cong. (L. C. Edition), vol. i, pp. 25-29, 40-41. 6y72,^
All later references to the Journals are to this edition.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION
413
adopted by a convention of Suffolk County in Massachu-
setts. This step was, according to Galloway, a " complete
declaration of war " on the part of the " repubhcans." ^
The " Suffolk Resolves '' rejected the recent legislation
against Massachusetts as unconstitutional and void, and
called for a civil government to be organized by the people
and for the establishment of a militia for defensive pur-
poses. Furthermore, the fourteenth resolve declared that,
as a measure for obtaining redress, the people of Suffolk
County (and the same action was recommended to the
other counties) would '' withhold all commercial inter-
course with Great Britain, Ireland and the West Indies "
and enter into a non-consumption of British and East India
wares, subject to such alterations as Congress might make."
By endorsing these resolutions, Congress, among other
things, committed itself to the principle of an extensive plan
of commercial opposition.
As a matter of practical strategy, however, it was deemed
safer to induce the members to agree to several separate
propositions regarding trade suspension before uniting the
parts into a single comprehensive whole. First was brought
up the proposal of a non-importation with Great Britain
and Ireland, the mildest kind of commercial warfare and
therefore the most widely acceptable of any. On Thursday,
September 22, Congress paved the way for its own action
by ordering the publication throughout the continent of an
official request that the merchants should send no more
orders to Great Britain and should suspend the execution
of orders already given, until the further sense of Con
gress should be signified.^
* Galloway, Rejections, pp. 66-67.
^Journals, vol. i, pp. 31-39-
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 41. Among other newspapers, this resolution appeared
in the Pa. Packet, Sept. 26, 1774; Md. Gas., Sept. 29; Rind's (Pinkney)
Va. Gas., Sept. 29; S. C. Gas., Oct. 10; Mass. Spy, Oct. 13.
414
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Parts of three days were given over by Congress to a
consideration of the exact form of the non-importation.^
The original motion for a non-importation with the British
Isles was made by Richard Henry Lee. Chase of Mary-
land, an impetuous radical during these years of his life,
spoke in opposition to non-importation as an insufficient
measure, and proposed instead the cessation of exportation
and the withholding of remittances. But Chase's plan ap-
parently had a single supporter, Lynch of South Carolina.
The chief question at issue was as to the time at which
Lee's motion would become operative. Cushing, a mer-
chant from the blockaded port of Boston, favored an im-
mediate non-importation and non-consumption. Most
speakers thought otherwise. Mifflin of Pennsylvania be-
lieved that the first of November would be sufficiently late
to allow for the arrival of orders already sent to Great
Britain in April and May, and he held that orders given
after that date had been dishonestly given to defeat the
anticipated non-importation. Gadsden of South Carolina
likewise argued for the first of November. It would ap-
pear that there were a number who strenuously favored a
much longer postponement; and Patrick Henry therefore
moved, by way of compromise, that December be inserted
instead of November, remarking : '' We don't mean to hurt
even our rascals, if we have any." ■ The non-importation
resolution, as adopted by Congress on September 2y, thus
fixed December i as the date after which no goods should
be imported, directly or indirectly, from Great Britain and
Ireland; and as a warning to stubborn importers, it was
i resolved that goods imported contrary to this resolution
,j should not be purchased or used.
y ^ On the next day, Gallo^yay formally presented to Con-
'Sept. 24. 26, 27; Journals, vol. i, pp. 42-43. Xotes on the discussion
are in Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 382-386.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 415
gress the plan of union, which constituted the platform of
the moderates; and he solemnly warned the body against
non-exportation, as an illegal measure which would bring
British warships and troops down upon American ports.
Galloway's extremely reasonable proposal received warm
support — from Jay and Duane of New York, from Ed-
ward Rutledge of South Carolina, and in general from the
members of fortune and property/ In spite of all the
efforts of the radicals, the plan was entered in the minutes
by a vote of six provinces to five; but, notwithstanding
this temporary success, the moderates were never thereafter
able to secure consideration for the plan. The zeal of the
radicals in later expunging from the record all traces of
this proceeding throws an interesting sidelight on their
methods.
The time of Congress was now devoted, for a consider-
able part of three days, to debates over the adoption of a
non-exportation resolution." No good account remains of
the protracted discussion at this stage; but the nature of
the remarks and the attitude of leading members may be
reconstructed from John Adams's notes on an earlier occa-
sion and from some scattered comments to be found else-
where.^ Cushing adopted as his slogan: ''a non-importa-
tion, non-exportation, and non-consumption, and imme-
diately," and was joined in this by Dyer of Connecticut.
Lynch and the Rutledges of South Carolina favored Cush-
^ Journals, vol. i, pp. 43-51; Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 387-391 J
I N. J. Arch., vol. x, pp. 503-507; Galloway, Rejections, pp. 72, 81 ; his
Exammation, pp. 48, 52 n. ; his A Reply to an Address to the Author of
a Pamphlet, entitled "A Candid Examination ..." (London, 1780),
p. 109.
^ Sept. 28, 29, 30; Journals, vol. i, pp. 51-52.
^ Works, vol. ii, pp. 382-386, 391 n., 394, 476-478; Drayton, Memoirs,
vol. i, p. 168.
4i6
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ing's proposal if the suspension of trade were made abso-
lute with the whole world, not merely with British terri-
tory. John Adams asked Congress to accept the logical
implication of endorsing the '' Suffolk Resolves," and to
resolve that, should further hostilities be pursued against
Massachusetts, or any persons seized under the revived
statute of Henry VIII, the several provinces " ought imme-
diately to cease all exportation of goods, wares and mer-
chandise to Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies."
Chase, who had sniffed at a non-importation, argued for
an immediate non-exportation and a withholding of debts,
which, he believed, would represent a total loss to British
merchants and manufacturers of £7,000,000 for the year.
He also urged an immediate non-exportation of lumber to
the West Indies, for the lumber-vessels exchanged their
cargoes for sugar and carried the latter to England, to the
great gain of the merchants there and of the British reve-
nue. In this latter position he was supported by Mifflin of
Pennsylvania and Sullivan of New Hampshire; but Isaac
Low of New York warned against a total prohibition of all
exports to the West Indies, as a measure which would
" annihilate the fishery " by wiping out the West Indian
market. Dyer proposed the withholding of flaxseed from
Ireland.
These and other suggestions were made by various dele-
gates; but it quickly became clear that, although opinion
was rapidly converging upon a plan of non-exportation, the
Virginia tobacco planters, and the South Carolina delegates
representing powerful rice and indigo interests, were de-
termined to protect the industries of their respective prov-
inces, in case such a plan were adopted. For a time, atten-
tion was centered upon the question of suspending tobacco
exportation. The Maryland delegates had instructions not
to enter into any arrangement for the non-exportation of
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 417
tobacco without the concurrence of Virginia and North
Carolina; and the Virginia delegates were explicitly in-
structed not to consent to a non-exportation before August
10, 1775, in order to allow time for the marketing of the
growing crop. This situation caused the exasperated Chase
to declare : " A non-exportation at a future day cannot
avail us. What is the situation of Boston and the Massa-
chusetts? A non-exportation at the Virginia day will not
operate before the fall of 1776." It was urged by Gadsden
and others that the other provinces should, in this measure,
act independently of Virginia; but for taking this step the
Marylanders pleaded their lack of power and claimed that,
even were a different course possible, it would be undesir-
able, for Maryland and North Carolina tobacco would be
carried to Virginia ports and the latter would run away
with their trade. Fortunately for the Virginians, other
provinces were also willing to postpone the operation of the
non-exportation; and the date agreed upon in the resolu-
tion eventually adopted was September 10, 1775, one month
later than the Virginia instructions required.
The South Carolina delegates, from the narrow nature
of their demands, were net equally successful in enlisting
the support of other provinces in their cause. What they
desired (Gadsden excepted) was nothing less than that rice
and indigo, the staples of the province, should be exempted
from the operation of the non-exportation to Great Britain.^
They held that, out of due regard to the interests of their
constituents, it was necessary either that the non-exporta-
tion should be made operative against the whole world, or
that, in case exportation were suspended with Great Britain
alone, rice and indigo should be made exceptions to the
regulation, being products which could (except under cer-
^ Drayton, Memoirs, vol. i, pp. 169-170; Izard, Correspondence, vol i,
pp. 21-25 ; statement of S. C. delegates, N. Y. Journ., Dec. 8, 1774.
4i8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
tain limited circumstances) be exported to Great Britain
only, whereas the markets of the world were open to the
wheat, flour, fish and oil of the commercial provinces.^
The South Carolina delegates were able to show that but
a small part of the export trade of the commercial provinces
was with Great Britain, while on the contrary nearly all of
the indigo and two thirds of the rice of South Carolina
went to the ports of Great Britain. Edward Rutledge felt
justified in remarking that : '' People who are affected but
in speculation [i. e. in theory] and submit to all the hard-
ships attending it will not shut up their ports, while their
neighbors, who are objects of ministerial vengeance, enjoy,
in a great degree, the benefits of commerce." Furthermore,
they maintained that the commercial provinces would be
enabled to pay off their British debts by the returns of their
foreign trade and thus greatly ameliorate the rigor of the
trade suspension. In explaining the position of the South
Carolina delegation before the South Carolina convention a
few months later, John Rutledge declared that: " Upon the
whole, . . . the affair seemed rather like a commercial
scheme among the flour Colonies to find a better vent for
their Flour through the British Channel, by preventing, if
possible, any Rice from being sent to those markets; and
that, for his part, he could never consent to our becoming
the dupes to the people of the North or in the least to yield
to their unreasonable expectations."
Much bitter feeling was generated in the Congress. Ed-
ward Rutledge declared: "A gentleman from the other end
of the room talked of generosity. True equality is the
^ It will be recalled that only enumerated commodities of the colonies
were required to be exported to Great Britain and that many American
products were not on the enumerated list. Rice and indigo were enu-
merated, but under temporary acts a way was opened by which rice
could be exported to Southern Europe and to regions in America
south of Georgia.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 419
only oublic generosity.** But it quickly became apparent
that the vast majority were opposed to adopting the drastic
expedient of blotting out American export relations with
the entire world; and that they were equally disinclined to
cater to the self-interest of the rice and indigo planters of
South Carolina. Richard Henry Lee pleaded earnestly
that : " All considerations of interest, and of equality of
sacrifice, should be laid aside." In face of the vehement
protests of the South Carolinians, the resolution for non-
exportation was carried on September 30. ^According to its
terms, all exportation to the British Isles and the West In-
dies should cease on September 20, 1775, unless American
grievances were redressed before that time. The South
Carolina delegates had thus lost their first battle. But they
did not accept defeat, and they laid plans to make a final
stand before Congress adjourned.
The principal features of the plan of commercial resist-
ance had now been adopted by Congress. The work of
drawing up a complete plan " for carrying into effect the
non-importation, non-consumption and non-exportation "
was now confided to a special committee, consisting of
Cushing of Massachusetts, Low of New York, Miffiin of
Pennsylvania, Lee of Virginia, and Johnson of Maryland.^
It is worth noting that the committee on rights and redress,
composed of two members from each province, was ignored
in this connection, although it still had its report under con-
sideration; and that, of the committee of five, all but Low
had the reputation of favoring radical measures. Low had
been included probably because, as a conservative merchant
of great wealth, his name would lend prestige to the work
of the committee.
Meantime, Congress did not give the special committee
*Sept. 30 ; Journals, vol. i, p. 53.
420
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 176S.1776
an absolutely free hand, for portions of three days were
occupied in formulating an additional resolution for their
guidance/ This discussion was very largely confined to the
advisability of extending the non-importation regulation to
apply to commodities upon w^hich an import duty had been
imposed by the revenue acts of 1764 and 1766. The South-
em members wished to phrase the resolution so as to avoid
the confusion arising from the importation of smuggled
articles of the same kind as the dutied articles. '* How is
the purchaser to know whether the molasses, sugar, or
coffee has paid the duty or not?" asked Pendleton of Vir-
ginia. '' It can't be known." " Many gentlemen in this
room know how to bring in goods, sugars and others, with-
out paying duties," declared Lynch significantly. Chase
urged the same practical objection as Pendleton, and ob-
jected further because of the principle involved. " Our
enemies will think," he said, *' that we mean to strike at the
right of Parliament to lay duties for the regulation of
trade." This caused Lynch to reply: " In my idea. Parlia-
ment has no power to regulate trade. But these duties are
all for revenue, not for regulation of trade." Low felt
himself called upon to defend the merchant class, of which
he was so respectable a member. " Gentlemen have been
transported, by their zeal, into reflections upon an order of
men, who deserve it least of any men in the community."'
He argued against the exclusion of West India rum, sugar
and molasses from the provinces as a measure ruinous to
American business; and he proposed that, as the importa-
tion of East India Company tea had been suspended by the
resolution of September 27, smuggled Dutch tea should
likewise be placed under the ban.*
1 Oct. I, S. 6; Journals, vol. i, pp. 53, 55n., 57, Notes on the discussion
are in Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 393-394-
'Low gained his point later in Art i of the completed Association.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 421
The outcome of the discussion was a resolution of Octo-
ber 6, which declared against the importation of the most
important dutied articles after December i next, i. e. mo-
lasses, coffee and pimento from the British plantations, or
from Dominica, formerly a French possession ; wines from
Madeira and the Western Islands; and foreign indigo.
The special committee of five were instructed to include this
new regulation in their report. Pendleton might well ex-
claim : " Shan't we by this hang out to all the world our
intentions to smuggle?" As finally phrased in the com-
pleted Association, the importation of syrups and paneles
(t. e., brown unpurified sugar) was also forbidden from the
British plantations and Dominica.
On Wednesday, October 12, the committee of five re-
ported the results of their deliberations in the form of an
"Association," which was ordered to lie on the table for
the perusal of the delegates. Time was spent on the subject
on the following Saturday, and again on Monday; finally,
on Tuesday, October 18, the form of association was
adopted after sundr}^ amendments, and was ordered to be
transcribed that it might be signed by the members.^ The
vote of passage was not recorded as unanimous, and this
makes it extremely probable that the South Carolina dele-
gation delivered their ultimatum at this juncture.^ Lynch,
Middleton and the Rutledges, speaking for their province,
demanded the exclusion of rice and indigo from the non-
exportation regulation as the price of their signatures.
Their proposition met with an angry dissent. Forty-eight
' Oct. 12, 15, 17, 18; Journals, vol. i, pp. 62, 74, 75. No record of
the debates remains.
^ For this episode, vide Drayton, Memoirs, vol. i, pp. 169-170; A''. F.
Journ., D€c. 8, 1774; Izard, Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 21-25; Cooper,
What Think Ye of Congress Now?, p. 40; Stevens, Facsimiles, vol.
xxiv, no. 2034.
422 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
hours were allowed to pass, during which all parties had an
opportunity to digest the situation. Without the accession
of the South Carolina delegates to the Association, the
province of South Carolina would not be bound thereby,
for such were the terms of the instructions which had been
granted the delegates.^ On the other hand, the South Caro-
lina delegates were too earnest in their opposition to parlia-
mentary encroachment to be willing to be detached from
co-operation with the sister provinces, if their demands
could be partially met. On Thursday, October 20, the final
trial of strength came. The Association was read to the
assembled Congress, and the delegates advanced to the
table to attach their signatures. Thereupon the four dele-
gates of South Carolina departed from the hall, leaving
only the stout-hearted Gadsden, who offered to sign his
name alone and to trust to the generosity of his constituents
for vindication. But wiser counsels prevailed. For the
sake of preserving the union of the provinces, the departed
delegates were recalled ; they agreed to abandon their point
regarding indigo, and, in return. Congress conceded the
advantage they demanded for the article of rice.
According to Galloway, the majority were forced to re-
sort to some further strategy before they succeeded in ob-
taining his signature and those of the other delegates who
had voted against many parts of the Association. At the
end of the document were placed the words : '' The f ore-
^Before the Congress met, Dr. Franklin had addressed these words
to a friend in Pennsylvania : " Your province will surely be wise enough
not to enter into violent measures without the strictest concert with
the other Colonies, particularly Maryland. Viriginia, and the Carolinas,
because on them depend the whole effect of the American non-exporta-
tion. The Northern Colonies have all the European markets almost
for their chief exports, but those Colonies have hardly any but the
EngUsh markets for their chief exports of tobacco and naval stores
..." Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Oct. 24. 1/74.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION
423
going Association being determined upon by the Congress,
was ordered to be subscribed by the several Members
thereof ; and thereupon, we have hereunto set our respective
names accordingly." ^ The recalcitrant delegates were told
that they were in the position of a Speaker of Assembly,
who signed, by order, a bill that was contrary to his per-
sonal judgment, a proceeding which could not be considered
as his private act but that of the majority who made the
order. This story bears the earmarks of truth, though it is
clear that Galloway also felt impelled to sign '* on the
ground of preventing the Congress from proceeding to more
violent measures." ^ Galloway remarked afterward that he
would rather have cut off his hand than sign.^ Congress
directed that one hundred and twenty copies of the Associa-
tion should be struck off; but the document was not made
public until the close of the session.
The Association was the most remarkable document put •
forth by the Congress. Of its authorship nothing is known
dennitely, perhaps for the reason that the instrument was
the outgrowth of the experience of all the delegates through
a decade of trade-suspension agreements and thus did not
embody the views of any one man or any single committee.
In part, the Association was the standardization and nation?
alization of the systems of commercial opposition which had I
hitherto been employed upon a local scale ; the earlier ex-
periments in non-importation, non-consumption, and various
forms of the secondary boycott bore fruit in a number of
1 Galloway, A Reply to an Address, etc., pp. 114-115. The italics are
Galloway's. Vide also Golden, Letter-Book, vol. ii, p. 374.
'Galloway, Examination, p. 56. Vide also Pa. Mag., vol. xxvi, pp.
320-321.
' Conn. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ii, p. 201. Several delegates were absent
on Oct. 20 and affixed their signatures later. Journals, vol. i, p. 81 n.
The Association was published in the Pa. Packet, Oct. 31, 1774, and
Mass. Spy, Nov. 10.
424
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
carefully drawn provisions of the Association. The influ-
ence of the southern delegates was plainly discernible in
many portions of the paper. The very name, "Associa-
tion," was of southern origin, and had been used in that
section in earlier years in preference to the northern term,
"Agreement." Most of the basic features of the Associa-
tion were, in substance, identical with the Virginia Asso-
ciation of August, 1774/ Furthermore, one important pur-
pose of the Association made it natural that the plantation
delegates should lead in its formulation. The Association,
though framed with the primary object of bringing indus-
trial pressure to bear upon England, was a worthless fabric
unless the colonial merchants could he compelled to observe
its provisions. This was a problem with which the planters
in the South had had to deal in the earlier periods of non-
importation, whereas the northern delegates, with the ex-
ception of Massachusetts, knew nothing of the difficulty,
because their non-importation agreements had been made
and enforced by the merchants themselves.
The Association was a document of more than two thou-
sand w^ords divided into a preamble and fourteen articles.*
The introductory paragraphs avowed allegiance to the king,
and declared that commercial coercion was adopted as " the
most speedy, effectual, and peaceable " method of obtaining
redress from the " ruinous system of colony administra-
tion," inaugurated by Great Britain about the year 1763
and modified and elaborated in the subsequent years.
Therefore, continued the paper, " we do, for ourselves, and
1 Vide supra, pp. 368-370. By this avenue of reasoning, it might ap-
pear that Richard Henry Lee, a member of the committee of five, should
have major credit for the content of the Association. On the other
hand, it is known that he held much narrower views at the opening
of Congress. Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, p. 362.
' Text in Journals, vol. i, pp. 75-81 : also in appendix, present volume.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION
425
the inhabitants of the several colonies, whom we represent,
firmly agree and associate, under the sacred ties of virtue,
honour and love of our country ..." The demand for a
/ return to the conditions prevailing before 1763 was, in a
later portion, made specific and unmistakable by an enu-
meration of the acts that must be repealed. These were
named as of three groups : ( i ) the duties on tea, wine,
molasses, syrups, paneles, cofifee, sugar, pimento, indigo,
foreign paper, glass, and painters' colors, and the act ex-
tending the powers of the admiralty courts beyond their
ancient limits; (2) that part of the act for better securing
the royal dockyards, ships, etc. (12 George III, c. 24) by
which any person in America, charged with an offense
therein described, might be transported to England for
trial; and (3) the three acts of 1774 against Boston and
Massachusetts and the Quebec Act.^
Of the fourteen articles which made up the directive
portion of the Association, ten were devoted to establishing
rules of conduct with reference to non-importation and the
cognate subject, non-consumption, and with reference to
M:he adjustment of the American standard of living to the
tion. Three articles were applicable to both non-importa-
tion and non-exportation and contained the most important .
executory provisions. \
\ Non-importation was to become effective on December i,
1774. Beginning with that date, no goods whatever were
to be imported from the British Isles, directly or indirectly;,
new conditions created by a suspension of trade. One
article dealt solely with the establishment of non-exporta-
no East India tea was to be imported from any part of the
world (thus aft'ecting the smuggled as well as the legal ar-
ticle) : the importation of molasses, syrups, paneles. coffee
>Art 3dv.
({
426 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
or pimento from the British plantations and Dominica was
forbidden, of wines from Madeira and the Western Islands,
of indigo from foreign parts/ It was further declared
specifically that no slaves were tr> be imported after that
date."
Next, as " an effectual security for the observation of the
non-importation/' a non-consumption regulation was de-
vised. No goods should be purchased or used v^-hich there
was cause to suspect had been imported after December i,
1774, except under special conditions described in Article x ;
likewise in the case of slaves.^ Venders of imported goods
were warned not to take advantage of the scarcity of goods
but were required to sell at their customary rates during the
preceding year.* An immediate non-consumption of dutied
tea was announced, with the provision that after March i,
1775, the use of smuggled tea should also be abandoned."
Article x provided for the disposal of merchandise im-
ported contrary to the Association. If any such imports
arrived during the first two months of the non-importation
(i. e., before Februar}^ i, 1775),, the owner should have the
option of re-shipping the goods immediately, or of storing
the goods at his ov/n risk with the local committee during
the duration of the non-importation, or of authorizing the
committee to sell the goods. In the last case, the owner was
to receive from the proceeds of the sale the first cost and
charges ; the profit, if any, was to be applied toward em-
ploying the victims of the Boston Port Act. Should any
goods arrive after February i, 1775, they "ought forth-
with to be sent back again, without breaking any of the
packages thereof."
Sumptuar}^ regulations were made in preparation for the
^ Art. i. ' Art. ii.
' Arts, iii and ii.
* Art . 5 Art. iii.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION
427
radical change which the absence of imported goods was
certain to produce in the Hfe of the average American.
'' Utmost endeavours " were to be made to improve the
breed of sheep and to increase their number/ ''Agricul-
ture, arts and the manufactures of this country, especially
that of wool," were to be promoted.^ All American manu-
factures were required to be sold at reasonable prices, so
that no undue advantage might be taken of a future scar-
city of goods/ Rigid economy was to be practised: we
" will discountenance and discourage every species of ex-
travagance and dissipation, especially all horseracing, and
all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shews,
plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments."
Economy in mourning w^as revived from the days of 1765-
1766, detailed directions being given/
The non-exportation regulation was announced to be-
come operative on September 10, 1775, if Parliament had
not made amends by that time. Beginning with that date,
no goods whatsoever should be exported, directly or in-
directly, "to fF«e"British Isles or the West Indies, except rice
to Europe.^ Another part provided that no sheep should
be exported to the West Indies or elsewhere ; and this regu-
lation was to become effective immediately.®
In some respects, the most important portions of the
Association related to the means of enforcement. Lacking
legal sanction, the Continental Congress were compelled to
create their own administrative and judicial machinery and
to impose their own penalties. This machinery was to con-
sist of a committee in every county, city and town, chosen
by those qualified to vote for representatives in the legisla-
ture. These committees were " attentively to observe the
* Art. vii. ' Art. viii.
'Art. xiii. *Art. viii.
* Art. iv. * Art. vii.
^S THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
conduct of all persons touching this association," and, in
case of a violation, to publish " the truth of the case " in the
newspapers, to the end that all such " enemies of American
liberty " might be universally contemned and boycotted.^
At this point the Association exposed its real character as
a quasi-law, inasmuch as its binding force was not limited to
those who accepted its provisions but was made applicable
to ** all persons." It was one thing for two or more men
to agree with each other not to buy goods from British
merchants; quite another to agree that, if a man not a
party to the compact, bought goods, they would restrain
him and ruin his business. For fear that this regulation
would not reach non-residents, it was provided that any
British or Irish merchant guilty of transgressing the non-
importation should likewise be published and bo3Xotted ; ^
that captains of American vessels should be forbidden to
receive on board prohibited imports on pain of immediate
dismissal ; ^ and that no vessels should be hired or com-
modities sold to those engaged in the slave trade after De-
cember I, 1774.'^ The principle of the boycott was invoked
against whole provinces in the provision that " no trade,
commerce, dealings or intercourse whatsoever " should be
sustained with any province in North America which did
not accede to or hereafter violated the Association.^ The
committees of correspondence of the various provinces were
instructed to inspect the custom-house entries frequently
and to inform each other of " every material circumstance
that may occur relative to this association." ^ Finally, great
elasticity was given to the enforcement provisions by the
blanket recommendation that the provincial conventions
and the committees in the various provinces should " estab-
1 Art. xi. ' Art. v.
' Art. vi. "* Art. ii.
*Art. xiv. . *Art. xii.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 429
lish such farther regulations as they may think proper, for
carrying into execution this association." ^
A few days after Congress had completed the Associa-
tion, a resolution was passed for calling another continental
congress to meet on May 10, 1775, if American grievances
should not then be redressed.^ Thus, a second congress
was to be held four months before the time at which the
non-exportation regulation was scheduled to go into effect,
— which obviously meant that an opportunity would be
afforded for further modifications of that measure, if any
should prove desirable. The balance of the time of Con-
gress was spent in drawing up a declaration of rights and
grievances, and in formulating addresses to the people of
Great Britain, to the inhabitants of the British colonies, to
the inhabitants of Quebec, and to the king.^- These papers
varied widely in form and phraseology and intent, but all
joined in endorsing the sentiment : " Place us in the same
situation that we were at the close of the last war, and our
former harmony will be restored.' * The declaration of
rights and grievances undertook to define the colonial theory
of the power of Parliament. This matter had caused con-
siderable difficulty in Congress. Five provinces maintained
that Parliament had the right to regulate trade; five prov-
inces denied this view; and Massachusetts and Rhode
Island were divided within themselves.^ A statement was
finally agreed upon to the effect that the colonial legisla-
^ Art. xiv.
' Oct. 22 ; Journals, vol. i, p. 102.
'John Adams wrote to Jefferson in 1813: "I never bestowed much
attention on any of those addresses, which were all but repetitions of
the same things, the same facts and arguments ... I was in a great
error, no doubt, . . . for those things were necessary to give popularity
to our cause, both at home and abroad." Works, vol. x, p. 80.
^Journals, vol. i, p. 89.
* Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, p. 397.
y
430
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
tures had exclusive powers of law-making in all cases of
taxation and internal polity, subject only to the royal nega-
tive; and that from the necessity of the case the colonists
did " cheerfully consent " to the bona fide regulation of their
external commerce by Parliament when it was done for the
good of the whole empire and contained no " idea of taxa-
tion, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the sub-
jects in America, without their consent." ^ The list of acts,
whose repeal was held by the declaration of rights and
grievances to be " essentially necessary," was somewhat
more comprehensive than the group of laws named as the
object of the Association, and included the Currency Act
of 1764, the act establishing the board of customs commis-
sioners and reorganizing the customs service, and the quar-
tering act of 1774.^
The Boston Tea Party — the episode that had precipitated
the present crisis — received scant notice. In the address to
the colonists, it was noted that the British administration
had entered into a " monopolizing combination " with the
East India Company to send a dutied commodity to Amer-
ica, and that the tea sent to Boston was destroyed because
Governor Hutchinson would not suffer it to be returned.^
A longer discussion of the affair appeared in the address to
the people of Great Britain; some slight effort was made to
justify the destruction, but most emphasis was placed on
the thought that : " even supposing a trespass was thereby
committed and the proprietors of the Tea entitled to dam-
ages, the Courts of Law were open " for the prosecution of
suits, instead of which thirty thousand souls had been re-
duced to poverty and distress upon unauthenticated ex parte
' Journals, vol. i, pp. 68-69.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 71-73.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 98.
THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION 431
evidence, for the act of thirty or forty/ No' mention what-
ever was made of the matter in the other documents.
Congress adjourned on Wednesday, October 26, and the
great majority of the delegates departed for their homes
with the feeHng that effective measures for a reconciliation
had been taken. But there were some dissenting minds. '^
Furthermore, the supreme test was yet to come : what would
the country think of the work of Congress? how would
the people receive the Association? would the Association
prove workable?
1 Journals, vol. i, pp. 85-87.
^ Adams, J., Works, vol. x, pp. 278-279; letter of Dickinson, 4 Am^
Arch., vol. i, p. 947.
CHAPTER XI
Ratification of the Continental Association
(November, 1774-JuNE, 1775)
Ck Enough has been said to make clear that the action of the
-I First Continental Congress involved a defeat for the moder-
\ ates and the mercantile interests. The radicals had achieved
I several important ends. They had reproduced on a national
^scale a type of organization and a species of tactics that in
many parts of British x\merica had enabled a determined
minority to seize control of affairs. It is not too fantastic
to say that they had snatched from the merchant class the
weapons which the latter had fashioned to advance their own
; selfish interests in former years, and had now reversed the
\ weapons on them in an attempt to secure ends desired solely
\ by the radicals. Finally, they had defined — nationalized — the
issue at stake in such a manner as to afford prestige to rad-
ical groups, wherever they were to be found, and to weaken
the hold of the moderate elements, on the ground that the
latter were at variance with the Continental Congress.
An ultra-radical interpretation of the radical victory was
made at the time in these words : " The American Congress
derives all its power, wisdom and justice, not from scrolls
of parchment signed by Kings, but from the People. A
more august, and a more equitable Legislative body never
existed in any quarter of the globe . . . The Congress,
like other Legislative bodies, have annexed penalties to their
laws. They do not consist of the gallows, the rack, and the
stake . . . but infamy, a species of infamy . . . more
432
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 433
dreadful to a freeman than the gallows, the rack, or the
stake. It is this, he shall be declared in the publick papers
to be an enemy to his country. . . . The least deviation
from the Resolves of the Congress will be treason : — such
treason as few villains have ever had an opportunity of
committing. It will be treason against the present inhabi-
tants of the Colonies : Against the millions of unborn gen-
erations who are to exist hereafter in America: Against
the only liberty and happiness which remain to mankind :
Against the last hopes of the wretched in every corner of
the world. — In a word, it will be treason against God." ^
Such sentiments stiffened the radical party in all parts of
the continent, and it hardly occasions wonder that a rever-
end divine of Charleston, S. C, should have been dismissed
from his congregation "for his audacity in standing up in his
pulpit, and impudently saying that mechanics and country
clowns had no right to dispute about politics, or what kings,
lords and commons had done !" Nor was it necessary for
the Newport Mercury to add that : "All such divines should
be taught to know that mechanics and country clowns (in-
famously so called) are the real and absolute masters of
king, lords, commons and priests . . ." ^
The moderates began to realize that they had committed
an error in lending countenance to the movement for an
extra-legal congress. In the eyes of many of them, any
direct connection with this congress and its committees be-
came equivalent to rebellion; typical of this group, Joseph
Galloway now withdrew from the extra-legal activities alto-
gether. Others, like Isaac Low, lingered in the movement,
^"Political Observations, without Order; Addressed to the People
of America," Pa. Packet, Nov. 14, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
976-977. This article created wide interest. Two replies appeared in
the N. Y. Gazetteer, Dec. i, 1774.
^Newport Merc, Sept. 26, 1774; also Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Oct. 13.
434
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1768-1776
persuaded that they could salvage in their local politics what
had seemed shipwrecked in the Continental Congress, or
because, like John Andrews of Boston, they were swayed
by the impalpable influences of environment, temperament,
habit, education or social connections/ As the months
^ John Andrews was a well-to-do merchant pf.Bostpii, who sat com-
placently at home drinking tea while the mob made their descent upon
the East India Company's shipments at the wharf. He wrote a witty
letter about it a few days later, and did not discover his indignation
over the destruction until it became apparent to him that, between the
Scylla of the Boston Port Act and the Charybdis of the radicals'
Solemn League and Covenant, his business would surely be wrecked.
At this time he had stock on his shelves amounting to about i2000
sterHng and almost as much more out in debts. He could say with
feeling that he opposed " Tyranny exerciz'd either in England or
America." He was disposed to favor the opening of the port of
Boston through reimbursing the East India Company for their losses.
Later, he entertained hopes that the Continental Congress would af-
ford rehef that would be " lasting and permanent." About this time
it would appear that he began to be affected by the excited state of
pubHc opinion and was himself much irritated by the rudeness and
immorality of the soldiers. He wrote on August 20, 1774: "When
I seriously reflect on the unhappy situation we are in, I cant but be
uneasy least ye trade of the town should never be reinstated again : but
on the other hand, when I consider that our future welfare depends
altogether upon a steady and firm, adherence to the common cause, I
console myself with the thoughts that if, after using every effort in
our power, we are finally obhg'd to submit, we shall leave this testi-
mony behind us, that, not being able to stem the stream, we were of
necessity borne down by the torrent." However, his mood became less
exalted in October, and he wrote, with reference to mob violence:
"every day's experience tells me that not only good policy, but our
own quiet, absolutely depends upon a bare acquiescence at least.
Therefore I esteem them very blameable who have persisted in
opposition to them, as vox populi, vox Dei — and their resentrnent is
so great in return, that it's a chance whether (if their struggles should
produce better times) they will ever admit of such passing their future
days uninterrupted among 'em." Andrews became more closely identi-
fied with the radical side as time passed and was a patriot at the time
of the Declaration of Independence. / M. H. S. Procs., vol. viii, pp.
326-33^, 339, 343-344, 377-
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 433
passed, there was presented to every merchant, with in-
creasing sharpness, the alternative of adhering to Congress, .
even if it meant rebeUion and independence, to which his
class had always been opposed, or of adhering to Great
Britain, even if that meant submission to those parliamen-
tary measures to which his class were also opposed. The
increasing tendency of the moderates was to follow the
counsel offered by one who himself had once been zealous
in meetings and organizations of the people : ''As we have
already done what we ought not to have done, and left un-
done what we ought to have done, let us ... in time re-
turn to our Constitution, and by our Representatives, like
honest men, state our grievances, and ask relief of the
mother state ; let us do this with that plainness and decency
of language that will . . . remove every suspicion that we
have the least intention or desire to be independent." ^
^- The publication of the Continental Association was
i greeted with a storm of protest from the moderate press in
t_the leading commercial provinces. These tracts were rem-
iniscent of the controversial literature produced under
somewhat similar circumstances by Drayton at Charleston
and by the writers in Mein's Boston Chronicle in the years
1769-1770.^ The chief plaint was directed against those
^"Z" in N. Y. Gazetteer, Dec. i, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
987-989. (For identity of " Z," vide ibid., pp. 1096-1097.) Vide also
Seabury, Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Con-
gress . . . (New York, 1774), p. 29: "Renounce all dependence on
Congress and committees. . . . Turn your eyes to your constitutional
representatives ..."
'^ The principal writings were : the articles by " Massachusettensis "
(Daniel Leonard) in Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, at intervals from Dec. 12,
1774, to April 3, 1775, afterwards published as a pamphlet; a series,
addressed " To the Honourable Peyton Randolph, Esq., late President
of the American Continental Congress," by " Grotius " in the same
newspaper; the anonymous pamphlets, What Think Ye of Congress
Now?, Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress
436 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
provisions which seemed to establish the Continental Con-
gress as a sort of de facto government. *'Massachusettensis"
claimed that the Association contained all the constituent
parts of a law, including an enacting clause, the establish-
ment of rules of conduct, and the affixing of pains and
penalties. Although the terms '' request " and " recom-
mend " were sometimes used, the usual style was that used
by an authoritative assemblage — that such and such a
thing " be '' done. " By their assuming the powers of
legislation, the Congress have not only superseded our pro-
vincial legislatures, but have excluded ever}' idea of mon-
arch}^ ; and not content with the havock already made in our
constitution, in the plenitude of their power have appointed
another Congress to be held in May." ^ The Association,
according to another writer, " is calculated for the meridian
of a Spanish Inquisition; it is subversive of, inconsistent
with, the wholesome laws of our happy Constitution ; it ab-
rogates or suspends many of them essential to the peace
and order of Government; it takes the Government out of
the hands of the Govemour, Council, and General Assem-
bly; and the execution of the laws out of the hands of the
Civil Magistrates and Juries." ^
A third writer agreed that the committees appointed to
enforce the Association were " a court established upon the
same principles with the papish Inquisition. No proofs, no
evidence are called for. . . . No jury is to be impannelled.
. . . hy a Farmer, and The Congress Canvassed . . . by A. W. Farmer,
probably written by Samuel Seabury; a pamphlet, Alarm to the Legis-
lature of New York . . ., by Isaac Wilkins ; articles in the N. Y.
Gazetteer by " Z," "A Freeholder of Essex," and others.
^ Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Mch. 27, 1775. Vide also Congress Can-
vassed, p. 14.
W. Y. Gazetteer, Feb. 16, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1211-
1213. Vide also Congress Canvassed, p. 20; Alarm to Legislature,
pp. 7. 9.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
437
No check is appointed upon this court; no appeal from its
determination." ^ The means prescribed for carrying out
the Association, affirmed '' Grotius " in an open letter to
the recent president of Congress, " would shock the soul of
a savage; your tenth, eleventh and fourteenth articles con-
tain such a system of lawless tyranny as a Turk would
startle at; it is a barbarous inroad upon the first rights of
men in a social state ; it is a violent attack upon the lawfully
acquired property of honest, industrious individuals." "
One unworldly Connecticut parson furnished another
ground for objection : " The Saviour of the world, whose
servant I am, hath commanded me to feed the hungry, to
give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked . . . Here it
will be to no purpose to say that such and such persons are
mine enemies; because our Lord hath expressly . . .
commanded me to extend my good offices to mine enemies
as such. And I beg the Committee to remember that Min-
isters of the gospel are, in a particular manner, commanded
to keep hospitality." ^ " Had an Act of Parliament formed
such an inquisition . . . ," declared another writer, " how
should we have heard of the liberty of the subject, his right
to trial by his peers, &c., &c. Yet these men, at the same
time they arraign the highest authority on earth, insolently
trample on the liberties of their fellow-subjects ; and, with-
out the shadow of a trial, take from them their property,
grant it to others, and not content with all this, hold them
up to contempt, and expose them to the vilest injuries." *
^ Congress Canvassed, p. 14.
• Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Feb. 6, 1775.
' " I am no politician, am not connected with politicians as such ;
and never will be either," he added. Rev. John Sayre, Fairfield, Conn.,
in N. Y. Journ., Sept. 28, 1775. For a scriptural answer, vide ibid.,
Oct. 26.
*"Z" in N. Y. Gazetteer, Dec. i, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i,
pp. 987-989.
438 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The opinion of the average moderate was well expressed
by the sentiment : *' If I must be enslaved, let it be by a
KING at least, and not by a parcel of upstart lawless Com-
mittee-men. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by
the jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and
vermin." ^
A great deal was said about the impracticability of the
Association as a means of redress. The pamphlet, Free
Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress,
went extensively into the matter. It was predicted that
there would be twenty times as much confusion and distress
in America as in Great Britain; that prices would soar;
that the American merchants would lose their trade per-
manently, for Great Britain would look elsewhere for raw
materials; that Parliament would block up all American
ports; that legal processes would be suspended; that the
farmers would be the chief sufferers ; and all this calamity
in a fruitless effort to obtain results which should be sought
only through the usual legal channels.
The moderate members of Congress were frankly accused
of having been outwitted and outmaneuvered by the radicals.
" You had all the honors, — you had all the leading cards in
every sute in your own hands," one writer told the moder-
ates, " and yet, astonishing as it may appear to by-standers,
you suffered sharpers to get the odd trick." ^ A New York
writer stated that he had reason to believe that the New
York delegates had opposed the headlong measures of Con-
gress and still disapproved of them; and he called upon
^ Free Thoughts, p. 23. Vide also "A Freeholder of Essex " in A^. Y.
Gazetteer, Jan. 5, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1094-1096.
' " Grotius " in Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Feb. 6, 1775- "Adams, with
his crew, and the haughty Sultans of the South juggled the whole con-
clave of the Delegates," was the way a Maryland merchant phrased it
in a published letter. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1194-
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 439
them to assert themselves despite the obligations of per-
petual secrecy/
The special concession granted to South Carolina in the
Association caused much comment, even in radical circles.
The writer just mentioned called upon the New York dele-
gates to state why the South Carolina delegates had suc-
ceeded better than they in securing special indulgences for
their constituents." A Virginia scribbler protested that the
tobacco interests had been sacrificed to the rice planters and
wheat exporters.^ One distracted fellow burst into verse,
eighty-two stanzas in length, in the following manner :
LIX
Suppose all truth the Congress say,
No doubt they make the worst;
Can we, my Friends, for many a day,
Be so completely curst,
LX
As have no cloaths, no grog, no tea,
To cheer our drooping spirits;
And snug in clover smugglers see.
Who have not half our merits.
LXI
Isn't it now a pretty story,
One smells it in a trice.
If I send wheat, I am a Tory,
But Charles-town may send RICE.*
Even the Albany Committee of Correspondence, upon a
plea of the necessity for harmony, took occasion to inquire
of the New York delegates upon what principle a discrimi-
nation had been allowed in favor of South Carolina.^
^ What Think Ye of Congress Now?, pp. 23-24. Vide also Alarm
to Legislature, p. 9 n.
2 What Think Ye of Congress Now?, p. 40.
^A^. Y. Gazetteer, Apr. 13, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. il, p. 163.
* Poor Man's Advire to his Poor Neighbours (New York, 1774).
^ N. Y. Journ., Feb. 16, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1097-1098.
440 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Notwithstanding the polemics of the opposition, the work
of establishing the administrative machinery for the Asso-
ciation had gotten irresistibly under way. The fact of the
matter was that the moderate elements lacked an organiza-
tion through which to express their opposition at this crit-
ical juncture.^ Indeed, the logic of their own position in-
clined them to avoid all extra-legal organization even for
purposes of self-defense.^ Furthermore, the coup of the
radicals in nationalizing the committee system shook to the
center such control as the moderates had already established
in various localities. The energies of the friends of the As-
sociation were first directed to the appointment of commit-
tees of observation and inspection in the local subdivisions of
the several provinces, and to obtaining formal sanction for
the Association from the provincial assembly or other pro-
vincial meeting. It was not specified in the Association that
endorsement by a provincial body was necessary — though
perhaps it was hinted at in Article xiv — but in any case it
was good politics. The remainder of this chapter will be
devoted to the progress that was made along these lines.
- Massachusetts, being the storm centre of the contest with
Great Britain, was one of the earliest provinces to move.
The leading ports (Boston harbor being closed) led the
way: Marblehead and Newburyport appointed committees
^ Cf. Gage's view; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 981.
^ " Pray examine the Province law throughout, and all other law
authorities that ever were held in repute by the English nation," de-
clared " Spectator " to the signers of a loyalist association, " and you
will not find one instance wherein they justify a number of men in
combining together in any league whatsoever to support the law, but
quite the reverse; for the law is supported in another manner; it is
maintained by Magistrates and Officers . . . and not by a number of
men combining together." N. H. Gas., Mch. 31, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch.,
vol. ii, p. 252.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 441
early in November, and Salem about a month later. Gov-
ernor Gage had deemed it unsafe to permit the Assembly
to meet; and the radical leadership of the province had
therefore devolved upon the provincial congress, which was,
to a large extent, the rejected Assembly under a different
name. When the provincial congress met on November 23,
1774, in their first session after the adjournment of the
Continental Congress, they lost no time in taking under
consideration the proceedings of the Continental Congress ;
and on December 5 they voted their endorsement, recom-
mending that committees of inspection be chosen in every
town and district not already having such committees.^
The town of Boston now acted. After unanimously
voting to continue the committee of correspondence — that
grain of mustard that had now become a great tree — the
town meeting on December 7 appointed a committee of
sixty-three, headed by Gushing, Hancock and Sam Adams,
to enforce the Association. , It is significant of the trend of
events that a goodly majority of the Sixty-Three were
small shopkeepers, mechanics and other men of non-mer-
cantile employment ; and that among the members appeared
such names as Thomas Chase and John Avery, the distil-
lers, Paul Revere, the silversmith, and Henry Bass, the^
radical merchant, — men who had been " Sons of Liberty " -^
in the earlier times and had hitherto been nameless for the
purposes, of the public press and committee rosters." The
' Mass. Spy, Dec. 8, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 993-998.
* An unfriendly characterization of the Sixty-Three supplies inter-
esting facts concerning certain obscure members of this committee.
John Pulling was " Bully of the Mohawk tribe ; " John Winthrop, Jr.,
was "AHas Joyce Jr., Chairman of the Committee for tarring and
feathering ; " Captain Ruddock, " supposed to be one Abiel Ruddock,
formerly head of the Mob on the fifth of November ; " Joseph Eayres,
" carpenter, eminent for erecting Liberty poles." ^ M. H. S. Procs.,.
vol. xii, pp. 139-142.
442
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
meeting recommended that the towns of the province should
follow the example of Weymouth and facilitate enforce-
ment by publishing copies of the Association in sufficient
number to supply every head of family.^
Most of the towns followed the advice of the provincial
congress, and did not go to the trouble of appointing special
committees of observation and inspection; for they had
already established committees for the enforcement of the
Solemn League and Covenant, now superseded by the Asso-
ciation. Marshfield presented the only instance of a deter-
mination to defeat the Association by town action. The
citizens, of that town had won for themselves the privilege
of drinking tea and killing sheep by obtaining the presence
of a detachment of British troops; and on February 20,
1775, a town meeting, duly licensed by Governor Gage
under the Massachusetts Government Act, rejected the re-
solves of the Continental and Provincial Congresses and all
other illegal assemblages. A minority protest, signed later
by sixty-four names, made the most of a bad situation by
charging trickery and misrepresentation.^ In summing up,
it would appear that Massachusetts was well equipped with
machinery to prevent any systematic infringements of the
Association.
New Hampshire had always been laggard in entering
into extra-legal organization. While the Continental Con-
gress was yet in session, organized opposition to the out-
come of the Congress was begun in Hillsborough County.*
^Mass. Spy, Dec. 8, 1774; also Bos. Town Recs. (i7TO-i777), PP- 205-207.
^Bos. Eve. Post, Mch. 6, 13, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
1177-1178, 1249-1251.
^ Twenty-three inhabitants of Frances-Town and fifty-four inhabi-
tants of New Boston signed agreements pledging their opposition to the
unlawful proceedings of men who pretended to maintain the very
liberties that they were trampling under foot. On Nov. 7, the town
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 443
However, in October, the fifty-two voters in attendance at
a town meeting at Portsmouth rescinded the action of fifty-
six voters at a previous meeting against furnishing dona-
tions to stricken Boston, and proceeded to appoint a "Com-
mittee of Ways and Means " of forty-five members. One-
half of the number refused to act, according to Governor
Wentworth; but when news of the proceedings of the Con-
tinental Congress reached Portsmouth, the remainder of
the committee at once assumed the duties of supervising the
execution of the Association. Governor Wentworth re-
ported on December 2 that the measures of the Continental
Congress were " received implicitly " by the province.^ On
the same day as his letter, the provincial committee, which
had been appointed by the first New Hampshire convention,
called upon the inhabitants of the province for a general
submission to the Association. In the subsequent weeks,
the various towns began to establish committees of inspec-
tion.2
Since the Assembly had not met for ten months past and
was not likely to sit again soon, a convention of the province
was held at Exeter on January 25, 1775, which unanimously
endorsed the Association. In an address to the province,
the inhabitants were exhorted to adhere to it strictly and to
support their committees of inspection.^ Just how many
of Hollis in the same county adopted similar resolutions. A^ H. Gas.,
Nov. 18, 1774, Feb. 10, 1775. While the Continental Congress was
still sitting, a mob at Portsmouth prevented the landing of a shipment
of tea but permitted the payment of the duty on it. Ibid., Sept. 16,
23, 1774; 4 An:. Arch., vol. i, pp. 786-787.
1 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 981-982, 1013.
^The organization of the following committees was noted in the
newspapers: in December, Exeter, New Market; in January, Parish of
Hawke, Temple, Kingstown, Epsom, Greenland. At Brentwood, the
committee of correspondence took over the duties of the committee of
inspection in February.
^4 Ant. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1180-1182.
444 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 176S.1776
New Hampshire towns finally organized committees of in-
spection, it is impossible to say. It is important to note, on
the one hand, that much had been done to develop a public
opinion favorable to the Association ; and on the other, that
the chief avenues of trade with the world were well guarded
by the presence of the " Forty- Five " at Portsmouth, and
by a network of committees along the overland routes
through Massachusetts.
In Rhode Island, the first official action appears to have
been taken on December 5, 1774, when the General Assem-
bly voted its thanks to the Continental Congress and recom-
mended the selection of committees of inspection to the
towns of the provinces.^ Within two weeks Newport and
Providence, the leading ports, had acted on the recommen-
dation.^ It would appear that similar action was taken by
the smaller towns.
The course of Connecticut was not unlike that of Rhode
Island, in many respects. Early in November, 1774, the
Connecticut General Assembly unanimously approved the
proceedings of Congress and sent orders into the several
towns for a strict compliance therewith.^ The action of
the legislature gained immediate attention; and by the end
of the year the establishment of twenty-eight committees
had been noted in the newspapers.* Other towns acted
later.
^R. I. Col. Recs., vol. vii, p. 263.
^Ibid.. vol. vii, pp. 284-285.
^Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Nov. 14, 1774; Hollister, G. H., History of
Connecticut (Hartford, 1857), vol. ii, p. 159.
* In November, the ten parishes of New Haven County ; Woodbury,
Pomfret, Waterbury, Derby, Milford, Wallingford; in December,
Windham. Saybrook. Danbury, Lebanon, Guilford, Simsbury, New
London, Stratford, Hartford, Norwich, Sharon, Fairfield.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 445
LOne sectionjDf Connecticut, represented by a group of the
smaller towns of Fairfield County in the western part of
the province, sought to prevent the acceptance of the Asso-
ciation. ; The animus appears to have been sectarian, being
; one phase of the long-standing antagonism of the strong
\Episcopalian element in these towns to Congregationalist
/undertakings.^ The two largest towns of the county, Strat-
V ford and Fairfield, chose committees of inspection in De-
cember, and the town of Redding took similar action a little
later. But on January 30, 1775, a town meeting at Ridge-
field rejected the Association with only three dissenting
votes out of a total present of nearly two hundred, and de-
nounced the Congress as unconstitutional." A large meet-
ing of the town of Newtown rejected the Association with
but one dissenting vote a week later. ^ These defiant reso-
lutions emboldened one hundred and forty-one inhabitants
of Redding and the vicinity to denounce and forswear all
committees in a written statement ; ^ and caused the town
of Danbury to revoke the appointment of a committee of
inspection, made at an earlier meeting, and to refuse to
send delegates to a projected county convention.^ But Dan-
bury underwent another change of heart, for when the
convention of Fairfield County assembled on February 14,
^A^. y. Gazetteer, Feb. 16, 1775. Vide also Gilbert, G. A., "The
Connecticut (Loyalists," Am. Hist. Rev., vol. iv, pp. 273-281. One-
third of the people of Fairfield County were EpiscopaHans. Beards-
ley, History of the Episcopal Church in Conn. (Boston, 1865), vol. i,
p. 289.
'AT. Y. Gazetteer, Feb. 2, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1202-1203.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 1215; also N. Y. Gazetteer, Feb. 23, 1775.
^ Ibid., Feb. 23, 1775 ; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1258-1260. One
hundred and twenty men signed similar resolves at New Milford, a town
in Litchfield County across the Housatonic from Fairfield County.
Ibid., vol. i, p. 1270; also A^. Y. Gazetteer, Mch. 16.
^ Ibid., Feb. 23, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1038-1039, 1215-1216.
446
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Ridgefield and Newtown were the only towns not repre-
sented.
f Now began a series of efforts on the part of the radicals
j to discredit and defeat these opponents of the Association.
I The county convention denounced a selectman of Newtown
( who had sold some copies of the Association for a pint of
flip, and called upon those citizens of Ridgefield and New-
town, who were attached to their country, to stand forth
and affix their signatures to the measures of Congress, so
that all commerce and connection might be withdrawn from
the other inhabitants of the towns/ In view of the ap-
proaching session of the Assembly at New Haven, the town
meeting at the capital resolved unanimously that no person
should entertain the deputies who were expected from the
delinquent towns.^ The Connecticut Assembly, when it
met in March, appointed a committee to investigate condi-
tions in the two towns and to determine how far any per-
sons holding provincial commissions were concerned in
promoting resolutions in direct opposition of the repeated
resolves of the legislature.^ The dissentients at Redding
were held up for public neglect by the committee of obser-
vation of that town."*
These tactics of the radicals brought only partial results.^
On ]\Iarch 20, fifty-five inhabitants of Ridgefield accepted
the invitation of the county convention and pledged them-
selves to the Continental Association. By April 12, seventy
inhabitants of Newtown had signed a statement disowning
the action of the town meeting. Finally, in December,
1775, Ridgefield appointed a committee of inspection and
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1236-1238; also N. Y. Journ., Feb. 23, 1775.
' Conn. Cour., Mch. 6, 1775; Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Mch. 13.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 107.
* Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1259-1260; also -V. Y. fov.ru., Apr. 20, 1775.
' 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1238-1239; vol. ii, p. 1135.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
447
fell heartily into line. The town of Newtown remained
obdurate with respect to the Association, although the
selectmen and principal inhabitants were prevailed upon to
give bond not to take up arms against the colonies. An
active loyalist sympathizer was able to write as late as
October, 1781, that "Newtown and the Church-of -England
part of Redding were, he believed, the only parts of New
England that had refused to comply with the doings of
Congress." ^ But so far as Connecticut as a whole was
concerned, the province was exceedingly well organized to
supervise the enforcement of the Association. Ridgefield
and Newtown were, after all, small inland towns and of no
importance commercially.
In New York the movement for establishing committees
of observation and inspection displayed many of the ear-
marks of the earlier contests between moderate and radical.
But there were some significant differences. Thus, the
measures adopted by the Continental Congress contained,
by implication, a sanction of the radical party in New York
city, hitherto discredited and outgeneraled by the moder-
ates.^ It remained to be proved whether the radicals could
realize on this asset. The leading radical organization, the j
Committee of Mechanics, took an early occasion to transmit i
their thanks to the New York delegates for the " wise,
prudent and spirited measures " of the Congress — meas-
ures which they well knew had been adopted against the
best judgment of these very delegates.^
^ Am. Hist. Rev., vol. iv, p. 279 and n.
2 " Behold the wretched state to which we are reduced," wrote Wil-
kins in Alarm to the Legislature, "A foreign power is brought in to
govern this province. Laws made at Philadelphia, by factious men
from New-England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia
and the Carolinas, are imposed upon us by the most imperious menaces."
3 N. y. Gazetteer, Nov. 24, 1774; also 4 Am- Arch., vol. i, p. 987.
448
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The moderates found themselves in something of a
dilemma: either they must oppose the united voice of the
continent as embodied in the Congress and thus list them-
selves with the office-holding gentry, or they must perpet-
uate their ascendancy in the extra-legal movement and thus
keep a controlling hand in the enforcement of the Associa-
tion. The academic minds of the party chose the logical
course; and important members of the community, like the
Reverend Samuel Seabury, the Reverend Miles Cooper, the
Reverend Charles Inglis and the Reverend Thomas Chand-
ler, denounced the Congress and all its doings, and became
'* loyalists," or " Tories." [But the men of practical affairs,
of large business connections and of political experience,
did not dare to follow their lead, for they had too much at
stake. / " The Merchants," wrote Colden on November 2,
1774, " are at present endeavouring to sift out each others
Sentiments upon the Association proposed by the Congress.
A certain sign, I take it. that they wish to avoid it." ^
Eventually they accepted the necessities of their situation
and determined to make a fight for the control of affairs,
reserving for a future contingency their exit from the
movement." Thus, Isaac Low continued to exert his influ-
ence as head of the " Fifty-One," and served as chairman
of the later committees of Sixty and One Hundred: but,
aware that his influence was waning, he refused to partici-
pate in the provincial convention in the latter part of April,
and likewise eliminated himself as a candidate for the
Second Continental Congress.
The old committee of '' Fifty-One," the bulwark of the
mercantile interests, made the first move with reference to
the Association. Expressing no intention of dissolving
* Colden, Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 369-370.
^ Vide ibid., vol. ii, p. 372.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 449
their present organization, they issued a call for ward meet-
ings of the freemen and freeholders for the purpose of
electing a committee of inspection for each ward/ It is
clear that the " Fifty-One " intended to supervise the ward
committees and to keep a close rein on affairs generally.
This plan met with the resolute disapproval of the Com-
mittee of Mechanics, and, fearing to brook their opposition
in the changed face of public affairs, the '' Fifty-One " re-
quested a conference with them on the subject. The out-
come of the conference was a virtual defeat for the mer-
chants and the adoption of a plan that was in entire har-
mony with the spirit of the Association. The "Fifty-One"
were to be dissolved; instead of ward committees, there
should be one general committee of inspection ; the " Fifty-
One " and the Committee of Mechanics should exchange
one hundred names, out of which the new committee should
be nominated." Furthermore, the election was to be held
at the city hall, where, because of the crowd, it would be
difficult to restrict the vote to freemen and freeholders.
On November 22 this plan was duly carried out, and a com-
mittee of sixty was chosen, although, according to Colden's
account, only thirty or forty citizens were present.^
The outcome of the election was a victory for the rad-
icals. The Committee of Sixty was essentially radical in
character although all varieties of opinion were represented
and the merchant, Isaac Lx>w, continued as chairman.*
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 328-329, 967.
' Ibid., vol. i, p. 330. The Committee of Mechanics continued in
existence.
' Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 2>72-
*■ Professor Becker's analysis of the Sixty is as follows : 29 members
of the original Fifty-One found places on the Sixty, and of these 21
gave active or passive support to the War for Independence. Of the
rejected members of the Fifty-One, 17 of the 22 became loyalists or
neutrals with loyalist sympathies. The 31 members of the Sixty who
450
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
With such zealots in the saddle as Sears and McDougall.
no merchant of insight could longer hope that the enforce-
ment of the Association would be merely nominal. **Anti-
Tyrannicus " might well lament after four months of the
rule of the Sixty : " While the late Committee of Fifty-One
acted as a Committee of Correspondence for this City, the
generality of its inhabitants, particularly the most sensible
and judicious part of them, were happy in reposing the
trust with so respectable a body, composed as it was of the
principal citizens; but when the present Committee was
formed out of the ruins, as I may say, of the old Commit-
tee, was there a cool considerate man among us, who did
not forbode evil?" ^
Early in November the " Fifty-One " had sent a circular
letter to the rural counties recommending the appointment
of committees of inspection pursuant to the Association.^
Enthusiastic response could hardly be expected in view of
the lassitude exhibited at the time of the election of dele-
gates to Congress ; and there was even a possibility that the
moderate elements would become active and defeat the
plans of aggressive radical minorities. Actually the results
were much the same as on the earlier occasion. Only three
of the thirteen rural counties gave the Association a favor-
able reception at this early time — Suffolk, comprising cen-
tral and eastern Long Island; and on the mainland, the
adjoining counties of Ulster and Albany. The most radical
action was taken by Suffolk County. On November 15, the
county committee of correspondence voted a full approval
were not members of the Fifty-One included about ten who became
active radicals and not more than five or six loyalists. A^. Y. Parties,
1760-1776, pp. 167-168.
^N. Y. Gazetteer, Mch. 23, 1775-
''4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 329. Professor Becker has assembled all the
facts in the discussion that follows in op. cit., pp. 169-173, 187.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
451
of the Association and recommended it to the several towns
to see that its provisions were executed. Within two months
most of the towns and districts of the county had taken
favorable action/ Next to Suffolk, the Association gained
widest support in Ulster County, where a joint meeting of
the freeholders of five towns recommended the appointment
of committees on January 6, 1775. In the subsequent
months such action was taken by five or more towns. ^ In
Albany County, the county committee of correspondence
endorsed the Association, with some misgivings, on Decem-
ber 10, 1774, and effected a reorganization of the commit-
tee, by which the three city wards and the rural precincts
were given representation. The action of endorsement met
with no public expostulation, except from a meeting in
King's district under the leadership of five of the king's
justices.
The contest over the acceptance of the Association was
sharp in Queens and Tryon Counties and the outcome was
a partial and barren victory for the radicals. Committees
of inspection were appointed in the former county at
Jamaica and Newtown, but the action was quickly repu-
diated by numbers of inhabitants. At Flushing in the same
county, it would appear that about one-seventh of the free-
holders, having come together at a funeral, appointed the
committee. At Oyster Bay, a meeting called for that par-
ticular purpose adjourned without action. In Tryon County
the radicals succeeded in appointing committees in only
four districts.^ In the eight remaining counties the Asso-
ciation was either disowned, ignored, or combated by
* Among them were Huntington, Smithtown, Islip and Southhaven.
Because of opposition, Brookhaven did not appoint a committee of
inspection until June 8, 1775.
' Shawangunk, Hanover, Wallkill, New Windsor and Kingston.
" Palatine, Canajoharie, German Flatts and Mohawk.
452
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763.1776
means of loyalist associations which asserted the " un-
doubted right to liberty in eating, drinking, buying, sell-
ing" etc.'^
The rather general disapprobation which the Association
met outside of the city and county of New York made
some form of provincial endorsement extremely important;
and a determined effort was put forth to secure the sanction
of the Assembly. This Assembly, which came together on
January lo, 1775, had been in existence since 1769; and
although it had passed a vote in the earlier year approving
the non-importation regulations which the merchants them-
selves had established, the body was not likely to prove re-
sponsive to the altered condition of public affairs in 1775."
Nevertheless the game was sufficiently uncertain to warrant
a trial by the radicals.^ On January 26 an initial attempt
was made to get the Assembly to pass judgment on the
Continental Congress, but through a resort to the previous
question the matter was stopped by a vote of eleven to ten.
The loyalist speakers pointed out that Congress was seek-
ing to wield powers properly belonging to a legislature,
and charged openly that the New York delegates in Con-
gress had opposed the proceedings.* In the subsequent
^ Quoted from the Dutchess County Association ; A^. Y. Gazetteer,
Feb. 9, 1775. A committee, appointed at White Plains in Westchester
County, was repudiated by 45 freeholders.
' Mass. Spy, Feb. 16, 1775 ; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. npi-
' Colden himself entertained doubts as to the course that the Assembly
would take. Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 378.
*4 A?ii. Ar£h., vol. i, pp. 1189-1191, 12S6-1287; Cotin. Hist. Soc. Colls.,
vol. ii, pp. 193-194; Brush's speech in A''. Y. Gazetteer, Mch. 2, 1775.
" Worthy old Silver Locks," when he learned of the vote of the As-
sembly, " cried out-nLord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in
peace." A moderate's letter in Mass. Gaz. & Post-Boy, Feb. 6, 1775.
It is to be noted that Colden was in charge of the New York govern-
ment at the three most trying times during the revolutionary move-
ment: the Stamp Act, the tea episode, and the period of the First
Continental Congress.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 453
four weeks, as tardy members made their appearance, three
more attempts were made to commit the Assembly in the
matter, but all to no purpose.^ These defeats convinced the
radicals that they could hope for nothing from the Assem-
bly, and they proceeded to do all in their power to undo the
damage which the course of the Assembly had wrought the
cause.
One spirited article, circulated in the newspapers, anal-
yzed the personnel of the New York government, and pur-
ported to show that most of the members of the Council
and Assembly either themselves had access to the public
crib through lucrative contracts or well-paid positions, or
•else were related to those who did.^ A report, originating
in London, was given publicity, to the efifect that several
members of the majority in the Assembly had received
bribes of £1000 for their votes, and that large land grants,
pensions and high offices were to be rewards for the leaders
of the majority.^ It is possible that the radicals would
now have followed the example of Massachusetts, New
Hampshire and other provinces and sought an endorsement
of the Association at the hands of a provincial convention.*
But much valuable time had been lost in the futile efforts
with the Assembly; and, furthermore, means had been
found of rendering the Association effectual without such
^ On Feb. 17, a motion to thank the New York delegates for their
services was lost, 15 to 9. On Feb. 21, a motion to thank the mer-
chants and inhabitants of the province for their adherence to the
Association was defeated, 15 to 10. On Feb. 23, a motion to appoint
delegates to the next Continental Congress was rejected, 17 to 9.
4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 128^-1297.
' Pa. Journ., Feb. 22, 1775 ; also Conn. Cour., Apr. 10.
^ The identity of the members was but thinly disguised in most in-
stances. Pa. Journ., May 17, 1775.
* A letter from the South Carolina General Committee, dated Mch. i,
1775, urged this course on New York. A^ Y. Journ., Apr. 6, 1775; also
4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 1-3.
y
454 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
sanction/ When, therefore, the radicals reached the de-
cision of caHing a provincial convention, it was only with a
view to the election of delegates to the impending Second
Continental Congress.
Fortunately for the administration of the Association,
the negative attitude of the Assembly and the absence of
committees of inspection in most of the rural parts were
matters of no essential importance. New York city was
the entrepot of commerce for the entire province, as well as
for portions of Connecticut and New Jersey; and as long
as this portal was well guarded, no serious violations of the
Association could occur. The Committee of Sixty, sta-
tioned there, was clearly of radical complexion; and its
successor, the Committee of One Hundred, elected upon the
receipt of the news of Lexington and Concord, was even
more largely so. On its roll were many members of the
old Sixty ; and among the new members were such unmiti-
gated radicals as John Morin Scott, John Lamb, and Daniel
Dunscomb, long chairman of the Committee of Mechanics.^
* Colden wrote to Dartmouth on May 3, 1775 that, from the time the
Assembly deviated from the general association of the colonies, " a
Design was evidently form'd in the other Colonies to drive the People
Here from acquiescing in the Measures of the Assembly, & to force
them into the General Plan of Association & Resistance. This Design
was heartily seconded by many among ourselves. Every species of
public and private Resentment was threatened to terrify the Inhabi-
tants of this Province if they continued Disunited from the others.
The certainty of looseing all the Debts due from the other Colonies,
which are very considerable, and every other Argument of private
Interest that could Influence the Merchants, or any one, was indus-
triously circulated." Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 401.
' After making a careful analysis of the new committee and its most
active members, Professor Becker concludes: "it is clear that the com-
mittee of One Hundred . . . was largely dominated by those who had
1 directed the Sixty, assisted by newly elected radicals; whatever it rep-
Iresented ostensibly, it was in fact the organ of that conservative-
radical combination which was destined to inaugurate the revolution
and achieve independence." Op. cit., pp. 197-199.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 455
Unless some nearby harbors in New Jersey should furnish
opportunity for evasion, the province was pretty effectually
sealed. The people of Jersey, however, as we shall see,
were definitely committed to the Continental Association.
The movement for ratifying the Association in New
Jersey got under way early in December, 1774, when the
three precincts of Essex County observed the directions of
Article xi and appointed committees of observation.^ The
movement spread rapidly, and the example of Essex County
in establishing committees of inspection in the local sub-
divisions was widely copied. By February i, 1775, com-
mittees of observation and inspection had been appointed in
eight of the thirteen counties ; ^ and at least two other coun-
ties acted shortly after. ^ Every populous county, with the
possible exception of Salem, was now organized for the
enforcement of the Association. No public opposition of
any importance appeared against the establishment of com-
mittees.* With such a broad basis of popular support, it
was not surprising that the z\ssembly of the province voted
approval of the proceedings of Congress on January 24,
1775.'
^ Elizabeth, Newark and Acquackanonck. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, 1009-
loio, 1012-1013, 1028; iV. Y. Gaz., Dec. 26, 1774.
' Other than Essex, these counties were in chronological order : Mon-
mouth, Gloucester, Somerset, Cumberland, Middlesex. Hunterdon, and
Morris. The italicization indicates the counties in which township
committees of inspection were organized. 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 35;
Pa. Gas., Dec. 21, 1774; N. Y. Gaz., Dec. 26; Pa. Packet, Jan. 19, 1775;
4. Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1083-1084, 1163-1164, 1106.
* Burlington and Bergen; ibid., vol. i. pp. 1235-1236; vol. ii, p. 579.
* For two instances, however, vide ibid., vol. i, p. 1165; vol. ii, pp.
130-131-
^ An appearance of unanimity was given to this vote through the
skilful manipulation of " the Junto at Elizabeth Town," i. e., William
Livingston, John DeHart and Elias Boudinot. i N. J. Arch., vol. x,
456 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The fact that Philadelphia had been the scene of the
transactions of the Continental Congress gave decided im-
petus to the movement for ratification of the Association
throughout Pennsylvania. In the city the chief source of
opposition was the group of wealthy Quaker merchants,
who controlled the policy of the sect to which they be-
longed. Galloway, outwitted in his first attempt to play
politics on a continental scale, was seeking balm for his
wounded sensibilities in the company of congenial spirits
in the city and in New York; and he did not appear in
public denunciation of Congress until after the radicals had
firmly established their organization in Pennsylvania.
The existing Committee of Forty-Three at Philadelphia,
representing city and county, had never been entirely satis-
factory to the ultra-radicals; it had been accepted by them
simply as the best committee that could be obtained under
the circumstances then prevailing. Even before the Conti-
nental Congress had begun its sessions, appeals had ap-
peared in the press, emanating avowedly from the laboring
class, demanding the appointment of a new committee.^
As the Continental Association pointed to the selection of
a new committee, the radicals at once made known their
opinion that separate committees should be chosen for the
city and for the county. Their purpose evidently was to
preclude the possibility of the city moderates dominating
the action of the county, as they had done to a certain de-
Pp. 537, 575-577- The Quaker members of the Assembly made an
exception to " such parts [of the proceedings of Congress] as seem
to wear an appearance, or may have a tendency to force (if any such
there be) as inconsistent with their reHgious principles." 4 Am. Arch.,
vol. i, p. 1 124. It would appear, however, that this saving clause was
removed on Jan. 25. Vide ibid., vol. i, p. 1287; J N. J. Arch., vol.
X, p. 546.
■^ "An Artisan" in Pa. Gaz.. Aug. 31, 1774; "A Mechanic" in Pa.
Packet, Sept. 5.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
457
gree in the election of the Forty-Three; but they tactfully
based their objections on the ground of convenience and
greater effectiveness of action.^ They also demanded, in
curious contrast to their New York brethren, that the elec-
tion be held by ballot, for the reason, it would appear, that
the voters could thus be best protected from the '' undue
influence " and '' electioneering attempts " of the citizens
of wealth and position.^
The Forty-Three had already sent out a call for a public
meeting on Saturday, November 12, 1774, to elect a joint
committee for city and county/ On Monday of that week,
a mass meeting, summoned without authority of the Forty-
Three, came together at the state house, and resolved by
unanimous vote that the election should be held in the sev-
eral wards by ballot of those who could vote for represen-
tatives in the Assembly, and that the city and its suburbs
should elect a committee of sixty separate from the county.*
The plan adopted by this meeting, unauthorized though it
was, prevailed. Separate tickets of names for membership
in the city committee were made out by the two parties,
and these were printed and distributed for electioneering
purposes. On election day the list of sixty names submitted
by the radicals won by a great majority.^ At the particular
request of the freeholders of two suburban districts, addi-
* Pa. Gas., Nov. 2, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 956-957.
' " Cassandra," a radical, in Pa. Gas., Mch. 20, 1776.
* Ibid., Nov. 2, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 95^.
* Ibid., vol. i, pp. 965-967; also Pa. Gas., Nov. 9, 1774.
* It is evident that only a small minority of all the citizens partici-
pated in the voting. 517 votes in all were cast in the city and the
Northern Liberties; and of these, 499 were for the radical ticket, with
very few exceptions to any one name. " Tiberius " in Pa. Ledger,
Mch. 16, 1776, Not one-sixth of the people voted, according to a
Philadelphia writer in the N. Y. Gasetteer, Feb. 23, 1775.
458
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
tional members were included in the committee, making the
total number sixty-six/
The radical character of the Sixty-Six is indicated by
the fact that, in the election of the two committees that in
turn succeeded to the functions of this committee, few alter-
ations were made in the personnel. The Sixty-Six in-
cluded only seventeen members of the old Forty-Three;
and these were, for the most part, men of the more radical
stamp, like Dickinson, Thomas Mifflin. Joseph Reed and
Charles Thomson. Thomas Wharton and the Reverend
Dr. Smith were dropped permanently from committee rolls.
Of the new men on the Sixty-Six, William Bradford, editor
of the radical Pennsylvania Journal, was the best known.
The others were, for the greater part, small tradesmen,
mechanics, and nobodies who had been active in popular
demonstrations in earlier years. It is not necessary to
accept literally the scornful comment of a contemporary
that " there are many of this Committee who could not
get credit for 20s. ;" and it would be difficult, if not impos-
sible, to verify his further statement that one of the Sixty-
Six, '' an avowed Republican, had lately met with some dis-
appointments . . . ; another had acquired his fortune partly
by an illicit trade last war, and partly by taking advantage
of a Resolve of the people here, not to deal with the Rhode-
Islanders, after they had broke through the Non-Importa-
tion Agreement, by supplying them with Goods, when no
other Merchant would do it ; another was an illiterate Mer-
chant; another too insignificant to notice, &c." '
The counties of the province quickly emulated the ex-
^ The names of the original sixty and of the four members from
Southwark are in Pa. Gas., Nov. 16, lyy^', the names of the two from
Kensington are in ihid., Nov. 23. Lincoln states that the committee
was composed of sixty-seven. Rezr'y Movement in Pa., p, 185.
' -V. Y. Gazetteer, Feb. 23. 1775 : also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1232.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 459
ample of Philadelphia in preparing for the enforcement of
the Association. In Philadelphia County, committees were
■first selected for each township; and at a meeting of these
committees on November 26 a general committee of forty
was named/ By the middle of February seven other
counties had chosen committees of inspection ; ^ and the
committee of correspondence of another county had as-
sumed the function of executing the Association."^ There
is nO' record of action in the case of the two sparsely settled
frontier counties of Northumberland and Westmoreland.
Ratification of the Continental Association was easily
carried in the Pennsylvania Assembly. That body had
held its first session while the Continental Congress was
still in session; and its first act had been to elect a successor
to Joseph Galloway, who had been speaker for so many
years. The second session began on December 5, and on
the tenth the proceedings of Congress were approved by a
unanimous vote.* Three days later, Galloway made his
first appearance in this Assembly. During the remainder
of the session and in the February session he proceeded
quietly and indefatigably to work up sentiment among the
members in opposition to the measures of Congress, and
he gained an increasingly large following. But he was
laboring against heavy odds ; and the excitement, produced
by the acceleration of public events, contributed in defeat-
^ This committee contained three members of the old Committee of
Forty-Three. Pa. Gaz., Nov. 16, 30, 1774.
' In chronological order : Berks, Bucks. York, Chester. Northampton.
Cumberland and Lancaster. Vide 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, passim, and
contemporary newspapers. Galloway wrote from his country seat in
Bucks County: "A Committee has been appointed for this County by
a few warm People of neither Property or significance among us."
Pa. Mag., vol. xxi, p. 478.
'Bedford; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1226-1227, 1229-1230.
* Ibid., vol. i. pp. 869, 1023 ; Lincoln, np. cit., p. 185.
\^
460 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ing his efforts/ Meanwhile the Sixty-Six at Philadelphia,
feeling that the time had come for frankly discarding the
leadership of the Assembly, had called into being a second
provincial convention. When that body assembled on Jan-
uary 2:^, lyys^ it immediately adopted a unanimous resolu-
tion endorsing the Continental Association and pledging
obedience to its provisions.^
In general, the situation in Pennsylvania was extremel}^
favorable for a close observance of the Association. With
the only port of entry well guarded, the chief source of
danger lay in the course which the Quaker merchants might
choose to pursue.
There was nothing distinctive about the movement to
ratify the Association in the Delaware Counties. On No-
vember 28, 1774, a committee of inspection was chosen in
Newcastle County. Kent County followed this example on
December 7. Apparently no committee was chosen at this
early stage in Sussex County, where the preponderance of
Episcopalians made it more difficult for the radicals to
carry their objects.^ At the first session of the House of
Assembly following the dissolution of the Continental Con-
gress, several unanimous resolves were passed on March
I5» 1775* expressing high approval of the proceedings of
Congress.^
Of the plantation group, the earliest action was taken by
^ For Galloway's account of the sharp politics of this unavailing
struggle, vide his letters to Governor Franklin, i N. J. Arch., vol. x,
PP- 572-575, 579-586; his A Reply to the Observations of Lieutenant
General Sir William Howe, etc., pp. 127-128; and his letters to Ver-
planck, Pa. Mag., vol. xxi, pp. 477-484.
' Pa. Gas., Dec. 28, 1774, Feb. i, I775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1169.
'Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. x, pp. 81-82.
^A^. Y. Gas., Mch. 27, 1775; also 4 Aw. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 126-127.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
461
Maryland. The counties in which Annapolis and Baltimore
were located took the lead; and by the end of November
committees had been chosen in six of the sixteen counties/
On the twenty-first of the month a provincial convention
had assembled at Annapolis, but because of the shortness
of the notice several counties were not represented. Before
adjourning, the convention voted unanimous approval of
the proceedings of Congress and recommended to the people
of Maryland an inviolable obedience to the Association.
The convention renewed its vote at a full meeting on De-
cember 8-12.^ Under stimulus of these provincial meet-
ings, a committee of observation was chosen in St. Mary's
County, and several of the old committees were enlarged so
as to afford a broader representation.^ In the counties that
failed to appoint committees, it would appear that the ex-
isting committees of correspondence took over the new
functions. The province proved to be adequately organ-
ized to execute the Association.
In the neighboring province of Virginia, committees of
observation were chosen with almost clocklike precision.
Five counties acted in November; eleven counties and the
town of Williamsburg in December; five counties in Jan-
uary; and at least four others in the subsequent months.*
^ In chronological order : Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Calvert, Charles,
Frederick, Prince George's. Consult 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, index.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 991, 1031 ; also Md. Gas., Dec. i, 15, 1774.
' The size of committees was increased in Baltimore, Anne Arundel,
Frederick, Charles and Prince George's. Consult 4 Am. Arch., vol.
i, index.
* In November, Henrico, Elizabeth City, Warwick, Chesterfield and
James City; in December, Richmond, Essex, Isle of Wight, Princess
Anne, Caroline, Prince William, King and Queen, Northampton, Charles
City, Orange, WilHamsburg, Accomack; in January, Charlotte, Prince
George's, Fincastle, Pittsylvania and Westmoreland; in February, Lan-
caster; in April, Bedford; in May, Mecklenburgh and Augusta. Vide
ibid., vols, i, ii, passim, and Pinkney's Va. Gaz., passim.
462 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
In the provincial convention, which began to meet on
March 20, every one of the sixty-two counties was repre-
sented; which makes it probable that a great many more
counties than those noted here appointed committees of ob-
servation. On March 22 the members of the provincial
convention voted their unanimous approval of the meas-
ures of the Continental Congress.^ The new House of
Burgesses, the first since the dramatic dissolution of May,
1774, was not called into session until the first of June,
1775: and on the fifth of the month they also resolved,
without a dissenting voice, their entire approval of the pro-
ceedings of Congress.^
Thus, excellent machinery of enforcement was estab-
lished in all parts of the province. A source of weakness
was the small but powerful body of merchants and factors,
who could not be expected to relinquish without a struggle
their prospects of recovering the great sums which the
planters owed them ; but even these professed an allegiance
to the Association.
The movement in North Carolina for the appointment of
committees proceeded sluggishly, except at the principal
port, Wilmington, where a city committee of observation
was chosen on November 23, 1774, and a county committee
some weeks later. '^ Pitt County appointed a committee on
December 9, and other tidewater counties probably fol-
lowed this example. ** A pronounced and effective opposi-
tion to the Association was made in the populous back-
country counties, where the Regulators had risen up several
years before in opposition to the oppressive practices of the
very tidewater leaders who now sought their support
^ Va. Gac, Mch. 30, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii. p. 167.
' Jhid., vol. ii, p. 1193.
' ^V. C. Col. Recs.. vol. ix, pp. 1088-1089, 1107-1108. 1154.
* Ibid., vol. ix, p. 1095 : vol. x, pp. ^7-38-
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 463
against England/ Addresses were sent to Governor Mar-
tin, signed by many inhabitants of Anson, Rowan, Surry
and Guilford Counties, condemning the " lawless combina-
tions and unwarrantable practices " introduced into North
Carolina from other provinces.^
When a provincial convention assembled at Newbern on
Monday, April 3, 1775, nine county and two town constitu-
encies, most of them in the back country, failed to send
representatives ; and Governor Martin averred that : "in
many others the Committees consisting of 10 or 12 Men
took upon themselves to name them and [in] the rest they
were not chosen according to the best of my information
by 1-20 part of the people." " The convention met one day
before the time fixed for the sitting of the Assembly. This
was of considerable convenience, physically and politically,
since every member of the Assembly who appeared was,
with a single exception, also a member of the convention.*
Sturdy John Harvey acted as '" Mr. Moderator " of the
one body and " Mr. Speaker " of the other ; and indeed the
two bodies met in the same room, changing character with
chameleonlike suddenness when occasion demanded. Gov-
ernor Martin issued a proclamation for dispersing the con-
vention ; and on Tuesday he sent a message to the Assembly
denouncing the convention and all committees of observa-
tion.^ While the House on the following day set about
preparing an answer to the governor, the convention took
occasion to ratify the Continental Association in a formal
vote, and all the members of the convention, with a few ex-
1 Bassett, "Regulators of North Carolina," Am. Hist. Assn. Rep.
{1894), pp. 209-210.
^N. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix. pp. 1157, 1160-1164.
^ Ibid., vol. ix, p. 1228.
* There were more delegates, however, than Assemblymen.
'' fbid., vol. ix. pp. 1187, 1190-1196.
464 I'H^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ceptions, signed their names to it/ The situation became
intolerable to Governor Martin when, on Friday, the sev-
enth, the House presented an address in defense of the con-
vention and the committees and voted approval of the
Association." On the following day he dissolved the As-
sembly. Although not as thoroughly organized as many
other provinces, North Carolina was in position to carry-
through the Association, since the burden of enforcement
rested with the tidewater communities where committees
were in existence.
In South Carolina the General Committee at Charleston
took the initiative in bringing about a ratification of the
Association. The situation presented some peculiar diffi-
culties because of the partiality shown to the rice planters
in the non-exportation regulation of the Association.
Ultra-radicals like Gadsden did not like the appearance of
a sales-price attached to South Carolina patriotism, and
they resolved to ratify the Association with the proviso
that the rice exemption be stricken out. On the other hand,
the indigo interests saw no reason why the welfare of the
rice planters should be safeguarded by the x\ssociation and
their own, equally meritorious, ignored.
The General Committee sought to disarm both elements
of opposition by the course it adopted. On November 9,
1774, a call was sent out for a provincial congress to meet
at Charleston on Wednesday, January 1 1 , for the purpose
of acting on the Continental Association and choosing a
new committee.^ The committee then proceeded to have
copies of the Association (of which they signified their high
^ N. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1180-1182, 1184-1185.
' Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1 198-1205. The North Carolina provincial congress,
which assembled on Aug. 20, 1775, voted a formal acceptance of the
Association on the twenty-third. Ibid., vol. x, p. 171.
' S. C. Gaz., Nov. 21, 1774.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 465
approval) distributed to the members in the various parts
of the province; and with this document they also sent
copies of a justification which the South Carolina delegates
in the Continental Congress had drawn up to explain their
course there/ This latter paper was a shrewd piece of
writing. It endeavored to show, on the one hand, that the
apparent discrimination in the Association in favor of
South Carolina served, in fact, only to place the province
on a basis of equality with the other provinces, and that
therefore any charge of commercialized patriotism was
ill-founded.- The larger part of the document was spent
in an effort to convince the indigo growers that the rice
planters had no desire to take unfair advantage of them.
Three reasons were offered why rice had been permitted to
be exported by Congress instead of indigo: rice was a
perishable commodity; it did not serve the people of Great
Britain as provision, nor, as in the case of indigo, as an aid
in manufacturing; furthermore, lands which produced rice
could be devoted to no other use whereas most of the indigo
lands might be advantageously planted with wheat, barley
and hemp. In conclusion, the delegates proposed that the
superior advantage of the rice planters should be counter-
balanced by a compensatory arrangement with the indigo
growers ; that is, '' that a reasonable proportion of all rice
made after the present crop be appropriated to the purchase
of indigo made by such planters as are so situated as to be
unable to turn their lands to the production of articles
* A copy of this justification may be found in N. Y. Journ., Dec.
8, 1774.
' Thus it was declared : " That while the other colonies had the ex-
portation of wheat, flour, oil, fish and other commodities open, Caro-
lina would (without the exception of rice) have had no sort of article
to export at all ; " and further, " That Carolina, having no manufac-
tures, was under a more immediate necessity of some means to pur-
chase the necessaries of life, particularly negro clothing."
466 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
which may be exported; and that the indigo so purchased
become the property of those for whose rice it was ex-
changed."
The appeal of the delegates was well calculated to accom-
plish their purpose; and it proved particularly effective in
healing the breach that had appeared betv\'een the rice
planters and the indigo growers. A strong note of dissent
was still to be heard, however, in certain quarters. A letter
written at Charleston on the last day of the year claimed
that: "Most of the inhabitants of this province are dis-
pleased that their Delegates asked an exception of rice from
the Non-Exportation agreement." ^ In the South Carolina
Gazette of January 2, 1775, ''A Country Rice Planter"
asked if the South Carolina delegates were " ever instructed
by the People to hold out in that Article and to refuse their
Vote if not compHed with?"; and suggested that: ** Even
supposing we were not upon a Level as to the Privilege of
Exportation with some other Colonies, is it the grand
struggle now, Whether we shall be upon a Level? or is it*
Whether we shall be free, and who shall do most and suffer
most to establish this Freedom?" The rice planters were
advised to repudiate their exemption outright rather than
agree to " the Scheme of Barter proposed, which it will not
only be as difficult to obtain the Assent of the Colony to as
the above — but be infinitely more difficult to accomplish to
Satisfaction." As late as the opening day of the provincial
congress, an onlooker at Charleston predicted that positive
instructions would be given the delegates to the Second
Continental Congress to put a stop to the exportation of
rice when the non-exportation regulation should take effect.^
But these writers, as the result showed, undervalued the
persuasive appeal of self-interest to the planting element.
^N. Y. Journ., Jan. 26, 1775.
* }fass. Spy, Feb. 16, 1775.
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 467
The provincial congress, which began its sessions on
Wednesday, January 11, had a membership almost four
times as large as that of the House of Assembly, and all
parishes and districts of the province were represented
according to a predetermined ratio. Colonel Charles Pinck-
ney, chairman of the General Committee, was chosen as
chairman of the congress, and the omnipresent Peter Tim-
othy served as secretary/ On the first day, the delegates to
the Continental Congress being in attendance, the Asso-
ciation was taken under consideration. The last four
words of Article iv — '' except rice to Europe " — gave rise
to a long and violent debate. Gadsden spoke for the mo-
tion, recounted the critical situation precipitated by his four
colleagues in the Continental Congress, and declared that
the reluctant concession granted by the other provinces had
created a jealousy of the rice provinces which ought to be
removed at the earliest possible time. John Rutledge now
undertook to defend the action of the majority of the South
Carolina delegation. He contended that the northern prov-
inces " were less intent to annoy the mother country in the
article of trade than to preserve their own trade;" which
made it seem only " justice to his constituents to preserve
to them their trade as entire as possible." In vigorous lan-
guage he emphasized the point that, since rice and indigo
were enumerated products, non-exportation in those articles
meant entire ruin for those staples of South Carolina,
whereas the northern provinces, having export connections
chiefiy with foreign countries, were little affected by a non-
exportation to British countries. For one, he could not
consent to the Carolinians becoming "dupes to the people
^ Journal of the congress in 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1109-1118; Dray-
ton's detailed account of the debates in Drayton, Memoirs, vol. i,
pp. 168-176; brief accounts in S. C. Gas., Jan. 23, 1775; N. Y. Gaz.,
Feb. 6; and N. Y. Journ., Feb. 9.
468 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of the North." He even charged " a commercial scheme
among the Flour Colonies '' to seize for themselves the
markets which had hitherto been supplied by South Caro-
lina rice via Great Britain. Turning to the indigo group,
he expatiated on the justice and practicability of a scheme
of compensation as a method of equalizing burdens.
The subject was thus complicated by the question of
compensation, and the debate became more general. Among
the principal speakers in opposition to the compensation
plan were Gadsden, Rawhns Lowndes, and the Rev. Wil-
liam Tennent. If the rice exemption must needs be re-
tained, yet, they asked, why should the benefits of compen-
sation be monopolized by the indigo growers alone?; ''it
should afford in justice also relief to the Hemp Grower,
the Lumber Cutter, the Com Planter, the Makers of Pork
and Butter, &c." It was said that " this odious distinction
has cruelly convulsed the Colony.'' On the other side the
chief speakers w^ere William Henry Drayton, the Rutledges,
and the Lynches, father and son. In this manner the whole
day was consumed, and at sunset a committee was ap-
pointed to formulate a plan of compensation. The report
was made late next morning to an assemblage that had been
waiting impatiently for two hours. All parties united in
voting through the first part of the report, which authorized
the committees of the several parishes and districts to sit
as judges and juries in all matters affecting the collection
of debts. But the details of the plan for compensation
proved unsatisfactory and were rejected.
The debate reverted to the original question of expung-
ing the words, " except rice to Europe," and continued
tmtil dark. '' Great heats prevailed and the members were
on the point of falling into downright uproar and con-
fusion." When the question was at length put by candle-
light, a demand was made that the vote be taken by roll-call
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 469
instead of zdva voce; and ^' by this mode [says Drayton]
some were overawed, either by their diffidence, circum-
stances, or connexions; and to the surprise of the nays,
they themselves carried the point by a majority of twelve
voices — eighty-seven to seventy-five." A formal endorse-
ment of the Continental Association was then voted. A
day or so later the members succeeded in agreeing upon a
plan of compensation and exchange, in which the benefits
of the arrangement were extended far beyond the original
intention of relief for the indigo growers exclusively.
After the tenth of September the rice planters were to de-
liver to designated committees one-third of their crop and
receive, at a stated rate of exchange, not more than one-
third of certain other commodities produced in the prov-
ince, such as indigo, hemp, lumber, corn and pork.
Before adjourning, the provincial congress took the pre-
caution of appointing committees in each parish and dis-
trict to carry into effect the Continental Association; and
in every case members of congress composed a majority of
the committee.^ In this way, according to Drayton, no
time was lost " in giving a complete appearance to the body
politic and the greatest energy to their operations." Future
vacancies in the committees were to be filled by the inhabi-
tants of the parishes and districts. South Carolina was thus
equipped with a well-solidified extra-legal organization,
invigorated by an interested public opinion.
The province of Georgia had been unrepresented in the
Continental Congress, although the zealous radicals of St.
John's Parish, assisted by some congenial spirits at Savan-
nah in Christ Church Parish, had employed their utmost
endeavors to bring the province into line. From some
points of view, prospects for radical action were brighter
^ For the names of the members of these committees, T'ide 4 Am.
Arch., vol. i, pp. 1113-1114.
470
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
in the months following the Continental Congress, inas-
much as the threatened Indian war had failed to materialize
and as rice, one of the staples of the province, had been
given a favored position in the Continental Association.
In other respects, the situation was more complicated be-
cause of a division among the radicals themselves as to the
question of tactics. Some of them insisted that the prov-
ince should be induced to accept the Continental Associa-
tion in the form in which it was issued by Congress ; others
believed that a bid should be made for mercantile support
by further postponing the time at which the non-importation
and non-exportation regulations were to become effective.
The extremists of St. John's Parish were uncompromising
advocates of the former course and they hastened to adopt
the Association in foto on December i.^ The radicals at
Savannah and the radical members of the Assembly were
inclined to the more conciHatory course.
" Since the Carolina Deputies have returned from the
Continental Congress . . . , every means possible have been
used to raise a flame again in this Province," wrote Gov-
ernor Wright on December 13, 1774.' The first step in the
direction of provincial action was taken by the Savannah
radicals on December 3, when a call was issued for a pro-
vincial congress to assemble on January 18, 1775.^ At the
time appointed, delegates appeared from only five of the
twelve parishes and districts to which the radicals had par-
ticularly written, and some of these were under injunc-
tions as to the form of the Association which should be
adopted.* It would appear, also, that, with the exception
^ A convention of the District of Darien did the same on Jan. 12.
1775. 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1135-1136.
' Ibid., vol. i. p. 1040.
* Ga. Gac, Dec. 7, 1774; also Pa. Gaz., Dec. 2^.
* This account of the Georgia congress and the meeting of the
RATIFICATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 471
of St. John's Parish, small radical minorities had carried
through the election of delegates.^ Furthermore, the dele-
gation from St. John's Parish, headed by Dr. Lyman Hall,
although present in Savannah, refused to take part in the
congress because of the known intention of that body to
deviate from the Continental Association, which the men
of St. John's had adopted verbatim.
Under these circumstances the members of the congress
found themselves in a dilemma. Representing a small and
amorphous minority of the people and estranged for the
time being from the ultra-radicals of St. John's, they did
not dare to represent their action as the voice of the prov-
ince ; on the other hand, they did not wish the endorsement
of the Continental Congress to fail by default. They de-
cided therefore to take advantage of an opportunity
afforded by the presence of the Assembly in town. That
body had already given indications of its friendliness when
it had laid on the table without comment two petitions
signed by a number of " principal people," condemning the
measures of the northern provinces, and when it had
adopted the declaration of rights and grievances of the
Continental Congress. The plan was that the provincial
congress should formulate a course of action with reference
to the Association and then present its conclusions to the
House of x^ssembly, which would adopt them in a few
minutes before the governor could interfere by means of
dissolution.
Upon this understanding, the members of the congress
Assembly is based on various contemporary narratives, friendly and
unfriendly, in 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1156-1163; vol. ii, pp. 279-281;
and Pa. Journ., Mch. 8, 1775.
^ Thus, it was alleged that 2^ men had acted in St, Andrew's Par-
ish, which contained at least 800 men of military age ; and that eighty
men had done the work in St. Paul's, a parish of equal size.
472 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
now proceeded. Ignoring the insistent messages trans-
mitted from time to time by the St. John's delegation that
the Association be ratified verbatim, they adopted it with
modifications, the most important of which postponed the
beginning of non-importation from December i, 1774, to
March 15, 1775, and exempted goods necessary^ for the
Indian trade from its operation, and provided that non-
exportation should start on December i, 1775, instead of
September 10, 1775. These changes were made on the plea
of allowing the Georgia merchants approximately the same
time for arranging their business for the suspension of
trade that the merchants of other provinces had enjoyed.
The congress also chose three inhabitants of Savannah as
delegates to the Second Continental Congress. These mat-
ters were now ready to be presented to the House of
Assembly for ratification " when the Governour, either
treacherously informed, or shrewdly suspecting the step,
put an end to the session." The members of the provincial
congress made the most of a bad situation by issuing their
Association on January 23, with their signatures attached,
and pledging their constituents to its execution.
Thus the effort to unite the province in radical measures
with the other provinces proved a failure. The delegates
chosen to the Second Continental Congress refused to serve
in that capacity on the ground that they were not in position
to pledge the people of Georgia to the execution of any
measure whatsoever. The radicals in general awaited the
action which the Second Congress would take in the cir-
cumstances. The committee of St. John's Parish, unbend-
ing in their self-sufficiency, began to cast about for some
way of escaping the boycott, which threatened them, as
well as the rest of the province, under Article xiv of the
Continental Association.
CHAPTER XII
Five Months of the Association in the Commercial.
Provinces (December, 1774-ApRiL, 1775)
In studying the actual workings of the Association two ]
important considerations should be borne in mind. Warned
by the trend of public discussion in the months preceding
the adoption of the Association, and allowed several weeks
of open importation by the provisions of the Association,
the merchants had an opportunity to provide against future -
scarcity by importing much greater quantities of merchan-
dise than customary. Richard Oswald quoted a British
exporter as saying that in July, 1774, an extraordinarily
brisk export trade set up, which swept the warehouses for \
American goods clean and advanced the price of many j
articles from ten to fifteen per cent.^ Other evidences of
the inflated conditions of exportation to America are abun-
dant. Wrote a London merchant to his New York corres-
pondent on July 29, 1774: "The people of Philadelphia
have encreased their orders triply this fall ; from whence I
am persuaded they mean to have a Non-Importation Agree-
ment." " ■' I hear the merchants are sending for double
the quantity of goods they usually import," wrote Governor
Gage in August, " and in order to get credit for them, are
sending home all the money they can collect, insomuch that
l)ills have risen at New- York above five per cent." ^ '' So
^ Stevens, Facsimiles, vol. xxiv, no. 2037, P- I4-
"^ N. Y. Gazetteer, Sept. 22, 1774. Vide also Pa. Journ., Aug. 24.
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 742-743.
473
Y
474 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
great has been the exportation to America, particularly to
New-England, for these six weeks past," wrote a London
correspondent in the same month, "that it is the opinion
of some Merchants conversant with American Trade that, if
the Colonies do agree in a non-importation scheme, it will
hardly be felt by our Manufacturers for six months or a
year.'' ^ . The Boston Committee of Correspondence enter-
tained the same general view of the situation. " We learn
by private papers from England," they wrote on September
7, " that prodigious quantities of goods are now shipping
for the Colony of Rhode Island, New York and Philadel-
phia." ^
I" _As a result of the augmented importation into America
;prior to the time that the Association went into effect, the
conditions of life under the non-importation regulation
were greatly ameliorated for the colonists. It w^as generally
estimated that the stock of goods on hand on December i,
1774, would suffice without replenishment for two years.' ^
^ .V. Y. Gaz., Sept. 26, 1774.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i. p. 784. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote to John Adams
in similar strain in October. Ibid., p. 878. Vide also N. Y. Journ.,
Sept. 29, 1774; N. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, p. 1093. A convention of
several Connecticut counties and a meeting of the town of Pomfret
protested against the flood of goods which was pouring into Connecticut
from New York. Conn. Cour., Sept. 19, 1774; Bos. Com. Cor. Papers,
vol. ii, pp. 217-218, 307-310. A comparison of the imports from England
during the years 1773 and 1774 confirms these statements, although it is
only fair to note that the former year was an off year, due to the
excessive importations of 1771 and 1772 following the breakdown of
the earUer non-importation agreement. English importations into
New York increased from £289,214 in 1773 to £437,927 in 1774; into
Pennsylvania from £426,448 to £625,652; into Maryland and Virginia
from £328,904 to £528.738. There was a sHghter increase in the case
of New England and th€ Carolinas — from £527,055 to £562,476 in case
of the former, and from £344,859 to £378,116 in case of the latter.
Georgia showed a decrease. Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, vol.
iii, pp. 549-550, 564.
'£. g., zide 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1740. "A Friend of Liberty"
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
475
This was something of an overestimate, however. This
supply of merchandise rendered the enforcement of the
non-importation during the first twelvemonth easier than
it would otherwise have been, for the merchants who had
laid in goods were not easily tempted to defy the regula-
tions of Congress and the committees. On the other hand,
the utility of the ^Association as an instrument of coercion
was not materially lessened by the advance importations.
The great consignments of British wares had to reach
America before December i, 1774, or, at the most, not
later than February i, 1775; and thereafter British mer-j
cantile houses and manufactories became idle so far as!
American business was concerned. They were threatened ;
with dull times and industrial depression at a time when |
their capital was more largely than usual tied up in Amer- j
ican ventures. "^ / '^
L«>c
{_The second consideration to be kept in mind in examin- ,- \
ing the Association in operation is that, after the non- ^
importation regulation had been in force for four and a
half months, events occurred which changed the whole face
of public affairs and rapidly converted the Association from
a mode of peaceful pressure into a war measure. . The
action of the " embattled farmers " at Lexington and Con-
cord and the military operations that followed showed the
radicals that the Association as a method of redress had
suddenly become antiquated and that it must be altered, if
not altogether abandoned, to meet the greatly changed
onditions. This realization was at once acted upon by
local committees and by Congress; and by the middle of
averred that this was the understanding upon which the colonists had
associated. Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Feb. 2, 1775. Alexander Hamilton be-
lieved that the merchants' stocks would be exhausted in eighteen
months, but that with the clothes which the people already possessed
imported articles would be in use for three years. "The Farmer Re-
futed," Hamilton, Works (Lodge), vol. i, p. 151.
476 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
1775 the Continental Association was rapidly losing its
original character. The military purposes to which the
machinery of the Association was turned became increas-
ingly important, so that by September 10, 1775, when the
non-exportation was to begin, the character of that measure
had also to be changed. Thus, the bold experiment, in-
augurated by the First Congress — to establish the several
self-denying regulations of the Association through the
mobilizing of public opinion — was brought to a premature
close by the call to arms. ,
Certain generalizations may be made with reference to
the workings of the Association before taking up the prac-
tice of the provinces separately. In Massachusetts, where
the war fever was high, and, to a lesser extent, in the
neighboring provinces, the committees and conventions felt
called upon to concern themselves with military preparations
even before the outbreak of war. Every province without
exception availed itself of the suggestion made in the Asso-
ciation that such further regulations should be established
by the provincial conventions and committees as might be
deemed proper to enforce the Association. Non-importa-
tion and sumptuary regulations occupied the entire attention
in the period before the opening of hostilities, save for the
non-exportation of sheep, inasmuch as the general non-
exportation was not to become effective until September 10,
1775. For the present, the period of enforcement prior to
the outbreak of war will be considered.
.AJmost the first collective action taken in Massachusetts
to strengthen the Continental Association locally was an
agreement, signed by forty-one blacksmiths of Worcester
County on November 8, 1 774, that they would refuse their
work to all persons who did not strictly conform to the
Association. They agreed further that they would not
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
477
perform any kind of work, after December i, for persons
of Tory leanings, particularly Timothy Ruggles of Hard-
wick, John Murray of Rutland, James Putnam of Worces-
ter, their employees and dependents/ By this latter re-
solve hung a tale, for Timothy Ruggles and his friends,
with the active co-operation of Governor Gage, were seek-
ing to promote a loyalist association for the purpose of de-
feating the Continental Association. By the terms of this
association the subscribers pledged themselves to defend,
with lives and fortune, their " life, liberty and property "
and their " undoubted right to liberty in eating, drinking,
buying, selling, communing, and acting . . . consistent
with the laws of God and the King." " When the person
or property of any of us shall be invaded or threatened by
Committees, mobs, or unlawful assemblies," said one por-
tion of the paper, '' the others of us will, upon notice re-
ceived, forthwith repair, properly armed, to the person on
whom . . . such invasion or threatening shall be, and will,
to the utmost of our power, defend such person and his
property, and, if need be, will oppose and repel force with
force."^
This brave pledge of opposition failed to win signers, for
the reason that every signer of the paper at once exposed
himself to the swift wrath of the radicals. The provincial
congress on December 9 recommended to the committees of
correspondence to give " the earliest notice to the publick
of all such combinations, and of the persons signing the
same, . . . that their names may be published to the world,
their persons treated with that neglect, and their memories
transmitted to posterity with that ignominy which such un-
^ Bos. Gas., Nov. 28, 1774.
^ Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Dec. 26, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i,
pp. 1057-1058.
478
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
natural conduct must deserve." ^ It was under influence of
this resolution that, a few weeks later, a mob of people at
Wrentham coerced five loyalists to plead, with heads un-
covered, the forgiveness of Heaven, and to pledge unde-
viating adherence to the Continental Association." Marsh-
field was the only town where as many as one hundred and
fifty men signed the loyalist association, and the associators
discreetly sent a hurry-call to Gage for troops for their
protection.^ Gage complained that the " considerable
people " of Boston were " more shy of making open dec-
larations," notwithstanding that they were in a fortified
town, than the people in the country.* [^ The failure of the
loyalist association was due to the superior organization of
^the radicals rather than to lack of support for it.
The provincial congress, meeting in late November and
early December, 1774, passed a number of resolutions to
supplement and strengthen several portions of the Conti-
nental Association. They also recommended that the min-
isters of the gospel throughout the province instruct their
congregations to cleave to the Association ; and in a f ei*vent
address directly to the inhabitants of the province they
urged the organization of minute-men as a protection
against Gage's troops who would certainly be employed to
defeat the Association.^
J There was unmistakable evidence that the non-importa-
I tion regulation was strictly enforced. In accordance with
Article x, importers of merchandise which arrived between
December i, 1774, and February i, 1775, were given the
^ Bos. Gaz., Dec. 19, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1004. Vide
also the resolution of April 12, 1775 ; ibid., pp. 1360-1361.
^ N. y. Gas., Jan. 2Z, i775-
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1177-1178, 1249-1251.
* Ibid., vol. i, p. 1634; vide also ibid., pp. 1046-1047.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1000. 1005- 1006.
IN THE COMMERCIAL FROUNCES 4-9
choice of immediately re-shipping the goods, storing the
goods with the local committee, or having them auctioned
off under direction of the committee. In the last case, the
owner was reimbursed to the extent of his actual invest-
ment and the profits were devoted to the uses of the Boston
needy. The provincial congress provided that such sales
must be advertised in the Boston and Salem papers at least
ten days in advance, and that the goods should be sold to
the highest bidder.^ The newspapers related many in-
stances of each course of procedure; and even the loyalist
writings did not seek to represent otherwise. The chief
centers of activity were Marblehead, Salem and Plymouth.
Many, perhaps most, importers preferred to offer their
goods at committee auction than to tie up their capital for
an indefinite period by storing the goods — a choice which,
by the way, afforded them an opportunity to buy back their
own goods.
As an example of such sales, the committee of inspection
at Marblehead offered at auction on December 26 such part
of the cargo of the London ship Champion as had then
been delivered to the committee, consisting of Russia duck,
osnaburgs, ticklinburgs, baizes, hemp, linens, hats, books,
women's hose, nails, needles, calicoes, velvets and medi-
cines to the value of £2410 sterling; and also the entire
cargo of the Falmouth brigantine Polly, consisting of
lemons, wines, raisins and figs. The rest of the goods im-
ported in the Champion were disposed of in January.^ The
complete cargoes of the schooners Lynn, Britannia and
Adventure, all from Falmouth, were sold a few weeks
later. ^ As the result of their enterprise, the Marblehead
^ Mass. Spy, Dec. 16, 1774.
"^ Salem Gas., Dec. 22,, 1774; Essex Gaz., Jan. 3, 1775: Bos. Gaz.,
Jan. 23.
' Mass. Spy, Feb. 9, 1775.
_^8o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
committee of inspection derived profits amounting to £120,
which they turned over to Boston/ Meantime, the Salem
Committee were disposing of importations from Bristol,
London, Falmouth, Jamaica and Dominica. Their method
of sale was indicated by their advertisement that : '' Each
invoice will be put up at the sterling cost and charges, one
per cent advance, and half per cent each bidder." - Their
contribution to Boston, as a result of the sales, amounted
to £109 9s. 5d.^ In the same period the Plymouth com-
mittee of inspection made profits for Boston amounting to
£31 5s. 6/2.^
After February' i few vessels arrived in Massachusetts
ports as compared with former and better days. When they
did come, the cargoes were almost invariably re-shipped
without breaking bulk."* One instance of defiance occurred
at Falmouth in ]\Iarch, when a small sloop arrived from
Bristol with rigging, sails and stores for a vessel which
Thomas Coulson was in the process of building. The com-
mittee of inspection resolved that the materials should be
returned by the same vessel; but Coulson would conform
to their demands only in part. He brought on his head the
condemnation of the Cumberland County convention, which
shortly after assembled at Falmouth; and as Coulson con-
tinued obdurate, the committee of inspection published him
as a violator of the Association.^
Few efforts were made to violate the regulation for the
non-exportation of sheep. In December, Captain Hamilton
^ Bos. Gaz., Mch. 13, 1775.
"^Mass. Spy, Jan. 5, 1775.
* Essex Gas., Apr. 11, 1775.
* Bos. Gaz., Islch. 27, 1775.
^ E. g., a cargo of molasses arriving at Marblehead from Dominica
on March 2; Essex Journ., Mch. 15, 1775.
*4 Am. Arch., vol. ii. pp. 311-313: Bos. Eve. Post, Apr. 3, 1775-
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 481
at Salem planned to send thirty sheep to Jamaica ; but when
the committee of inspection explained that he would be
violating the Association, he readily desisted/ The com-
mittee later stopped another consignment. The regulations
concerning non-consumption were harder to administer,
because of the practical difficulty of distinguishing between
goods which might properly be bought and those which
could not. The committee at Newburyport met this diffi-
culty by requiring shopkeepers to produce a certificate from
some committee of inspection, testifying that the wares
offered for sale had been imported before December i or,
if later, that they had been disposed of according to Ar-
tide x.^ The provincial congress simplified the situation-
for the future by passing a sweeping resolution forbidding
the sale, after October 10, 1775, of goods which fell under
the ban of the non-importation regulation, even if the goods
were unsold stock remaining from the period prior to De-
cember i.^
The most frequent infractions of the non-consumption
regulation occurred with reference to the article of tea. An
example of the vigilance of the committees of inspection
was afforded by the prompt apprehension of Thomas Lilly,
of Marblehead, for the purchase of a pound and a quarter
of tea from Simon Tufts, a Boston dealer, after March i,
1775. When Lilly had burnt the tea in the presence of a
large crowd, and had signed a confession, which read in
part : " I do now in this publick manner ask their pardon,
and do solemnly promise I will not in future be guilty of a
like offence," the Marblehead committee announced that he
might " be justly entitled to the esteem and employ of all
^ Essex Gaz., Dec. 13, 1774.
^ Essex Journ., Dec. 2S, 1774.
' 4 Am. Ar£h., vol. i, pp. 998-999. This resolution was repealed on
Sept. 30, 1775, however, before it became effective. Ibid., vol. iii, p. 1445.
^82 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
persons as heretofore." The Boston committee examined
into Tufts' action and secured from him a statement, made
under oath before a justice of the peace, that the tea had
been sold to Lilly by the clerk without the knowledge or
consent of himself and that in the future his conduct should
not be open to misconstruction/ Some difficulty arose from
the practice of peddlers and petty chapmen going through
the country towns and selling teas and other East India
goods which, there was reason to suspect, had been im-
ported after December i. On February 15, 1775, the pro-
vincial congress urged the committees of inspection to pre-
vent such sales, and recommended to the inhabitants not to
trade with peddlers for any article whatever.^
Some effort was made by the provincial congress to stim-
ulate local industry, although it hardly wxnt beyond an ex-
hortation to the people to form societies for the purpose of
promoting manufacturing and agriculture. A number of
articles were named, whose production should be encour-
aged— such as nails, steel, tin-plates, buttons, paper, glass
and hosiery, gunlocks, saltpetre and gunpowder. A few
mxnths later, the provincial congress asked every family in
the province to save rags in order that a paper mill erected
at Milton might have a sufficient supply. The people were
also asked to refrain from killing sheep except in cases of
dire necessity.^ Local manufacturers made some progress
if one may judge from the advertising columns of the
Massachusetts Spy in January, 1775. Fish-hooks, made at
Cornish, were offered for sale by Lee & Jones. Enoch
Brown advertised sagathies, duroys, camblets, calamancoes
and shalloons of Massachusetts-make, and decanters, cruets
^ Essex Gas., Mch. 28, 1775, and Bos. Gaa., Apr. 3: also 4 Am. Arch.^
vol. ii, p. 234.
^Ihid., vol. i, pp. 1339-1340.
* Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1001-1002. 1334; vol. ii, p. 1514; vol. iii, p. 329.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 483
and other glassware imported from Philadelphia. Boston-
made buttons could be purchased from John Clarke.
Tendencies toward a greater frugality were to be found
in other respects as well. The Marblehead committee of
inspection voted unanimously that '' the meeting of the in-
habitants of this town in parties at houses of entertainment,
for the purposes of dancing, feasting, &c., is expressly
against the Association," and that future offenders should
be held up to public notice.^ The regulation with reference
to simplicity in mourning seems to have been well ob-
served," although the committee of inspection at Newbury-
port felt it necessary to declare that : *' If any should . . .
go into a contrary practice, they may well expect that their
friends and neighbours will manifest their disapprobation
... by declining to attend the funeral." ^
In New Hampshire the enforcement of the Association
depended in large degree on the faithfulness and energy of
the Committee of " Forty-Five " at Portsmouth, the only
port of entry. This committee proved equal to its respon-
sibilities. Before news of the adoption of the Association
reached Portsmouth, Captain Pearne, a merchant, had com-
missioned a brig to proceed to Madeira for a cargo of
wine; but before the vessel sailed the provisions of the
Association were learned and the merchant agreed to send
her to the West Indies instead.^ The committee also
stopped Captain Chivers who was on the point of exporting
fifty sheep to the West Indies; and he was forced to dis-
pose of them (otherwise at some loss to himself.^ On De-
cember 2 Governor Wentworth wrote that most people
^ Essex Gas., Jan. 17, 1775 ; also Salem Gaz., Jan. 20.
' Mass. Spy, Nov. 24, 1774.
' Essex Journ., Dec. 28, 1774.
* N. H. Gas., Nov. 18, 1774.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1013; N. H. Gas., Nov. 18, 1774.
484 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
accepted the regulations of Congress " as matters of obe-
dience, not of considerate examination, whereon they may
exercise their own judgment." ^ When sixty pounds of
dutied tea was found in possession of a shopkeeper on Jan-
uar}^ 18, the culprit exhibited the better part of valor by
burning it in the presence of a large crowd. ^ On February
10 the committee recommended that all who furnished
accommodations for cards and biUiards should discontinue
their unjustifiable proceedings at once.^ So energetic was
the committee that the conservatives endeavored to set on
foot an association in opposition to the Continental Asso-
ciation ; but the movement came to nought."^
In the towns outside of Portsmouth, the greatest diffi-
culty was experienced in dealing with country peddlers and
chapmen. These men were accused of contravening the
non-importation and non-consumption regulations and also
of " tempting women, girls and boys with their unneces-
sary fineries." The town of Exeter voted to permit no
itinerant traders to sell wares there. ^ A town meeting at
Epsom established the same regulation " upon no less
penalty than receiving a new suit agreeable to the modern
mode and a forfeiture of their goods." ® The committees at
Kingstown, New Market and Brentwood announced that
the provincial law prohibiting peddling would now be
rigidly enforced.^ When a provincial convention met on
January 25, they endorsed this last method as the most
effective way of coping with the difficulty.^ The conven-
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1013.
'A/". H. Gaz., Jan. 27, 1775.
^ Ibid., Feb. 10, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1223.
* Ibid., vol. ii, p. 251 ; also A'. H. Gas., Mch. 31, 1775.
^Ibid., Jan. 6, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1105-1106.
* Ibid., vol. i, p. 1 105; also A'. H. Gaz., Jan. 20, 1775.
' Ibid., Jan. 13, 1775.
^Ibid., Feb. 3, 1775; also 4 Am- Arch., vol. i, p. 1182.
7A^ THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 485.
tion also issued an address to the inhabitants in behalf of
the Association and, among other things, recommended the
immediate and total disuse of tea whether dutied or smug-
gled. The people were also urged to promote home manu-
factures and shun all forms of extravagance. It was not
until the provincial congress met in May that the subject
of local production received further attention. Then linen
and woolen manufactures were mentioned as being partic-
ularly worthy of encouragement, and farmers were enjoined
to kill no lambs before the first of August following.^
The non-importation regulation appears to have been
well enforced in Rhode Island. Several vessels intending
for the African coast were actually laid up at Newport be-
cause they could not be gotten ready to depart by Decem-
ber i.^ The Newport committee remitted to Boston the
sum of £5 15s. 3d. sterling as the profits of sales of im-
portations prior to February i, 1775.^ Late in January,
the committee at Providence auctioned off a quantity of
merchandise, valued at £1200 sterling, imported from
Liverpool by way of New York, and derived a profit of
£16 6s. id. for the relief of Boston.^ Particular attention
was given in Rhode Island to the regulations for the non-
exportation of sheep. In November, 1774, the Providence
committee exhorted obedience to these regulations; a few
days later they sent to Boston, as a gift, one hundred and
thirty-six sheep that had originally been intended for ex-
portation to the West Indies but which the town had bought
instead."^ Until late in February, Newport would not even
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 651.
^ Pa. Journ., Feb. 8, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. 1, pp. 1098-T099.
^ 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, p. 265.
* Bos. Eve. Post, Feb. 20, 1775 ; Essex Gaz., Mch. 7.
* 4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, p. 154.
486 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
permit the shipment of sheep to associated provinces ; then,
the Salem committee succeeded in pointing out the error
of this interpretation of the Association.^
Providence facihtated the enforcement of the non-con-
sumption regulation by requiring all dealers to show a
certificate that the goods offered for sale conformed in
every way to the specifications of the Association." On
March 2, 1775, the day after the total disuse of tea became
effective, the event was celebrated at Providence by a bon-
fire of three hundred pounds of tea that had been collected
from the inhabitants." The situation in Rhode Island may
be summarized in the language of the Newport committee
to their Philadelphia brethren : '' so far as we can learn,
the Association hath been strictly adhered to by the mer-
chants in this colony . . ." * Apparently little was done
to encourage manufacturing or to foster the simple life.
However, the graduating class at Rhode Island College in-
duced the college authorities to abandon the public com-
mencement exercises as out of harmony with Article viii.'^'
The chief problem in Connecticut was not that of non-
importation (for her imports came largely by way of Mas-
sachusetts and New York), but that of non-consumption.
The Norwich committee required all dealers to comply with
the regulation, which was rapidly becoming popular, of
vouching for the character of new stock by displaying cer-
tificates from whence the merchandise came.*' An early
tendency was obser\^able for prices to rise, due to the fact
^Pickering Papers (M. H. S. Mss.), vol. xxxiii, p. 122; vol. xxxix,
p. 100.
' R. /. Col Recs., vol. vii, pp. 285-287.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 15.
^ Pa. Journ., Feb. 8, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1099.
' Ihid., vol. ii, pp. 935-936.
• Conn. Gas., Dec. 30, 1774.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
487
that the importers had sold to the Connecticut retailers at
an advance and the former could not easily be reached be-
cause of their residence in other provinces. On January 25,
1775, a joint meeting of committees of inspection of Hart-
ford County resolved that, even if the importers violated
the Association, the retailers should not be excused, and
that no better rule could be fixed regarding prices than Ar-
ticle ix of the Association.^ A few days later the com-
mittee of inspection at Farmington in the same county ob-
tained from James Percival, a local dealer, a written con-
fession of his guilt in violating this regulation and a
promise to deposit his surplus profit with the committee for
use of the Boston unfortunate.^ The same action with re-
spect to prices was taken by the counties of New Haven,
Fairfield and Litchfield. All these counties also directed
attention to the importance of improving sheep, raising flax
and encouraging manufactures.^
As Connecticut possessed no commercial metropolis,
special effort was made in that province to standardize the
practice of trying persons accused of transgressing the
Association in the several small river and coast towns. The
movement was set on foot, it would appear, at the meeting
of the committees of inspection of Hartford County on
January 25. In executing the Association, it was there
agreed that proceedings against an accused should be con-
ducted in an "open, candid and deliberate manner;" that
formal summons should be served upon him, containing the
nature of the charge, with an invitation to defend himself
before the committee at some time not sooner than six days
later ; that witnesses and other evidence should be " openly,
fairly and fully heard:" and that no conviction should be
^ Conn. Cour., Jan. 30, 1775.
2 Ibid., Feb. 13, 1775.
' Ibid., Feb. 27, 1775 ; Conn. Journ., Mch. 8.
488 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
made " but upon the fullest, clearest and most convincing
proof." ^ The same mode of procedure was adopted by the
counties of New Haven, Fairfield and Litchfield."
Trials of offenders by the committees of inspection bore
every evidence of being fair and impartial hearings, al-
though mistakes were occasionally made. In March three
men failed to appear before the Fairfield committee who
had been summoned to answer charges; and upon an ex
parte examination the committee held unanimously that the
accused were guilty of a breach of the Association and
should forfeit all commercial connections with the com-
munity. Five weeks later, two of the men came before the
committee, proved their innocence and were restored to
public favor.^ At Guilford Captain Griffin appeared be-
fore the committee and demanded that his character be
cleared of the aspersions cast upon it by a letter from
Martinique, which had been printed in the Journul and
which accused him of having violated Article vii by taking
fourteen sheep to Martinique. After investigation the
committee decided that Griffin was not guilty and recom-
mended him to the favorable consideration of the public*
In general, the view expressed by Thomas Mumford of
Groton to Silas Deane in October, 1775, may be accepted
as correct : " This Colony universally adheres to all the
Resolves of Congress." ^ Even in Fairfield County, where,
it will be recalled, the greatest disaffection existed, the
principal towns Avere actively engaged in executing the
Association.
^ Conn. Cour., Jan. 30, 1775.
^ Ibid., Feb. 27, 1775; Conn. Journ., Mch. 8.
' Conn. Gaz., Apr. 4, May 12, 1775.
^N. Y. Gas., Apr. 3, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 222.
' Conn. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ii, p. 310. Vide also 4 Am. Arch., vol.
ii, pp. 252-253.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
489
In New York province the responsibility of enforcing
the non-importation regulation rested with the Committee
of Sixty at the port of entry. However, the first occasion
for enforcement of the Association was the attempt of an
inconsiderate citizen to ship some sheep to the West Indies.
The shipment was prevented through the energy of a group
of inhabitants who acted without consulting the Committee
of '' Fifty-One," then still in office.^ A few days later the
distillers of the city signified their hearty approval of the
pending non-importation by resolving to distill no molasses
imported from the British West Indies or Dominica nor to
sell any rum for the purpose of carrying on the slave
traffic.^ In the two months prior to February i, 1775, the i
Committee of Sixty showed a record of astonishing activ-
ity. Their official report testifies that they conducted auc-
tions for the sale of goods imported in twenty-one vessels,
as well as for the sale of a trunk of calicoes imported from
London by way of Philadelphia." These cargoes were
made up of a variety of articles representing many quarters
of the globe and evidencing the colorful romance of colo-
nial commerce. A great deal of space was taken up in the
newspapers by announcements of sales. The greatest profit
arose from the sale of merchandise brought in the large
London ship Lady Gage, from which £182 i8s. was cleared
for Boston. In a number of cases the selling price covered
merely the first cost and charges. The total profits from all
sales amounted to £347 4s. id.
After February i the Sixty displayed equal diligence in
returning cargoes without breaking bulk. For the purpose
of facilitating this work a sub-committee w^as appointed to
supervise the arrival of all vessels.* The most difficult case
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. <;^^; also N. Y. Journ., Nov. 10, 1774.
'^ Ibid., Nov. 10, 1774.
^ Ibid., Apr. 27, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 342-343.
*iV, F. Journ., Feb. 2, 1775.
^go THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
of enforcement proved to be that of a vessel that arrived on
the second day of the new dispensation. This was the ship
James, commanded by Captain Watson and bringing a
cargo of coal and dr}^goods from Glasgow. The captain
was promptly warned by the sub-committee not to enter at
the custom house and not to dela}' in departing with his
cargo unbroken. But the loyalists were determined to
make this a trial of strength; and although the consignees
refused to appeal to the authorities for aid. they obtained
the not unwilling ear of Captain Watson and employed men
to go aboard and bring the colors ashore with a view to
raising a posse to assist in landing the goods. A great mob
assembled on the shore; and the captain, much alarmed,
dropped down about four miles below the city, where he
remained several days attended by a boat containing repre-
sentatives of the committee. On Thursday evening, the
ninth, the ship reappeared in the harbor escorted by an
officer and some men belonging to the royal vessel King-
fisher, which had just come on the scene. The people again
assembled in great numbers, seized the captain who was
lodging in town, and paraded him about the streets until
he was glad to flee to the man-of-war. After two days of
sober reflection he prepared to depart with his ship, but was
now ordered to desist by an overzealous lieutenant from the
Kingfisher. Again the people collected ; and the captain of
the Kingfisher, hearing of the unauthorized act of the lieu-
tenant, permitted the departure of the James. That vessel
was watched far beyond Sandy Hook, as she sw^ept out to
sea, by the committee's boat.^
The vigilance of the Sixty was again tested later in the
month upon the arrival of the Beulah from London. After
lying at anchor for almost three weeks in an effort to elude
'^N. Y. Journ., Feb. 9, 16, 1775; Pa. Jouni., Feb. 8; Golden, Letter
Books, vol. ii, p. 380.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
491
the watchfulness of the committee's boat, the vessel fell
down to Sandy Hook to await a favorable wind for the
return voyage. After two days' delay, she put to sea.
Word quickly reached the Sixty that, under shelter of dark-
ness, a boat from Elizabethtown, New Jersey, had taken off
some goods while the ship lingered at the Hook. Investi-
gation was at once undertaken by the Elizabethtown com-
mittee, and the truth of the case was being ferreted out
when Robert and John Murray, merchants of New York,
appeared before the Sixty and confessed that they were the
principals in the affair. The return of the Beulah with an
unbroken cargo meant great financial loss to them, but it is
evident that they feared the blast of the boycott even more
greatly. They made a sworn statement of the goods that
had been landed and promised to re-ship them in seven
days' time. Finally, to propitiate public feeling, they sub-
scribed £200 for the repair of the hospital, recently dam-
aged by fire. The Sixty published these facts without com-
ment; and the Elizabethtown committee proscribed John
Murray, and his son-in-law of that town — the actual par-
ticipants in the affair — as violators of the Association.^
The Sixty exhibited less concern about the advancing of
prices. While the First Continental Congress was yet in
session, the old " Fifty-One " had taken cognizance of the
discontent arising from '^ the exorbitant price to which sun-
dry articles of goods, particularly some of the necessaries
of life," had advanced in anticipation of non-importation;
and they had induced a meeting of importers at the Ex-
change to agree to maintain prices at the usual level, dis-
courage engrossing, and to boycott retailers who acted con-
* A''. Y. Journ., Feb. 23, Mch. 9, 23, Apr. 6, 1775. The son-in-law
was restored to public favor, after public contrition, by act of the
New Jersey provincial congress, Oct. 24, 1775. 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii,
p. 1232. For the later history of the Murrays, vide infra, p. 565 and n. i.
/
492 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
trariwise/ Nevertheless, by January, claims were made in
the leading loyalist organ that prices had actually risen.
Thus, coarse osnaburgs were said to have advanced a full
third in the hands of the wholesaler; the price of coarse
linens and Russia sheetings had increased also." These
allegations may not have fairly represented the situation, or
else the committee may have thought it unwise to supervise
the merchants too closely on this point. In any case the
Sixty paid no attention to the charges.
An obvious effort was made to simplify the standard of
living. When Mrs. Margaret Duane died early in January,
her remains were interred in accordance with the directions
of Article viii.^ The London ship Lady Gage brought two
puppet shows to New York ; and in the midst of their first
performances, a committee of citizens stopped the proceed-
ings and, while the audiences dispersed in much confusion,
secured the promise of the managers not to show again.*
The project of establishing local manufacturers on some
systematic plan attracted little interest at first. When, how-
ever, some enterprising Philadelphians established a manu-
facturing company a few months later, the Sixty decided
to make use of the same plan, under the name '' The New
York Society for employing the Industrious Poor and Pro-
moting Manufactory." The object was to manufacture
woolens, linens, cottons and nails; but subscriptions for
stock failed to materialize, and it was not until January,
1776, that a partial trial of the scheme was made possible
by a subsidy granted by the committee of safety at New
York city.^ This was too late to be of any practical use
because of the British occupancy of the city soon after.
^N. Y. Gas., Oct. 10, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 328.
* N. y. Gasetteer, Jan. 19, 26, Apr. 6, 1775.
*iV. Y. Gaz., Jan. 16, 1775. ^N. Y. Journ., Dec. 15, 1774-
*4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 1263-1264, 1424-1426; Constitutional Gas.^
Jan. 27, 1776.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 493
Apart from the three rural counties of Albany, Ulster
and Suffolk, the outlying districts were not at this time
sufficiently organized to enforce the non-consumption reg-
ulations. It should be noted, however, that the energy and
intelligence of the Sixty at the metropolis reduced the im-
portance of such enforcement, inasmuch as foreign wares
seldom, if ever, penetrated that far. Probably the worst
infractions occurred in the matter of tea drinking after
March i, when no tea either dutied or smuggled was to be
consumed. On April 7, Jacobus Low of Kingston in Ulster
County was proscribed by the Kingston committee as the
only dealer in town who would not refuse to sell tea. A
long and somewhat abusive controversy ensued; but at the
end of two months Low appeared before the committee and
made all the concessions they required.^
Since the mercantile houses of New York city were the
feeders for the country stores of Connecticut and New Jer-
sey, the inviolability of the non-importation in the metrop-
olis was trebly important. That it was well kept the fore-
going incidents testify. A group of conservatives in
Dutchess and Westchester Counties sought to promote a
loyalist association for personal liberty, modeled on Briga-
dier Ruggles's association in Massachusetts ; but it made no
headway.^ Lieutenant Governor Colden, who had orig-
inally been skeptical of the success of the Continental Asso-
ciation, uttered a dependable judgment when he wrote on
March i : " the non importation association of the Con-
gress is ever rigidly maintained in this Place." ^
The spirit of the New Jersey associators has already been
suggested by the conduct of the Elizabeth town committee
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 298, 448, 548, 917.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 1164; iV. Y. Gas., Mch. 20, 1775.
' Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 389- Vide also ibid., pp. 369-370, 373-
494 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
in the Murray affair. On December 6, 1774, Governor
Franklin informed the home government that : "Altho' the
Proceedings of the Congress are not altogether satisfactory
to many of the Inhabitants of the Colonies, yet there seems
at present little Reason to doubt but that the Terms of
Association will be generally carried into Execution, even
by those who dislike Parts of it. But few have the Courage
to declare their Disapprobation publickly, as they all know,
if they do not conform, they are in Danger of becoming
Objects of popular Resentment, from which it is not in
the Pcwxr of Government here to protect them." ^ The
public meetings of Gloucester County and of Woodbridge
Township in Middlesex County expressly instructed their
committees of observation that they should '' as carefully
attend to and pursue the rules and directions for their gov-
ernment ... set forth in the said association, as they
would if the same had been enacted into a law by the legis-
lature of this province." ^
The committees had to devote ver^" little time to the pre-
vention of importation because of the absence of any good
ports. However, a consignment of merchandise, which
had come by way of New York in the Lady Gage, was sold
at auction at New Brunswick; and another importation
from Bristol in the Fair Lady via the same port was sold
at Elizabethtown.^ An effort was made to land secretly a
quantity of dutied tea at Greenwich in Cumberland County.
The consignment was seized by some inhabitants ; and while
the committee of observation was gravely deliberating as to
its disposition, Indians a la Boston made a bonfire of it.*
^ I N. J. Arch., vol. x, p. 503.
' Po. Gas., Dec. 21, 1774; 4 Avi. An-h.. vol. i, pp. 1102-1103.
' N. Y. Journ., Jan. 19, 26, 1775.
* Pa. Packet, Jan. 19. 1775; Andrews, F. D.. Tea-Burners of Cumber-
land County (Vineland, N. J., 1908).
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
495
In February the committees of observation of Elizabeth-
town and Woodbridge suspended commercial intercourse
with the obdurate inhabitants of nearby Staten Island, who
had neglected to join the Association.^
Of the various committees that passed resolutions in be-
half of economy and home production, the Hanover com-
mittee in Morris County established the most comprehen-
sive regulations. They promised to take note of all horse-
racing, cock-fighting and gambling and to prosecute the
offenders in accordance with the law. To Article vii of the
Association they added the requirements that no sheep
should be taken from the county without the committee's
permission and that no sheep should be killed until it was
four years old. They recommended the wide cultivation of
flax and hemp, and inveighed against any dealers who
should advance prices."
An illustration of the effectiveness of the boycott was
accorded by the action of Silas Newcomb, a member of the
Cumberland C(;unty committee, in announcing voluntarily
on March 6 that he had been drinking tea in his family
since March i and that he proposed to continue the prac-
tice. All dealings were thereupon broken off with him;
and on May 1 1 he appeared before the committee and made
an abject apology for his offense: that body accepted his
'' recantation.'' ''
In Pennsylvania the chief obstacle to a perfect execution
of the Association was the hostility of the Quaker merchant
aristocracy at Philadelphia, the only porf of entry. These
men were toO shrewd to expose themselves to the rigors of
'A', }'. Journ., Feb. i6. Mch. 9, 1775; also i Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
1234-1235, 1249.
' Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1240-1241 ; also N. Y. lourn., Feb. 23, 1775.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 34-35-
\y
^^6 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the boycott through personal infractions of the Association ;
but, being weahhy and influential members of the Society
U'^'of Friends, they were able to conduct a campaign against
the Association by controlling the official utterances of that
organization.
As early as May 30, 1774, the day before the Boston
Port Act became effective, the several meetings of the soci-
ety in Philadelphia joined in declaring that, if any Quakers
had countenanced the plan of suspending all business on
June I, " they have manifested great inattention to our re-
ligious principles and profession, and acted contrary to the
rules of Christian discipline established for the preservation
of order and good government among us." ^ In the follow-
ing months the constant effort of the Quaker leaders, in
striking contrast with earlier years, was to keep the members
of the society clear of radical activities. " This has occa-
sioned no small care and labor," wrote James Pemberton
on November 6, **' but has been so far of service that I hope
it may be said we are generally clear; tho' there have been
instances of some few who claim a right of membership
with us that have not kept within such limits and bounds
as we could wish." ^ Joseph Reed, fixed in his singleness
of purpose, seriously impugned their sincerity. They " act
their usual part," he wrote on the same day as Pemberton's
letter. " They have directed their members not to serve on
the Committee, and mean to continue the same undecisive,
neutral conduct until they see how the scale is like to pre-
p>onderate. . . . But American Liberty in the mean time
must take her chance with them." ^
Finally, on December 15, a meeting for sufferings at
Philadelphia appointed a committee to wait on the Quaker
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 2>6s-2>^.
' Sharpless, Quakers in Revolution, p. 108.
^4 Am, Arch., vol. i, pp. 963-964.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES
497
members of the provincial assembly and reprimand them
for having given their votes to a resolution ratifying the
doings of the Continental Congress five days earlier/ This
was preliminary to the action taken by the meeting for
sufferings for Pennsylvania and New Jersey, held at Phila-
delphia on January 5, 1775. At this meeting disapproval
was expressed of the measures which were being prosecuted
against Great Britain, and all members of the society were
earnestly requested to avoid joining in such measures as
inconsistent with their religious principles.^ A gathering
of Quaker representatives from the two provinces later in
the month was even more explicit in their '' testimony "
against '' every usurpation of power and authority in op-
position to the Laws and Government, and against all Com-
binations, Insurrections, Conspiracies and Illegal Assem-
blages." '
Many members differed with the official utterances of the
society, some perhaps because they had increased their
stocks in anticipation of the non-importation, many others
because they could not see why they should abstain from
extra-legal activities at this juncture inasmuch as Quakers
had been leaders in commercial combinations against Great
Britain during Stamp Act times. A contemporary noted
that the Quakers were divided; that many of them disap-
proved of the Testimony, just alluded to, and indeed that
the Testimony had been adopted by a gathering of only
twenty-six people.* '' B. L.," writing in the Pennsylvania
Journal of February i. 1775, reasoned blandly that the
Testimony could not have been directed against extra-legal
^ Sharpless, op. cit., p. 107.
^ N. Y. Gac, Jan. 30, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1093-1094.
* Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1176-1177; also Pa. Journ., Feb. 8, 1775.
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1270.
498
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
measures, since that supposition would condemn the very
meeting which had issued the paper, and since James Pem-
berton, the secretary of the meeting, was well known as an
active participant in the selection of the committee last
summer. The upshot was that the Society of Friends was
not able to fasten an official stigma on the radical measures
nor to control the actions of all of its members, although it
continued to seek to do so.
The Committee of Sixty-Six at Philadelphia made care-
ful arrangements for the enforcement of the non-importa-
tion regulation. The membership of the committee was
divided into six districts, and one person from each district
was required to attend every morning at the London Coffee
House to inspect the arrival of vessels.^ All importers after
December i were warned to consult with this sub-committee
as to whether new merchandise should be stored, auctioned
off, or re-shipped. Detailed regulations were laid down for
public sales, such as, for instance, that in ordinary cases no
lots worth more than £15 sterling nor less than £3 sterling
should be offered for sale.^
Unfortunately no record has been found in the news-
papers or elsewhere of the performance of the committee in
the first two months of the non-importation; but that the
committee was faithful to its trust there can be no doubt.
'' There seems to be too general a disposition every where
to adhere strictly to the Resolutions of the Congress," wrote
Deputy Governor Penn on December 31.^ The Sixty-Six
declared on February 16, 1775, that they had "not met
with the least impediment or obstruction in carrying into
execution any one Resolution of the Continental Congress,"
^ Pa. Gaz., Dec. 7, 1774; also A". Y. Journ., Dec. 15.
'Pa. Gas., Dec. 14, 1774; also Essex Journ., Dec. 28.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1081.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 499
although, like in every community, there were persons who,
placing private interest against public good, had a malig-
nant pleasure in stirring up dissension.^ " The Non Im-
portation is Strictly adheard to . . . ," wrote Eliza Far-
mar on February 17; "all ships that came in after the
first of Deer, the goods were deliverd to the Commities to
be sold by Auction agreeable to the order of the Congress." ^
After February i the newspapers from time to time
published instances of the return of cargoes without break-
ing bulk. So, with some pipes of Madeira wine that arrived
early in February; and so, also, with a large consignment
of Irish beef which arrived in April. ^ " All Ships with
goods after the ist of this month are not Sufferd to un-
load," reported Eliza Farmar in the letter noted above;
" several have been obliged to go to the West Indies."
It would appear likely that the Sixty-Six showed some
laxity in the regulation of prices; and this may have been
done to appease the merchants in order to accomplish the
larger purposes of the non-importation. While the First
Continental Congress was still sitting, it was charged that
pins had advanced to 15s. a pack, pepper to 3s. 6d. a pound,
etc., in anticipation of a suspension of trade.* On Novem-
ber 30, the Sixty-Six took official notice of advances made
by "a few persons " and recommended to the public that
the boycott, prescribed by Article ix in such cases, should
be promptly carried out." The provincial convention in
January added the weight of its influence to this timely
^ N. Y. Gas., Mch. 31, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1243. An
abusive reply to the committee's assertion did not deny that the non-
importation had been faithfully observed. Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 238-242.
' Pa. Mag., vol. xl, pp. 202-203.
' Pa. Packet, Feb. 13, 1775 ; Pa. Eve. Post, Apr. 20.
■* Letter in N. Y. Gazetteer, Oct. 6, 1774.
^ Pa. Gaz., Nov. 30, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. loio.
200 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
advice.^ However, in March, 1775, it was freely charged
that the drygoods merchants were, without the least oppo-
sition, asking prices for goods representing an increase of
twenty-five to one hundred per cent over former prices ; ^
and as late as September of the same year Chase declared
publicly in the Second Congress that prices had been ad-
vanced fifty per cent in Philadelphia."
The spirit of the enforcement outside of the city was in-
dicated by the resolution of the provincial convention that,
if opposition should be offered to any committee of obser-
vation, the committees of the other counties should render
all the assistance in their power to keep the Association
inviolate.^
The distinctive feature of the working of the Association
in Pennsylvania was the importance that was given to the
development of home production and to the introduction
of simpler modes of living. Community sentiment was well
fertilized for such an undertaking by the religious teachings
of the Friends as well as by the homely maxims of " Poor
Richard " through a long period of years. The funeral
regulations, recommended by Congress, were well observed,
even such a prominent man as Thomas Lawrence, ex-mayor
of Philadelphia, being buried in accordance with these
directions.^ The Sixty-Six on November 30 recommended
that no ewe-mutton be purchased or eaten in the country
until May i, 1775, 3.nd none after that day until October i,
and that thereafter none at all should be used. Notices in
English and German were published throughout the prov-
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1172; also Pa. Journ., Feb. i, 1775.
' "An Englishman," 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 239.
'Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 447.
^ Pa. Journ.. Feb. i, 1775: also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1170.
^Pa. Journ., Jan. 25, 1775.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 501
ince to warn the country people against selling sheep to
butchers contrary to the regulation/ Sixty-six butchers of
Philadelphia agreed to be bound by the recommendation of
the committee, and the butchers of Reading signed a similar
agreement.^ In January the provincial convention resolved
unanimously that after the first of March no sheep under
four years of age should be killed or sold, except in cases
of extreme necessity.'^
The provincial convention made many recommendations
respecting the commodities and wares which the province
seemed best fitted to produce. Raw wool should be utilized
in the making of coatings, flannels, blankets, hosiery and
coarse cloths; and dyes should be obtained from the culti-
vation of madder, woad and other dye stuffs. Of the
farther-reaching proposals were the recommendations that
fulling-mills should be erected, and mills should be estab-
lished for the manufacture of woolcombs and cards, of steel,
nails and wire, of paper, of gunpowder, of copper kettles
and tinplates. As the demand for Pennsylvania-made glass
exceeded the supply, it was recommended that more glass
factories be established. To carry these proposals more
speedily into effect, local societies should be established,
and premiums awarded in the various counties.* The Bed-
ford County Committee, among others, acted on these rec-
ommendations a few weeks later, and offered five pounds
to the person who erected the first fulling-mill in the county^
* Because several city butchers had a stock of sheep on hand, the
regulation was not to become operative until January i in Philadelphia.
Pa. Gas., Nov. 30, Dec. 21, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. loio.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1050-1051, 1 144; also Pa. Gaz., Dec. 21, 17yd,, and
Pa. Journ., Jan. 25, 1775.
^ Ibid., Feb. i, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1171.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1171-1172; also Pa. Journ., Feb. i, 1775.
-02 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
and four smaller money prizes to the persons making the
best pieces of linen cloth within a given period.^
The most ambitious venture of this character was the
United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American
^Manufactures, estabHshed in March, 1775. The company
was financed through the sale of stock at ten pounds a
share; and the efforts of the company were devoted to the
manufacture of woolen, cotton and linen textiles. Daniel
Roberdeau was chosen first president. At the start, some
mistakes were made, owing to the inexperience of the man-
agers; but soon nearly four hundred spinners were em-
ployed, and at the end of six months the board of managers
announced that the enterprise was not only practicable but
promised to be profitable for the stockholders. More stock
was then sold to enlarge the scope of the company's opera-
tions.^
In the light of this array of facts, the announcement,
made on February 27, 1775, by the Sixty-Six testifying to
'' the uniform spirit and conduct of the people in the faith-
ful execution '' of the Association, and a private statement,
made on the same day, that the " City Committee have sub-
dued all opposition to their Measures," bear the stamp of
truth." As President Roberdeau of the United Company of
Philadelphia put it, " The Resolves of the Congress have
been executed with a fidelity hardly known to laws in any
Country . . ." "^
Possessing no important commercial connections, it
^ Pa. Jour)!., Mch. 8, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol, i, pp. 1226-1227.
* Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1256-1257; vol. ii, pp. 140-144; vol. iii, pp. 73^ 820-
821 ; also Pa. Gas., Feb. 22, Aug. 9, i775, and Pa. Journ., Mch. 22,
Sept. 27.
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. i. pp. 1269, 1270.
*Jbid., vol. ii, p. 141; also Pa. Ledger. Apr. 15, 1775.
IN THE COMMERCIAL PROVINCES 503
would appear that the Association went quietly into force
in the Lower Counties on the Delaware. If any decided
opposition developed in Sussex County, where no committee
was yet appointed, no record of it remains. In Newcastle
and Kent, the chief attention was given to carrying out the
popular Pennsylvania regulation regarding the conservation
of sheep and to the elimination of extravagance and dissi-
pation.^ Letters written to Philadelphia in February de-
clared that " the greatest unanimity subsists in putting into
force the Resolves of the Continental Congress." ^
^ E. g., vide 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1022; Niles, Prins. & Acts, p. 239.
^ Pa. Journ., Feb. 15, 1775.
CHAPTER XIII
Five Months of the Association in the Plantation
Provinces. General Conclusions
f ■ The problem of enforcing the Continental Association
I in the plantation provinces differed in one respect markedly
• from that in the commercial provinces. The old antagon-
ism between merchant and planter — between creditor and
debtor — that had raised its forbidding head at various
times during the previous years, had now become more
acute. The conditions, imposed by a non-intercourse, in-
creased the difficulties of the planters to repay their obliga-
tions; and the economic dominance of the merchants and
factors made it necessary that their power be broken before
the Association could be successfully administered. The
plantation provinces thus, without exception, resorted to
fextreme measures against the merchant-creditors.
The execution of the non-importation and non-consump-
tion regulations in Maryland was somewhat complicated by
the fact that there were more than twenty rivers in the
province navigable by large ships. However, commerce
centered naturally at Baltimore and Annapolis; and the
zeal and watchfulness of the radicals probably reduced
evasions of the Association to a minimum in all parts of
the province.
It was well understood that the merchant and factor class
were likely to be the most pertinacious offenders against the
Association, and therefore the Maryland convention, meet-
ing in December, 1774, resolved that lawyers should prose-^
504
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
505
cute no suits for violators of the Association, and that, if
the violator were a factor, lawyers should not conduct debt
prosecutions for the store of which he was manager/ In-
fluenced in the interval by the example of Virginia, where
the mercantile interests were even more deeply intrenched,
the Maryland convention went to greater lengths in August,
1775. They resolved that no civil actions (with a few
specified exceptions) should be commenced or renewed in
any court of law, save by permission of the committee of
observation of the county in which the debtors and defend-
ants resided. These committees were instructed to permit
the trial of cases where debtors refused to renew their obli-
gations, or to give reasonable security, or to refer their dis-
putes to one or more disinterested parties, or when the
debtors were justly suspected of an intention to leave the
province or to defraud their creditors.^
In the first two months of the non-importation, public
sales of merchandise imported in contravention of the
Association were reported at Annapolis, Chestertown, Pis-
cataway and Calvert County. For example, James Dick
and Anthony Stewart, who were in bad odor for past in-
discretions, were concerned in an importation of Madeira
wines at Annapolis ; and the consignment was sold, at their
request, at a profit of £1 iis. id. for the Boston poor/ In
the months following February i, 1775, many instances of
effective execution were noted in the newspapers. Thus, to
cite one case that required more than usual skill in its man-
agement, the captain of the brig Sally from Bristol ap-
peared before the Baltimore committee and attested under
oath that his cargo consisted of twenty-four indentured
^ Md. Gaz., Dec. 15, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1032.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 117-118.
' Md. Gas., Dec. 15, 1774. For other instances, vide ibid., Feb. 23,
Mch. 2, June 29, 1775.
-o6 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
servants and one hundred tons of British salt. Clearly the
bringing in of sei'vants did not violate the Association, and
Dr. John Stevenson, the consignee, maintained to the com-
mittee that the salt ought to be considered merely as ballast
and thus not contrary to the Association. But the commit-
tee voted unanimously that the salt should not be landed.
A week later the captain and the consignee were called be-
fore the committee again and charged with having unladen
a portion of the salt in defiance of the decision of the com-
mittee. Stevenson replied that he had understood the reso-
lution to apply to Baltimore County only and that he had
shipped a quantity on board four bay-craft to various parts
of Maryland and Virginia. Inasmuch as there was a color-
able pretext for this interpretation, the committee decided
not to boycott him upon his pledge to give the proceeds of
the sales to the relief of Boston and not to land the remain-
der of the salt anywhere between Nova Scotia and Georgia.
Word was sent out to various parts of the province to stop
the sale of the salt and to punish all persons guiltily in-
volved. In Prince George's County Thomas Bailey was
discovered to be implicated and, after a hearing, declared
to have wilfully violated the Association.^
The more usual procedure in cases of forbidden impor-
tation was for the captain to take his vessel away at the
command of the local committee without disturbing the
cargo." A little out of the ordinary was the arrival of a
tomb-stone in Charles County, which had been brought
there from a vessel that had stopped in the Potomac. The
committee ordered that the stone should be broken to
pieces.^ With regard to non-consumption regulations, some
^ Md. Gaz., Mch. 30. June 15, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp.
34, 308.
'£. g., vide ibid., vol. ii, pp. 123, 175-176, 659-660, 1122-1123.
*N. y. Gaz.. July 24. 1775.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
507
difficulty was experienced in preventing the use of tea. In
the instance of one obdurate tea dealer, the committee for
the Upper Part of Frederick County sentenced the offen-
der, one John Parks, to set fire to his tea with head uncov-
ered and then to suffer the rigors of the boycott. Not con-
tent with these measures, the populace derived some satis-
faction from breaking in his door and windows.^ Usually,
however, offenders acquiesced without trouble.
The supervision of prices received careful attention. In
December, 1774, the Maryland convention noted the wide
range of prices in different parts of the province during the
preceding twelve months, and resolved that all merchants
must observe a uniform rule which the convention an-
nounced : that wholesale prices should not be more than
ii2j/^ per cent, retail prices cash not more than 130 per
cent, and retail prices on credit not more than 150 per
cent, advance on the prime cost." Alexander Ogg, a mer-
chant of Huntington, was found guilty of infringing this
rule by the Calvert County Committee and published as an
enemy to his country. He offered to give store credit for
every farthing he had charged beyond the limit fixed, but
his plea fell on deaf ears.^
The rigorous observance of the boycott was attested by
the petitions of John Baillie, Patrick Graham and Alexan-
der Ogg to the provincial convention.^ The first two had
been proscribed for knowingly importing goods forbidden
by the Association, at a public meeting called by the Charles
County committee. Baillie declared that he had suffered
" the extremity of a heavy, though just, sentence " which
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1009; also Md. Journ., Nov. 16, 1774, and
Md. Gas., Dec. 22.
"^ Ibid., Dec. 15, 1774; also 4 A^n. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1031-1032.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, p. 281 ; also Md. Gas., Apr. 13, 1775.
*4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 727; vol. iii, pp. loi, 102, 106, 119-121.
5o8
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
had been " executed with such rigour that it has been with
the most extreme and hazardous difficuhy he could obtain
the necessary food to support a Hfe rendered miserable by
his conduct and the abovementioned sentence;" and he
promised exemplary conduct if his offense were forgiven.
Graham testified that he had " already suffered greatly, not
only in his own person, property and reputation, but should
he continue much longer in the present situation, his offence
must reduce an innocent wife and four children to beggary
and ruin." Ogg, who had advanced prices unduly, declared
that he had not been able to carry on his business or to
collect the debts due to him. The convention squarely re-
jected Baillie's petition; but Graham and Ogg, because of
mitigating circumstances, were allowed to resume their
earlier occupations, the former under some restrictions.
A resolution of the Marj'-land convention in December,
1774, sought to prevent the killing of any lamb under four
years of age. Because the terms of this resolution w^ere
much more severe than the recommendation in the Conti-
nental Association, considerable confusion arose from the
representations of violators that they were entirely in har-
mony with the Continental Association and therefore ought
not to be proscribed. To relieve the situation the resolu-
tion was withdrawn by the Maryland convention in August,
1775.^ The provincial convention of November, 1774,
recommended that balls be discontinued in this time of
public calamity.^ The Jockey Club at Annapolis called off
the races which had been arranged to conclude the club sub-
scription.^ In April, 1775, the Baltimore committee unani-
mously recommended to the people of the county not to en-
'^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1031 ; vol, ii, pp. 308-309, 903-904; vol. iii, pp.
104, 117.
* Ibid., vol. i, p. 991 ; also Md. Gas.. Dec. i, 1774.
* Ibid., Nov. 3, 1774.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 509
courage or attend the approaching fair because of its ten-
dency to encourage horse-racing, gaming, drunkenness and
other dissipation/
In view of the abundant evidence, it is scarcely necessary
to quote Governor Eden's words of December 30, 1774, to
the effect that he firmly believed that the Marylanders
would '' persevere in their nonimportation and nonexporta-
tion experiments, in spite of every inconvenience that they
must consequently be exposed to, and the total ruin of their
trade." '
L,In Virginia the chief dissent to the Association came!
from the merchant and factor element, largely Scotch by!
nativity. The fact that a majority of the faculty of Wil-(
liam and Mary College were non-associators elicited un-
favorable comment from the radical press ; ^ but their op-
position was no more important than that of the small
Quaker element in the population, which Madison noted,*
or of the royal office holding class, since none of these
groups was in position to enforce their views even if they
wanted to.
The opposition of the Scotch was clandestine but none
the less pertinacious. The body of the trade at Williams-
burg, numbering more than four hundred, professed sup-
port of the Association in a written pledge early in Novem-
ber, 1774, and received the thanks of Peyton Randolph and
other delegates of the province for disregarding the influ-
ence of their commercial interest in the great struggle for
liberty.^ And the Norfolk committee affirmed on Decem-
1 Md. Gaz., May 4, 1775 ; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 2>2)7-
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 1076; also Pa. Eve. Post, June 6, 1775.
* Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Dec. 22, 1774; Jan. 5, 26, 1775.
* Writings (Hunt), vol. i, pp. 28-29.
* Pa. Gaz., Nov. 30, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol, i, pp. 972-973.
3IO THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ber 6 that the whole trading body of the province had
cheerfully subscribed to the Association/ Whether or not
the motive of the merchants at this early time was to gain
the good will of the radical planters who owned them large
sums of money, the facts are clear that they had to regulate
their conduct ultimately by the instructions of the English
houses they represented or, in any case, be tempted almost
beyond endurance by the prospect of obtaining monopoly
prices during the suspension of importation.
Suspicion of the good faith of the Scotch merchants had
too deep a hold on many radicals to permit acceptance of
their protestations at face value. " It is generally believed,
by this time, that the Scotch have all signed the associa-
tion," declared one newspaper writer. " If they have, I
would ask if it is not through compulsion?" He urged
that, while there was still time, the province should be
purged of such filth by withdrawing all trade from them."
Another writer deplored " that antipathy to the Scotch,
which appears to be so general amongst us," and showed
that despite their personal predilections they must as a
matter of duty defer to their British employers with re-
spect to the Association.^ When the period for enforcing
the non-importation arrived, the Scotch as a class proved to
be the most numerous offenders. The climax came when
Purdie's Virginia Gazette of December 22 and 29, 1775,
published a number of intercepted letters, which showed
that the leading Scotch merchants were as unprincipled as
the most skeptical radicals had believed them to be. A
letter was printed, written by Andrew Sprowle, chairman
of the Williamsburg trade, who had headed the merchants
^4 M. H. S. Colls., vol. iv, pp. 160-161.
' Charles M'Carty, of Richmond County, in Pinkney's T'a. Gas., Jan.
19, 1775-
' "A Citizen of the World '' in ibid.. Jan. 26. 1775.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
511
when they signed the Association in November, 1774. In
this letter Sprowle ordered some invoices of goods from
Greenock, Scotland, and declared further : " 1 would have
no fear in bringing in a vessel with Osnabrugs, Irish linen,
and other sortable goods, [as they] would be protected by
a man of war." Robert Shedden of Portsmouth had writ-
ten to his Glasgow correspondent : " Depend upon it you
will never have such another opportunity to make money
by dry goods in this country. Osnabrugs, canvass, &c and
every necessar)- article; a large and full assortment of
goods, nails, &c; bring as many as you can get credit for.
... If you bring 20,000 1. in goods, they will sell to ad-
vantage." Wrote the Norfork merchant, John Brown, to
London : " You are hereby ordered to ship, by the first op-
portunity, £1000 sterling value in linen goods, &c."
Meantime, the merchants and factors had been taking
advantage of their position in another way — they had been
hastening to press their debtors for the payment of long-
outstanding obligations before the latter became entirely
bankrupt from the suspension of trade. This prudent busi-
ness transaction worked a grievous hardship on many plan-
ters, and estates were sold for debt in divers places.^ A de-
mand arose for a boycott against merchants who used ex-
cessive caution in extending credit; and Peyton Randolph
felt impelled to declare in a public statement that the Asso-
ciation furnished no remedy, that it did not empower com-
mittees to dictate to merchants to whom they should sell
on credit or for what time they should give credit.^
Unless the radicals could devise effective counter-
measures, the merchants seemed about to cut the ground
from under them. The radicals had foreseen this situation,
to some extent, and their course of action was designed to
^ "A Scotchman " in Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Mch. 23, 1775.
' Ihid., Feb. 2, 9, 1775.
^12 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
cripple, if not to destroy, the economic power of the mer-
chants. The provincial convention of August, 1 774, closed
up the county courts of justice on the ground that the last
session of the Assembly had not renewed the Fee Act; and
" the men of fortune and pre-eminence joined equally with
the lowest and meanest '' in bringing this to pass, averred
Governor Dunmore/ They also recommended that lawyers
and witnesses stay away from the approaching General
Court of Judicature, except in criminal cases ; and they suc-
ceeded in carrying their point. On March 25, 1775, a later
provincial convention gave their sanction to the suspension
of judicial proceedings. They declared that, on account of
the unsettled state of public affairs, the lawyers, suitors
and witnesses ought not to take part in civil cases at the
next General Court: that county courts ought not to hear
any suits on their dockets, except attachments, nor give
judgment, save in the case of sheriffs or other collectors
for money or tobacco received by them, or in cases where
judgment should be voluntarily confessed or in amicable
proceedings for the settlement of estates." Though ex-
horted by Governor Dunmore, the House of Burgesses in
June refused " to interpose legislative authority in order
to compel the Magistrates to open the courts of civil juris-
diction, and thereby expose the people to cruel exactions."
They justified their refusal as an answer to the act of Par-
liament, recently passed, restraining their trade, and de-
clared it was best for the courts to remain closed until wis-
dom had returned to the British administration.^
These measures afforded an effective shield against the
merchant-creditors and saved the situation for the radicals.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 775, 1062.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 16S-169; also Pinkney's I 'a. Gaz., Mch. 30, 1775.
^4 Am. Arch., vol, ii. pp. 1188, 1190-1191.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 513
Indeed, on August 25, a petition was presented to the Vir-
ginia convention by sundry factors and mercantile agents,
complaining of the ill-grounded prejudices Avhich had been
aroused against them as natives of Great Britain and pledg-
ing their aid in the civil contest with the parent country in
every respect except that of taking up arms against the
people among whom they had been born. The convention
resolved unanimously that the petition was reasonable and
instructed the local committees " to treat all natives of
Great Britain resident here, as do not show themselves
enemies to the common cause of America, with lenity and
friendship. . . ." ^
In carrying out the Association in Virginia, the plan was
adopted of requiring all the inhabitants to attach their sig-
natures to the docum.ent. Other provinces had been willing
and anxious to let sleeping dogs lie; the Virginia radicals
were so confident of the power of public opinion behind
them that they carried this challenge to every inhabitant, so
far as it proved practicable." Thus, the Northampton com-
mittee divided the county into seven districts with sub-
committees appointed to present the Association to all the
inhabitants.^ The committee for Princess Anne County
delivered a list of non-associators to every merchant in the
county and posted other copies at various public places and
at Norfolk, with the recommendation that all commercial
intercourse with the delinquents be stopped. When Ben-
jamin Gray, one of the proscribed, was reported to have
called the committee " a pack of damn'd rascals," his addi-
tional offense was also given publicity.* In Nansemond
1^ Am. Arch. vol. iii, pp. 391-392; also Pinkney's Fa. Gaz., Aug.
31, 1775.
^Madison, Writings (Hunt), vol. i, pp. 28-29.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1045.
* Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 7(>-77 ; also Pinkney's Va. Gas., Mch. 23, 1775.
CI4 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
County, the Reverend John Agnew was held up to public
censure for roundly condemning the Association in his ser-
mons and private conversations; and a man who rented a
" flatt " from the parson was obliged to give it up/ Ex-
amples like this abounded. The Virginia plan forced every
inhabitant into a position of either active friendship or open
hostility; and since it was entirely possible for a man to
disapprove of the Association without ever violating its
provisions, the number of those subject to neglect and boy-
cott was vastly greater than in other provinces. The Vir-
ginia radicals thus took an advanced stand — a stage which
the other provinces did not reach until the bloodshed of
April, 1775, had occurred.
In early November, 1774, a mob at Yorktown went on
board the Virginia and dumped into the river two half-
chests of tea, with the entire approval of the county com-
mittee. The London shippers and the consignees at Wil-
liamsburg were both held up for neglect by the York com-
mittee and the adjoining Gloucester County committee.^
This little " tea party " exceeded the provisions of the
Association, but marked the enthusiasm which character-
ized the execution of the non-importation regulation. Pub-
lic sales of cargoes that arrived between December i, 1774^
and February i, 1775, were reported at Norfolk and Wil-
liamsburg and in fourteen counties.^ Many of these sales
showed small profits or none at all ; but occasionally a ship-
ment brought a substantial advance, like Andrew Wod-
row's in King George County, which yielded a profit of
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 226-228; N. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, p. 1164.
'^ Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Nov. 24, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
964-965.
^ Charles City. Dinwiddle, Elizabeth City, Essex, Fairfax. Gooch-
land. Henrico, Tsle of Wight. King George, Nansemond, New Kent,
Princess Anne. Spotsylvania and Surry. Vide files of the three Vir-
ginia Gazettes, edited by Pinkney. by Purdie. and by Dixon & Hunter.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 515
£19 14s. for the Boston needy. ^ For this reason, it is im-
probable that the Scotch merchants feh tempted to with-
hold importations from committee auction.
One interesting case of defiance occurred. Late in Jan-
uary an importation of medicines worth £200 sterling ar-
rived for Dr. Alexander Gordon, a well-known physician
of Norfolk; and he requested that he might be allowed to
receive the goods agreeable to the terms of the provincial
association of August, 1774. The committee informed
him that their rule of conduct now was the Continental
Association, and advised him to submit the medicines for
sale in accordance with Article x, as had been done by
other physicians. He expressed a preference for storing
the goods under charge of the committee; but while ar-
rangements were being m.ade for this purpose, he quietly
landed the medicines and took possession of them himself.
It proved impossible for the committee to get the merchan-
dise away from him, and with very evident reluctance thej
held him up for public censure."
The regulation against the importation of slaves had
caused very little difficulty in the northern provinces; but
the Norfolk committee found it necessary to proscribe John
Brown, a Scotch merchant who had been in Virginia since
1762, for being concerned in the importation of twenty
slaves in the brig Fanny from Jamaica. He stoutly pro-
tested his innocence, but his letter-books proved the con-
trary.'
* Dixon & Hunter's Va, Gaz., Jan. 28, 1775.
* Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Feb. 16, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. j, pp.
1217-1278.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 33-34; also Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Mch. 2^, 1775.
Vide also memorial of the Browns in A. O. no. 55: N. Y. Loyalist
Claims Transcripts, vol. xxvii, pp. 459, 467-471. The Chesterfield
County committee also took occasion to voice their indignation and to
declare the suspension of all dealings with him. Purdie's Va. Gas.;^
May 5, 1775.
^iS THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
After February i the number of incoming vessels fell
off, and when goods were brought contrary to the Associa-
tion they were almost invariably re-shipped. In one case,
that of the brigantine Miiir from Antigua, the captain had
sold some merchandise before he learned of the Associa-
tion; and the Essex County committee absolved him from
public censure Vv'hen he signed the Association and re-
shipped the goods, including the portion sold/ On the
other hand, the Norfolk committee declared Captain Samp-
son, of the snow Elizabeth from Bristol, an enemy to his
country for practising deception in landing a cargo of salt
and then seeking protection of a man-of-war." The non-
consumption regulations required little attention from the
committees, except the prohibition of tea drinking, which
was effectively administered.^
The upvrard trend of prices gave more trouble. Accord-
ing to the Continental Association prices were not to ad-
vance beyond the customary charge for articles during the
twelve months preceding. A disgusted radical of North-
umberland County averred that, when it came to the inves-
tigation of prices, one Scotch merchant would swear to
another's lies — the}^ were "determined to be clannish, even
at the expence of their souls !" * This practice was prob-
ably not restricted entirely to the Scotch traders. At any
rate, it quickly caused the committees to adopt the practice
of examining the daybooks and invoices of any merchant
under suspicion. Should he refuse access to his accounts,
he was deemed to be guilty by the very fact. For example,
in December, 1774, the committee of Caroline County in-
^ Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Mch. 16, 177^-
-Ibid., Apr, 6, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 174-175.
^ E. g., Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Dec. i, 1774, June i, 1775; Dixon &
Hunter's Gaz., Feb. 4 ; Purdie's Gaz., July 7.
^ Charles M'Carty in Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Jan. 19, 1775.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 517
spected the books of four merchants, declaring them inno-
cent, and pronounced six others subject to^ boycott because
they had withheld their books. Within less than a month
the six permitted their accounts to be examined; and the
committee declared that they also had adhered to the Asso-
ciation/ In Gloucester County, Captain Charles Marshall,
who had been acting consistently with his avowal that
" every man has a right to sell his goods for as much as he
could get," was disciplined by the committee; whereupon
he signed the Association, and issued a confession in which
he said : "These are offenses I am (as have been some other
North Britains) taught to know, at this time, deserve
severe punishment." ~ Great activity in the regulation of
prices was also recorded in other counties, especially Prince
William, Charlotte, Spotsylvania, Hanover, Richmond and
Fairfax.^
The promotion of local manufacturing met with ready /
response, partly no doubt because it contributed to the '
weakening of the economic position of the factors and mer-
chants. Interest centered in the production of cotton and
woolen textiles, arid of gunpowder. The Northampton
Colinty committee in January, 1775, offered a bonus of £40
sterling to the first person who in the next eighteen months
should make one thousand pairs of wool-cards in the prov-
ince and agreed to buy them at the rate of 2s. a pair. A
premium of £40 was also oft'ered to the first person who
should manufacture five thousand pounds of gunpowder in
the province in the next eighteen months. The committee
appealed to other counties to add to these premiums, so that
- Pinkney's Va. Gas., Jan, 12, 1775; and Dixon & Hunter's Va. Gaz.,
Feb. 4.
* Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Jan. 19, 1775.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1034, 1138-1139; Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Jan.
19, Feb. 2, May 18, 1775; Purdie's Gaz., Feb. 17, Apr. 21.
qrS THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the total sum would foster a widespread interest in manu-
facturing/ Other counties quickly acted on the sugges-
tion; ^ and on March 27 the provincial convention outlined
a comprehensive program of industrial development by
adopting bodily the main resolutions passed by the Penn-
sjdvania convention in January. After j\Iay i no sheep
were to be killed under four years of age, except in cases of
necessity. Woolen, cotton and linen manufactures should
be established; steel, woolcombs, paper, gunpowder, etc.,
should be manufactured. These various undertakings
should be promoted by the formation of local societies for
that purpose and by the offering of premiums.^ In Sep-
tember, James Stewart returned to Virginia after eighteen
months' stay in England where he had been studying the
culture and preparation of dyes and machines for manu-
facturing cotton. He brought with him a large quantity
of seeds and roots of the standard dyes, for planting in
various parts of the province, and planned to instruct per-
sons in the construction of cotton machines.* What suc-
cess he met with we do not know.
In no province was the practice of gambling more deeply
rooted than in Virginia ; and determined efforts were made
t.-^ discourage this wasteful manner of living. Thus, infor-
mation was received by the Northumberland County com-
mittee that William Lewis had violated the Association by
gaming with Anthony McKenley of Maryland. W^itnesses
were called, sworn and examined ; and the evidence showed
^ Dixon & Hunter's Va. Gaz., Feb. 4. 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i,
pp. 104S-1046.
' £. g., Isle of Wight, Cumberland, Essex, Gloucester and Bedford;
ibid., vol. i, p. 1247; vol. ii, pp. 13-14, 387-388; Pinkney's Va. Gaz., F€b.
13, 1775-
^ Jhid., Mch, 30, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 170-171.
* Ibid., vol. iii, p. 716; also Purdie's Ta. Gaz., Sept. 15, 1775.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 519
that Lewis had won " a Silver Watch, two pair of Leather
Breeches, and two men's fine Hats." Both men were ad-
judged guilty and were publicly advertised as violators of
the Association/ The Southampton County committee
recommended four men, who had been gaming, to the
mercy of the public, upon their offer to refund all they had
won and to observe the Association strictly in the future.*
In another instance, the Hanover County committee " hon-
ourably acquitted " Samuel Overton of the charge of en-
couraging horse-racing.^
The degree of efficiency attained by the committees in
executing the Association aroused Governor Dunmore to
righteous indignation in his well-known letter of December
24, 1774, to Lord Dartmouth. His conclusions in that
epistle were that the Association was being enforced '' with
the greatest rigour " and that " the Laws of Congress "
received from the Virginians " marks of reverence which
they never bestowed on their legal Government, or the Laws
proceeding from it." By way of pathetic afterthought he
added : '' I have discovered no instance where the inter-
position of Government, in the feeble state to which it is
reduced, could serve any other purpose than to suffer the
disgrace of a disappointment, and thereby afford matter of
great exultation to its enemies and increase their influence
over the minds of the people." *
In North Carolina the development of events was influ-
enced by the example of nearby Virginia. The old Regu-
^ Pinkney's Va. Ga::., Mch. 2, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp.
1178-1179.
' Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 299-300.
' Pinkney's Va. Gas., Jan. 19, 1775.
* Ibid., Apr. 28, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1061-1063. For
radical answers to Dimmore's assertions, vide ibid., vol. ii, pp. 502-504,
525, 1204, 1210-121S, 1222-1225.
-20 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
lator class held aloof from the Continental Association,
although it made some progress among them ; ^ being seg-
regated in the interior counties, they were not in position
to impair the operation of the Association in its more im-
portant aspects. There was, how^ever, a small, compact
group of Scotch merchants at Wilmington, the chief trading
town;^ and, as in Virginia, they obeyed the Association
only so far as it served their interests so to do. In the
first two months of the non-importation they co-operated
with the Wilmington committee in permitting their impor-
tations to be sold under the terms of the Association. The
records show that at least thirteen merchants received goods
between December i, 1774, and February i, 1775, which
were offered for public sale by the Wilmington committee,
and that at the smaller town of Edenton two merchants ob-
served the same regulation.^ For example, at a meeting of
the WTlmington committee on December 30, Hogg & Camp-
bell submitted an invoice of salt imported in the North Star
from Lymington, and four other firm.s submitted invoices
of anchors, cables, canvass, csnaburgs and other merchan-
dise imxpcrted in the Thetis from Glasgow. The goods
were sold at public vendue the next day.^ In general, it
may be said that the sales yielded little or no profit; from
all the sales conducted by the Wilmington committee, the
profits for Boston amounted to only £25 2s. 5d.^
In six or seven instances the committee at Wilmington
secured the re-shipment of slaves that had been imported
^ Note the means used to convert three pertinacious inhabitants of
Anson County to the Association. X. C. Col. Recs., vol. x, pp. 125-129,
161, 182.
^ Ihid., vol. X, p. 48.
^ Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1095-1154 passim.
* Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1103-1104.
'^Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1153-1154.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 521
contrary to the Association/ After February i, when the
new period of non-importation began, fewer vessels arrived
at Wilmington, and the cargoes were re-shipped without
trouble. Two interesting exceptions were made — once for
paper intended for use of the press, and another time for
household goods intended for personal use.^
Through their possession of large stocks, the Wilming-
ton merchants were in position to demand high prices and
thus discredit the Association, unless the radicals resorted
to drastic measures. Therefore every effort was made to
supervise prices carefully. On December 17, 1774, the
Pitt County committee fixed a maximum price for salt
with the penalty of boycott for violation.^ About the same
time the Wilmington committee conducted an investigation
into the prices of rum and gunpowder, and in January they
called a meeting of merchants and traders in order to agree
on prices and prevent advantage being taken of the suspen-
sion of importation. On January 2y the committee decided
upon maximum prices for salt and drygoods; and about
two weeks later they compelled Jonathan Dunbilrie to re-
turn to a purchaser the excess profit he had received for a
bushel of salt.* The Rowan County committee also dis-
played great activity in this direction.^
As a still further check upon the merchants, the Wil-
mington committee in March, 1775, adopted the Virginia
device of requiring all friends of the Association to attach
their signatures to the document. On the following day all
the housekeepers in town were given the opportunity, and
* N. C. Col Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1098-1099, 1112-1113, 1168, 1171, 1222,
1266 ; vol. X, p. 24.
^ Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1185-1186; vol. x, pp. 50, 279.
^ Ibid., vol. ix, p. HOC.
* Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1099-1100, 1 1 13, 1 126.
^ Ibid., vol. x, pp. 9-10.
C22 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
only eleven persons refused. Seven of these were Scotch
merchants; five of them had formerly submitted their im-
portations for committee auction. The committee resolved
that unless the eleven revised their decision within six days
they would have no dealings or intercourse whatsoever with
them. Eight prom^ptly gave their signatures ; and when the
six day period expired, only three — two tailors and one
merchant, by name AIcKenzie, McNight and McDonnel —
remained obdurate.^
The way was easy for the radicals to hamper the collec-
tion of debts, for, owing to a quarrel between the governor
and the Assembly, the law for the establishment of courts,
which had expired in February, 1773, had never been re-
newed. At the brief session of the Assembly in April,
1775, Governor Martin urged the importance of a law for
the permanent establishment of courts. But the radical
leaders would have nothing to do with it, openly avowing,
according to Governor Martin, that courts " would be in-
jurious at this time unless their operation could be sus-
pended, since they would furnish the merchants with op-
portunity to harrass their Debtors while the people at large,
having bound themselves by the Resolves of Congress,
could not convert their commodities into money to pay
their Debts." Furthermore, the governor declared that it
was well known that among the radical leaders there were
" some whose desperate circumstances make them dread
the long arms of Courts of unlimited jurisdiction which
would extend to their own cases . . ." ^ Not content with
merely negative action, the North Carolina congress in Sep-
tember, 1775, went the full length, as had the neighboring
provinces, and resolved that no actions should be begun or
i.V. C. Col. Rccs., vol. ix, pp. 1149-1150, 1152-1153, 1166.
^ Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1225-1226.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
523
continued in the courts except by consent of the committee
of the county in which the debtor resided/
Perhaps the most interesting case of boycott, because of
the prominence and wealth of the gentleman concerned,
was that of Thomas Macknight, of Currituck, a county in
the extreme northeastern part of the province. As a mem-
ber of the provincial convention of April, 1775, Macknight
spoke against a motion, which expressed high approval of
the Association, on the ground that a great many colonists,
like himself, owed money in Great Britain which the non-
exportation regulation would render them unable to pay.
Notwithstanding his opposition, the convention proceeded
to adopt the motion, and then voted that every member
should sign the Association. Macknight protested; he said
that he would " conform " to the Association but that he
could not endorse it by the attaching of his signature. The
sense of the convention was taken on his statement of ad-
herence, and the body divided fourteen counties against
fourteen. Macknight continued to withhold his signature,
l3ut offered to change the word " conform " to " accede."
This was voted as acceptable by a majority, but an un-
compromising minority declared they would withdraw from
the convention if any subscription different from theirs
was accepted from him. To restore harmony, Macknight
himself now voluntarily withdrew; and the convention
thereupon passed a resolution holding him up '' as a proper
object of contempt to this Continent " to be subjected to a
rigorous boycott. The other members from Currituck also
withdrew as well as two members of the Pasquotank dele-
gation. It would appear that Macknight did not at once
suffer any serious consequences from this resolution inas-
much as the more substantial leaders among the radicals
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, p. 208. Some changes in detail were made in
this resolution by the provincial council in October. Ibid., p. 1093.
;24 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHAXTS: 1763-1776
realized that he had not asserted his right to act contrary
to the community but merely to think as he pleased. How-
ever, with the development of events in the next twelve-
month, Macknight's offense began to appear more heinous,
and he was forced to abandon his estate and flee to the
British for protection/
Interest in the promotion of domestic manufacturing de-
veloped later in North Carolina than in most other prov-
inces, but assumed a more practicable form. A beginnings
was made in March, 1775. by the Chowan County com-
mittee, who offered premiums to the first persons in the
province who should make a stated quantity of wool cards
and cotton cards, with the added inducement that the arti-
cles should be purchased by the committee at a higher price
than the same articles made in England commanded. Other
awards were announced for the making of steel, bleached
linen and fulled woolen cloth." The provincial convention
in April, 1775, recommended that the other counties follow
out the same plan.^ Most counties proving apathetic, the
provincial congress in September set an example for the
continent by offering twenty premiums, amounting in all to
£2965, for the encouragement of local manufacturing.
Among the manufactures named for subsidies were nails,
pins, needles, steel and pig iron, cotton and wool cards,
linens and woolens, salt, powder and saltpetre.^
As in other provinces, the foibles of the people were sub-
jected to the pitiless sur^^eillance of the committees. This
was strikingly true in the case of AMlmington, where the
^ N. C. Col. Rers., vol. ix, p. 1227; vol. x, pp. 31-37; P^^b. Rec. Off.,
C. 0. 5, no. 147, pp. 447-457 (L. C. Transcripts) ; 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii,
pp. 269-272.
^ .Y. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1 133-1 134; 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 30-31^
' Ibid., vol. ii, p. 270.
* Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 209-212; also N. C. Col. Recs., vol. x, pp. 216-219.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 525
subscription races in November and January were stopped,.
billiard tables were abolished, and dances, private as well as
public, were prevented/
In conclusion, it is a safe generalization that the essential
features of the Association were well executed. The in-
habitants of Anson, Rowan, Surry and Guilford, the old
Regulator counties, remained quiet and no doubt violated
the non-consumption regulations whenever opportunity
afforded — which was seldom. Governor Martin paid his
respects to the efficiency of the radical organization when,
in his proclamation of March i, 1775, he referred to the
"Tyrannical and arbitrary Com^mittees which have already
in many instances proceeded to the Extravagance of forc-
ing his Majesty's subjects contrary to their consciences to
submit to their unreasonable, seditious and chimerical Re-
solves . . ." ^
The temper of the radicals at Charleston, South Caro-
lina, was made manifest by the measures they pursued while
the First Continental Congress was still in session.^ The
General Committee prevented a merchant from filling an
order for the exportation of arms and ammunition. They
warned the merchants against the mercenary practice of
engrossing and recommended that the merchants should
receive only their customary profits. They actively pro-
moted an association for the non-consumption of India teas,
dutied or otherwise, to be effective on November i ; and
at their instigation the schoolboys of the city collected
from private houses the tea that remained on that day and
burned it publicly on Gunpowder Plot Day, November 5.
Twenty- four chests of tea were discovered in the cargo of
^ A'. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1090- 1 150 passim.
'^ Ibid., vol. ix, pp. 1145-1146.
^ S. C. Ga::.., Oct. 17, 31, Nov. 21, 1774.
526 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the ship Britannia which arrived from London in the first
few days of November, and the merchants to whom they
were consigned were induced by the committee to go on
board and throw^ the tea into the river. On the same day
six chests of smuggled tea were re-shipped to the port
whence they had come, with a caution to the shipper not to
venture any more.
The non-importation regulations of the Association
were enforced with as great impartiality and enthusiasm.
Although the details of the transactions have not come
down to us, Timothy's Gazette makes it evident that im-
portations arriving between December i, 1774, and Feb-
ruary I, 1775, Avere sold at committee auction almost as
quickly as the vessels arrived.^ After February i, the
committee displayed great diligence in effecting the return
of cargoes without landing any part of them. Three ves-
sels arrived in February : one was turned away ; and in the
case of the other two, the consignees preferred to cast into
the sea their merchandise, consisting of 3844 bushels of
salt, 35 caldrons of coal, 45,500 tiles and two tons of pota-
toes, rather than return it.^ In March, four more vessels
were turned away.^ Of the brigantine Industry, Timothy's
Gazette remarked laconically : " Nothing was landed but a
Man, his Wife, and six fine Children."
The affair of Robert Smyth brought the zeal of the popu-
lace into play. Smyth had returned to Charleston in the
snow Proteus, bringing with him from London his house-
hold furniture and two horses that belonged to him. Upon
an appeal to the General Committee it was decided by a
bare majority of the thirty-three members present that this
^ E. g., ride S. C. Gac, Dec. 19, 26, 1774.
^ Ibid., Feb. 27, Mch. 6, 1775. Vide also letter in Mass. Gaz. & Post-
Boy, Apr. 3.
^ .9. C. Gaz., Mch. 6, 13, 27, Apr. 3, 1775.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES ^2y
importation did not violate the spirit of the Association.
This decision caused mutterings and threats among the
people, and a couple of days later a petition, signed by
more than two hundred and fifty people, was presented to
the General Committee, asking for a reconsideration of the
decision in a full meeting. In consequence, another meet-
ing was held at which seventy members were present as well
as a great crowd of the tumultuous townsmen. Gadsden
moved to rescind the part of the former vote that had
authorized the landing of the horses. He urged that it was
contrary to the Association ; that it would alarm the north-
em provinces; that, in any case, the committee as servants
of the people, v/ere bound to yield to their constituents. On
the other side, Thomas Lynch, the Rutledges and Rawlins
Lowndes were the chief speakers. They contended that to
reverse the vote would be to cast contempt upon the com-
mittee; and that the spirit, not the letter, of the Association
should be observed. William H. Drayton arose in reply.
He argued that if the committee refused to change for fear
of contempt, the king of England might reasonably use the
same justification for his course; and, furthermore, that it
was always safer to follow the letter than to explore the
spirit of a law. When the vote was put, Gadsden's motion
prevailed by a vote of thirty-five to thirty-four.^ " It is
worthy of remark," Drayton records, '' that this is the first
instance of a point of importance and controversy being
carried against those by whose opinion the people had been
long governed."
Like the other plantation provinces, the radicals sought
to safeguard the operation of the Association by endeavor-
ing to paralyze the pecuniary power of the mercantile class.
The provincial congress of January, 1775, passed a unani-
1 Drayton, Memoirs, vol. i, pp. 182-187; S. C. Gas., Mch. 27, 1775.
^28 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
mous resolution vesting the local committees of observation
with complete control over prosecutions for debt. No
action for debt should be commenced in the court of com-
mon pleas, nor any such action begun there since the Sep-
tember return should be proceeded in, without the consent
of the parish or district com.mittee. In certain cases the
committees were instructed to permit prosecution : when-
ever debtors refused to renew their obligations or to give
reasonable security; when they were justly suspected of an
intention to depart the province or defraud their creditors ;
or whenever there should appear any other reasonable cause
for granting permission/
The only action in behalf of domestic production ema-
nated from the provincial congress in January. The in-
habitants were asked to give a preference to their own
manufactures, to cultivate cotton, hemp, wheat, barley and
hops, and to kill no sheep for sale after March i following.
A resolution was passed to emxploy storekeepers at Charles-
ton, Georgetown and Beaufort to buy all the wool that
might be brought to them, at stated rates, and to sell the
wool to weavers at cost price; and also to market domestic
linens, woolens and cottons without charge to the manu-
facturers." Apparently not so much attention was paid to
the sumptuary regulations as in Virginia and Maryland.
However, the mourning regulations were widely observed.
Also, at Charleston the concerts of the St. Coecilia Society
were suspended; and the races at Georgetown were called
off.^
All things considered, the statement of the General Com-
mittee in a letter to the Committee of Sixty at New York
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, p. 1113.
"^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1112-1113. 1116.
^ S. C. Gac, Nov. 21, Dec. 19, 1774.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES 529
on March i, 1775, seems well substantiated so far as the
essential features of the Association were concerned. " We
have the pleasure to inform you," the letter said, " that in
this colony the Association takes place as effectually as law
itself. . . . A'Ve may assure you of our fixed determination
to adhere to the resolutions at all hazards ; and that minis-
terial opposition is here obliged to be silent." ^
While the Continental Association was being put into'^
operation in the twelve Associated Provinces, certain i
other parts of continental British America, of lesser im- ;
portance, held sternly aloof from the movement. This ;
brought into operation the comprehensive boycott recom-'
mended by Article xiv against dissentient provinces. South
Carolina was most intimately concerned in the failure of
Georgia to join the league of provinces, as the staples of
the two provinces were the same. Therefore, on February
S, 1775, the General Committee at Charleston decreed that
thereafter all ''Trade, Commerce, Dealings or Intercourse"
should cease with the inhabitants of that province."
A few weeks later delegates from St. John's Parish in
Georgia arrived in Charleston and sought to show reason
to the General Committee why St. John's Parish should be
exempted from the boycott. They contended that Article
xiv should " be considered as a general rule only, and as
respects this Province [Georgia] considered in a mixed or
promiscuous sense; but, as we of this Parish are a body
detached from the rest by our Resolutions and Association,
and sufficiently distinct by local situation, large enough for
particular notice . . . , adjoining a sea-port . . . , there-
^ A'. Y. Joiirn,, Apr. 6, 1775 ; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 2.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 1 163; also 5. C. Gas., Mch. 6, 1775. South Caro-
linians, owning plantations in Georgia or having debts due from there,
were specifically exempted from the terms of the resolution.
530
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
fere we must be considered as comprehended within the
spirit and equitable meaning of the Continental Associa-
tion." But the General Committee felt constrained to ad-
here to a literal interpretation of the Association, and ad-
vised the people of St. John's to present their case before
the ensuing Continental Congress.^ This course the St.
John's committee perforce determined to adopt. Meantime,
being denied trade with South Carolina, the parish found it
impossible to subsist without some limited trading connec-
tions with the merchants at Savannah; and so they were
forced to forego an absolute boycott for a carefully regu-
lated trade under the supervision of a committee especially
appointed for the purpose."
Georgia was not the only British province on the conti-
nent to be delinquent on this important occasion, although
it was the only one of the old thirteen in which the Conti-
nental Association was not being effectively executed. The
First Continental Congress had invited Quebec, St. John's
Isle,^ Nova Scotia, and East and West Florida to accede to
the Association ; ^ and the threat of boycott in Article xiv
applied, by its terms, to *' any colony or province in North-
America." Not one of these places was of importance
commercially; but it was deemed desirable by the radical
party that British America should offer a united front to
the mother country. Early in February, 1775, it developed
that there was an inclination among the British merchants
in the city of Quebec to adopt the Association; but no
/ \
1 5'. C. Ga::., Mch. 6, 1775; also 4 -'^^'". Arch., vol. i, pp. 1161-1163.
"^Journals Cont. Cong. (L. C. Edn.) , vol. ii, pp. 45-48. For Gov-
ernor Wright's view of this arrangement, zide White, Ga. Hist. Colls.,
p. 523.
^ The early name for Prince Edward Island.
^Journals Cont. Cong., vol. i, pp. loi, 103, 105-113.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
531
action was taken because, according to one merchant there,
" it would only serve to throw the trade out of our own
hands into those of the French, who would never listen to
any proposals of that kind but rejoice in such an opportun-
ity to wrest the trade from us."' ^ It was true of all these
regions that, due to a preponderance of aliens in the popu-
lation, a sympathetic understanding of the constitutional
and governmental principles at stake was lacking. Further-
more, the inhabitants relished the prospect of diverting to
themselves the rich trade which had been monopolized by
the older and more populous communities."
After a lull of several weeks following the action of 1 .
South Carolina with reference to Georgia, the northern ^
provinces began to pass resolutions of boycott which
affected all the dissentient provinces. On April 17, the
Philadelphia committee served warning on the local mer-
chants that such a measure im.pended; and ten days later ^
a resolution was adopted for suspending all exportation to
Georgia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and all parts
of the fishing coasts and fishing islands until the Continental
Congress should direct otherwise.^ The fisheries were in-
cluded in the boycott because of the news, recently received,
of the act of Parliament restraining New England from
the fisheries. On May i, the Maryland provincial conven-
tion passed a similar resolution, and in turn extended the
boycott to include the town of Boston, which was now
occupied by the British forces as an armed camp after the
fighting at Lexington and Concord.* On the same day the
^Letter of Dec. 24, 1774, Pa. Packet, Feb. 13, i775', also Mass. Gaz.
& Post-Boy, Feb. 27.
2£. g., vide Piih. Rec. Off., C. O. 5, no. 138 {P. C. Transcripts),
p. 404; 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1164-1165.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 338, 421; also Pa. Eve. Post, Apr. 18, 29, 1775.
* Md. Gas., May 4, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 380.
532 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
New York committee took like action ; ^ and the committees
of Cumberland County, Va., and Newark, N. J., followed
later in the month. ^
[^ When the Second Continental Congress assembled on the
tenth of Mayjone of the first questions that had to be
settled concerned the status of St. John's Parish under the
Association. Dr. Lyman Hall presented himself as the
delegate of the parish, and his admission to the membership
was voted unanimously.^ On the seventeenth when a reso-
lution was passed suspending exportation to all the recal-
citrant provinces, St. John's Parish was expressly exempted
from its terms. The resolution applied to the rest of
■Georgia, to Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, St. John's
Isle, East and West Florida, and the British fisheries on the
American coasts.* Thus, so far as action of Congress
could effect it, the export trade of the twelve iVssociated
Provinces was withheld from these parts. The provincial
congress of New Jersey took occasion on May 26 to recom-
mend to the people of that province to adhere " religiously "
to the resolution,^ and the Virginia House of Burgesses
took a similar step on June 19.^ On June 7, the Wilming-
ton, N. C, committee voted to withhold all exportations
destined for the British army and navy, for Newfoundland,
and for the northern provinces from whence provisions
could be had for these purposes."^
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 469; also N. Y. Journ., May 4, 1775.
* Purdie's Va. Gaz., July 7, 1775, and A^ Y. Journ., June i ; also 4 Am.
Arch., vol. ii, pp. 622, 634.
* He was not permitted to vote in cases where the ballot was taken
by provinces. Journals, vol. ii, pp. 44-45, 49-50-
^ Ibid., vol. ii, p. 54.
^ A'". Y. Gas., May 29, 1775; also / N. J. Arch., vol. x, pp. 597-598.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 122 1.
' A'', C. Col. Recs., vol. x, p. 12.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
533
These resolutions, it would appear, were excellently kept.
For example, the Philadelphia committee in May prevented
the departure of two cargoes intended for Newfoundland ; ^
and in September the New York committee held up for
public neglect the owners of two vessels that had been
trading with Nova Scotia and Newfoundland." The effect
of the boycott was not what had been expected. Deep dis-
tress was experienced at Newfoundland and the various,
fishing settlements because of their reliance on New Eng--
land for food; but after a time the British government suc-
ceeded in affording them some relief, and they were also .
surreptitiously aided by the enterprise of Nantucket fisher-
men.^ The people of East Florida also found themselves ,
temporarily in want of provisions/ Quebec and Nova.
Scotia, as has been already noted, probably felt no serious;
inconvenience and were, on the other hand, receiving en-
hanced prices in the West Indies for their grain, flour and
flax-seed.^ Only Georgia found herself in distress, with-
out prospect of relief, and torn by civil discord. But Geor-
gia's adhesion to the Continental Association was to come
only through the shock caused by the outbreak of hostilities.
^ Journals, vol. ii, p. 52.
^ N. Y. Gas., Sept. 4, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 622-624.
^ Letters from Newfoundland in N. Y. Joiirn., June 29, Aug. 24, 1775.
English exports to Newfoundland increased from £77,2^^ in 1774 to
£130.280 in 1775. Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, pp. 564, 585.
The act of 16 George III, c. Z7, permitted the exportation of peas and
biscuit to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Labrador.
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 703-707. English exports to Florida in-
creased from £S2,i4g in 1774 to £85,254 in 1775. Macpherson, op. cit.,
vol. iii, pp. 564, 585.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 1164-1165; Pub. Rec. Off., C. O. 5, no. 138
{L. C. Transcripts), p. 404. At Quebec English imports increased from
^307.635 in 1774 to £472,368 in 1775; at Nova Scotia, from £47,148 ta
£56.308. Macpherson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 564, 585.
534
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
^ Before the Continental Association had been in effect
many weeks it had become perfectly evident not only that
provinces and tovv-ns tliat held aloof from the Association
must be boycotted but that a close degree of co-operation
must be maintained among the Associated Provinces in
, order to prevent evasions of the compact by means of the
: coastwise trade. About the middle of November, 1 774, a
Salem merchant engaged in coastwise trade with Virginia
requested of the Salem Committee of Correspondence a
certificate vouching for his firmness in the cause of Amer-
ical liberty, so that he might carry it with him. This being
an innovation, the Salem committee consulted with the
Boston Committee of Correspondence; and the reply was
. a vv^hole-hearted endorsement of the plan and the suggestion
that the device be regularly employed.^ The committees of
the other provinces fell in with the plan sooner or later.
Providence, Rhode Island,^ and the Virginia counties being
among the first." The best form of certificate was that
prescribed by the Philadelphia committee in June, 1775.
The importer of merchandise into that metropolis was re-
quired either to produce a certificate from the committee
from whence the goods had come sigmf3nng that the}^ had
been imported into America in accordance with the Asso-
ciation, or to produce a qualification, taken before a magis-
trate, testifying to the identity of the goods, the time of
importation into America, and the name of the vessel in
which they had been brought.* A few months later, when
the object was not only to safeguard the Association but
also to prevent provisions and merchandise from reaching
^ Bos. Com. Cor. Papers, vol. iii, pp. 651, 653.
' R. I. Col Recs., vol. vii, pp. 285-287.
■^ Richmond. Westmoreland, Prince William. Prince George and
Accomack, Vide the Virginia newspapers, Feb.-June, 1775, passim.
* Pa. Eve. Post, June 8, 1775; also 4 Am. Ardi., vol. ii, pp. 909-910.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
;35
the British army, the provincial bodies of Massachusetts
and New York required that coastwise traders should give
bond that the goods they took away would be landed at the
destination named/ These precautions aided greatly in
simplifying the enforcement of the Association for indi-
vidual provinces.
It is now possible to reach some conclusions with refer- 1
ence to the workings of the Continental Association in tliel
twelve Associated Provinces during the first four and a half
months. In general, the situation bore a very hopeful
aspect for those Americans who believed that the salvation
of British America depended upon an effective administra-
tion of the Association. The administrative machinery of
the Association had been established in the twelve prov-
inces; and all features of the document, which were in-
tended to have a coercive effect upon the mother country,
were being vigorously enforced. Indeed, the Association
was receiving a more faithful obedience than the provincial
laws ordinarily did, as many a royal governor mournfully
testified. While it has not been possible to obtain statistics;
confined to the period of non-importation which is now:
being particular!}^ examined, yet the comparative figures of
importations during the years 1774 and 1775 are a sugges-
tive index to the true condition of affairs. English imports
fell off from £562,476 in 1774 to £71,625 in 1775 in the
New England provinces; from £437,937 to £1,228 at New
York; from £625,652 to £1,366 at Philadelphia; from
£528,738 to £1,921 in Mar^^land and Virginia ; and from
£378,116 to £6,245 in the Carolinas." The total decline in
the import trade from England in 1775 as compared with
^ 4 Am. Arrh., vol. iii. pp. 1468, 1625.
^ Macpherson, op. cif., vol. iii, pp. 564, 585.
-36 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
\/ the preceding year was almost ninety-seven per cent. Mak-
ing due allowance for such part of this disparity as came
from the abnormal importations in the latter part of I774r
the contrast still remains an eloquent testimonial to the
activity and efficiency of the radical organization. In the
same period imports into Georgia only increased from
£57,518 to £133,377.
y< Further evidence of the effective enforcement of the
' Association was afforded by the course pursued, in the
early months of 1775, by the business men in Great Britain
who possessed American connections and investments. Al-
though they had watched indifferently while Parliament
passed the coercive acts of 1774/ they were now galvanized
into sudden activity by the realization that the American
Association was closing their chief markets to them." Be-
ginning in January and continuing for almost three months,
the merchants and manufacturers concerned in the Amer-
fican trade carried on a systematic propaganda for the pur-
ipose of convincing the ministry and Parliament that the
Wts of 1774 should be repealed. The movement was in-
augurated by a series of meetings of the London merchants
in the North American trade at King's Arms Tavern at
Cornhill,' and by joint meetings of the West India mer-
chants and the absentee proprietors of West Indian planta-
tions at London Tavern.* Petitions were addressed to Par-
liament, and word was sent to the manufacturing towns to
'^ Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, May 16, 1774; Mass. Spy, July 15.
* E. g., a commercial correspondent declared in a London newspaper
that from January i to April 27, 1775, the following ships cleared from
Bristol carrying nothing but ballast: seven for New York, three for
Maryland, three for Philadelphia, three for Virginia, one for North
Carolina, and three for South Carolina. N. Y. Gazetteer, Aug. 24^
1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 921-922.
^ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1086-1091, 1107-1110, 1513-1515, 1525-1526.
* Ibid., vol. i, pp. 1082- 1083, 1147-1152, 1540.
y
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
537
join in the agitation.^ The latter responded with alacrity.
When Parliament reassembled on January 19, 1775, the
House of Commons was deluged with petitions in the en-
suing weeks. The merchants, traders and manufacturers
of Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool,
Leeds, Belfast, and many other places joined in the chorus
of lamentation, complaining that business conditions were
already poor and foretelling the suspension of debt collec-
tions, bankruptcy and widespread unemployment.^
But the ministry w'ere as adamant. They believed that
England was reaping the whirlwind that had been sown
when indulgent ministries had granted concessions to the
colonists on the occasion of the two earlier non-importation
leagues. As one man friendly to the ministry wrote:
" there will be no end of it, if the Americans may rebel at
their pleasure, and then slip behind their creditors for
security." ^ Solicitor General Wedderburn presented the
issue with unmistakable clearness to the House of Com-
mons. I " He gave every allowance for, and paid all defer-
ence to, the interests of Commerce and ^lanuf actures ; but
contended that in the present case interests were concerned
of yet greater consequence; that all the w^orld must ac-
knowledge that when the clearest rights of the Legislative
power of a country are invaded and denied, and when in
consequence the people so denying are in actual and open
^ Mass. Gas. & News-Let tcr, Mch. 23, 1775.
^ Petitions also came from Norwich, Dudley, Wolverhamipton, New-
castle, Burslem, Tunstall, Colridge, Shelton, Hanly, Stoke Lane, Delf
Lane End, Nottingham., Bridgport, Wakefield, Halifax, Bradford,
Huddersfield, Whitehaven, and Waterford, Ireland. 4 Am. Arch., vol.
h PP- 1513-1540, 1567, 1627-1638, 1658-1703; Franklin, Writings (Smyth),
vol. vi, pp. 303-308, 315-317. There were a few petitions praying the
government to stand firm — from Birmingham, Leeds, Wakefield, Hali-
fax, Bradford, Nottingham and LIuddersfield, usually from the alder-
men, sheriffs, gentlemen and principal manufacturers.
^ Mass. Gaz. & Posi-Boy, May 23, 1774.
538 2"/-/£ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
rebellion, that then there are points of greater importance
to be settled and decided than points of Commerce and
Manufacture. " An enemy in the bowels of a Kingdom is
surely to be resisted, opposed and conquered ; notwith-
standing the trade that may suffer, and the fabrics that
may be ruined. That descriptions of the immense conse-
quence of our American trade w^ere arguments against the
opposing Members than for them ; for the greater the con-
sequence of the Commerce, the greater the care ouglit to
be, and the firmer the policy that is to preserve it ; that the
question is not now the importance of the American Colo-
nies, but the possession of the Colonies at all." ^
For a decade colonial governors had been urging that
Parliament should declare non-importation agreements
illegal as combinations in restraint of trade. Lord North's
plan v/as more penetrating : " as the Americans had refused
to trade with this Kingdom," he was reported to have said,
" it w^as but just that we should, not suffer them to trade
with any other Nation."" His first bill, was directed
against the New Englanders, whom he believed to be at the
bottom of the Am.erican troubles. This bill became a law
en March 30, 1775, and provided that, until peaceful condi-
tions of business had been restored, no New England
province should, after July i, trade with any part of the
world, save the British Isles and the British West Indies,
nor after July 20 should be permitted to use the fisheries.'
^ Pa. Can., Apr. 12, 1775; also 4 Ant. Arch., vol. i. p. 1547. Vide
also ibid., pp. 1526-1527, 1624- 1625.
^ Ibid., vol. i, p. 1622; also N. Y. Journ., Apr. 20, 1775. North had
this plan in mind as early as September 21, 1774 — before the Continental
Association had been adopted. Hutchinson, Diary and Letters, vol. i,
p. 245-
^ 15 George III, c, 10. The inhabitants of Nantucket v/ere exempted
from the provisions of the act so far as the whale fisheries were con-
cerned, and the inhabitants of Marshfield and Scituate so far as the
mackerel, shad and alewife fisheries were concerned.
IN THE PLANTATION PROVINCES
539
Meantime it had become evident that most of the other |
•colonies had ratified the Continental Association ; ^ and so,
by Lord North's second bill, enacted April 13, the terms of
the first act were extended to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, |
Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina after July 20.^ |l
I The commerce of New York, the Delaware Counties,
North Carohna and Georgia was left unmolested for the
time being, upon the belief that with such encouragement
these colonies would hold off from union with the Asso-i
ciated Colonies — an illusory hope. .J
The indignation of the merchants and manufacturers in
Britain, who had thus been ignored and chastised by the
•government, was at first unbounded. But several events
soon transpired which reconciled them to the situation.
Undoubtedly the affair at Lexington and Concord in April -
■sharpened the understanding of many of them as to the
nature of the issues at stake. Equally important was the
amelioration of business -conditions in Great Britain which
began to be felt about the middle of the year 1775. This
was in no sense due to any relaxation of the enforcement
of the Association in Am.erica, but to increased orders for
manufactures which began to pour in. from various parts
of Europe — particularly from the Baltic countries and •
Germany, owing to the establishment of peace between
Russia and the Porte and the pacification of Poland, and
irom Spain in consequence of warlike preparations against
Algiers. At the same time great wheat exportations from^
America and the advanced prices paid for American tobacco
and oil enabled the colonial merchants to discharge their
debts better than usual, and thus increased the amount of
capital which the British merchants and manufacturers
^ 4 A}!:. Arch., vol. i, p. 1701.
"^ Exclusion from the fisheries was not included, however. 15
^George III, c. 18.
-40 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
might use in developing this new business.^ This analysis
of the revival of business confidence, made by a gentleman
of American s)'mpathies in England, was borne out by
abundant and indubitable testimony of a varied character/
Fortuitous occurrences thus robbed the Continental Asso-
ciation of its coercive consequences and enabled the British
administration to develop its policy without uncomfoirtable
pressure from the commercial and manufacturing interests.
When Parliament assembled in the fall of 1775, scores of
votes of confidence were presented from towns all over
Great Britain, and the few mercantile petitions that were
sent in behalf of the Americans did not plead the cause of
the colonists on the ground of commercial distress.^ Under
tTiese auspicious circumstances Parliament, on December 23,
enacted as a war measure the law that provided for en-
tirely closing up the thirteen colonies to trade with any part
of the world after March i, 1776.*
^4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, p. 818.
' Macpherson, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 589-591 ; Izard, Corresp., vol. i,
pp. 116-117; Puh. Rec. Off., C. 0. 5, no. 154 (L. C. Transcripts) , pp.
281-283; letter in N. Y. Gas., Nov. 6, 1775; 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp.
loio-ioii, 1111-1112, 1115-1116, 1261-1262, 1381-1382, 1520, 1641.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 802-1704 passim.
* 16 George III, c. 5.
CHAPTER XIV
Transformation of the Association (April, 1775-
JuLY, 1776)
The tocsin of war, sounded on the historic April day at|
Lexington and Concord, wrought a radical change in the:
nature of the opposition directed by the Americans against]
the British measures. This did not mean that a struggle]
for independence had begun, but it did mean that armed
rebellion had superseded commercial coercion as the de-
pendence of the radicals in their struggle for larger liber
ties. Thereafter the Continental Association lost its dis
tinctive character as a method of peaceful coercion; it be-
came subordinated to the military necessities of the times.
\^ The transformation which the Association was under-
going revealed itself in five ways : in the widespread adop-
tion of defense associations; in the determination of the
Georgia moderates to adopt the Continental Association as
a deterrent to the more violent methods advocated by the
radicals there; in the spontaneous action of the extra-legal
bodies in the several provinces in taking on disciplinar}^ and
military functions ; in the adoption, by provinces exposed to \
the perils of war, of non-exportation regulations prior to the
time fixed in the Association; and in the important altera-!
tions made in the text of the original Association by thel
Second Continental Congress.
News of the gallant stand made by the Massachusetts
tninutemen was carried down the coast and through the
country by swift couriers. The radical organizations of the
541
542 THE COLO\nAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Associated Colonies were faced with the decision whether
they should follow the Massachusetts extremists into armed
resistance just as they had followed them a little earlier
into commercial opposition. The air was electric with ex-
citement. As individuals, some radicals hesitated or de-
serted the cause; as organizations, they were too deeply
committed to do anything but give loyal support to their
brethren of Massachusetts. The New England group of
X provinces, quickened by the hazardous proximity of the
British forces, responded in April and May by reorganizing
their militia and putting it on a war footing.^ Their action
hardly more than consolidated the military companies that
had been drilled and equipped in the towns and counties
during the several preceding months.
In the remaining provinces the almost invariable form of
action was the adoption of defense associations; and in-
deed the same device was also utilized by Connecticut where
the loyalists were thick in Fairfield County. This plan of
procedure was fashioned frankly on the principle of the old
associations for commercial coercion; and acting through
the same machinery, it gained prestige by reason of the
fact. In phraseolog}^ the associations appeared to vary
according to the character of the population. In the mere
moderate provinces, like New York and New Jersey, the
subscribers agreed solemnly to '' carry into execution zvhat-
ever measures may be recommended by the Continental
Congress or resolved upon by our Provincial Convention ;" *
^ The Massachusetts provincial congress had taken its measures earlier.
Vide particularly the votes of Oct. 26, 1774 and April 5, 1775. 4 Am,
Arch., vol. i, pp. 843-845, 1350-1355. For the acts of the other provinces,.
vide New Hampshire provincial congress, May 20, in ihid., vol. ii, pp.
652-653; Rhode Island Assembly, Apr, 25, in ibid., vol. ii, p. 390; Con-
necticut Assembly, Apr. 26, in ibid., vol. ii, pp. 411-418.
^ The italics are Governor Franklin's. / N. J. Arch., vol. x, p. 592.
TRANSFORM ATIOX GF THE ASSOCIATION -43
in ultra- radical communities, like ^Maryland, South Caro-
lina and certain North Carolina counties, the subscribers
pledged their ** lives and fortunes " in defense of the Amer-
ican cause. But whatever the form, the underlying mean-
ing of all associations was the same.^ The defense associa-
tions appeared spontaneously in the various provinces, and
were afterwards usually adopted formally by the provincial
congress or convention with the provision that the male
adult inhabitants be given an opportunity to sign, and the
further provision frequently that the names of dissentients
be listed. The act of signing the defense association was a
more rigid test of loyalty to the radical cause than acceptance
of the Continental Association and largely superseded it in
public attention and importance.^ These associations spread
southward through the Associated Provinces in the spring
and early summer of 1775.^
The course of New York exemplified, in its main out-
lines, the progress of the defense association in every prov-
^ Connecticut. New York. New Jersey, Maryland and South Carolina
provided that lists of non-signers should be drawn up.
^ The central radical organizations of the several provinces adopted
defense associations as follows : the New York provincial congress on
May 26, 4 Am. Arch., vol. i„ p. 1256; the New Jersey provincial congress
on May 31, ibid., vol. ii, p. 690; the Pennsylvania Assembly on June 30,
ibid., vol. ii, p. 1172; the Maryland provincial convention on Aug. 12,
ibid., vol. iii, pp. 107-108; the North Carolina provincial congress on
Aug. 23, ibid., vol. iii, p. 187 ; the South CaroHna provincial congress on
June 3, ibid., vol. ii, pp. 896-897; the Connecticut Assembly in October,
ibid., vol. iii, p. 1026. In the Delaware Counties, no record of action
has been found; however, an out-and-out military association was signed
in Kent County on ^May 25 ; ibid., vol. ii, p. 704. In Virginia, it would
appear that this method was not tried ; but the militia was reorganized
by resolution of the provincial convention of Mch. 25, 1775 ; ibid., vol.
ii, pp. 169-170. Some of the county associations in North Carolina were
more plainspoken than the association adopted by the provincial con-
gress, being m.odeled on the South Carolina association ; e. g., ibid., vol.
ii, p. 1030.
^44 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1762-1776
"the first accounts of the action between the King's Troops
and People near Boston was spread with horrid and aggra-
vating circumstances. The Moment of Consternation and
anxiety was seized, the People were assembled, and that
Scene of Violence and Disorder was begun which has en-
tirely prostrated the Powers of Government and produced
an Association by which this Province has solemnly united
with the others in resisting the Acts of Parliament." ^ For
nearly a week after the receipt of the fateful news the city
was ruled by the mob. Under the leadership of ultra-
radicals like Sears and Lamb, the arsenal was raided and
the muskets distributed; the custom house was shut up;
business was at a standstill; and armed citizens paraded
about the streets.
Out of this " State of anarchy " issued three things of
great import. An association was set on foot in New York
city on April 29 by which the subscribers, professing alarm
at the revenue plans of the ministry and at " the bloody
i scene now acting in the Massachusetts-Bay," resolved never
^ to become slaves, and associated, under all the ties of re-
ligion, honor and love of country, to carry into execution
g whatever measures were determined upon by the Conti-
nental Congress or the provincial congress for the purpose
of preserving the constitution and opposing the arbitrary
and oppressive acts of Parliament.^ A new committee of
one hundred, of more radical complexion even than the
Sixty, was chosen on May i with power to act in '* the
present unhappy exigency of affairs as well as to observe
^ In the following account, Professor Becker's discussion, with his
references, has been rehed upon where no other authority is cited.
N. Y, Parties, 1760-1776, pp. 193-227.
* Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 402. Vide also ibid., p. 404.
'A'. Y. Joiirn., May 4, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 471.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 545
the conduct of all persons touching the Association." A -^
call was sent out for a provincial congress '' at the present ^
alarming juncture " to meet on May 22. The defense asso-
ciation was taken up by the two latter bodies, when they
met, and applied to the inhabitants of the province as a
touchstone of their allegiance to the radical organization.
At the first meeting of the One Hundred on May i, it
was resolved to offer the association of April 29 to every
inhabitant in the county, save Golden only, the names of
those refusing to subscribe to be recorded. In the high
excitement of the hour the association was quickly signed
by more than a thousand persons; and within a month
eighteen hundred had subscribed in the city alone. ^ On
May 26 a resolution was passed by the provincial congress
that all members be desired to sign the association of April
29 ; and arrangements were made for county committees to
tender the association to every inhabitant of the province
and return to the congress a list of signers and non-signers
not later than July 15. No penalty f®r dissentients was
imposed. By the time fixed, the defense association had
been subscribed by one hundred members of the provincial
congress, fourteen failing to do so. " The official returns
show in five districts of Orange County approximately
1,550 signers and 250 non-signers; in seven districts of
Ulster County, approximately 1,770 and 80 non-signers;
in seven or eight districts of Suffolk County, 2,060 signers
and 200 non-signers; in six precincts of Dutchess County,
1,680 signers and 882 non-signers; in one district of Char-
lotte County, no signers; in three districts of Cumberland
County, 123 signers and 10 non-signers; in Queens County,
17 signers and 209 non-signers."
* Colden, Letter Books, vol. ii, p. 424. Colden added, however:
*' there must be at least three Times that number who have an equal
Right to Sign."
j46
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
By September the policy of the provincial congress toward
non-signers began to be defined. ''Although this Congress
have a tender regard for freedom of speech, the rights of
conscience, and personal liberty," declared the resolution of
September i, yet, for the public safety, any person denying
the authority of the provincial or continental congress or
any county or district committee should be disarmed, and,
for a second offense, should be confined at his own expense.
This vote did not apply in terms to non-signers; and two
wxeks later the provincial committee of safety voted to
disarm all of the latter by force if necessary. This was
disapproved by the provincial congress in October: and
there the matter rested until March, 1776, when the com-
mittee of safety again ordered the disarming of non-
associators. This time the provincial congress gave its
support.
The net outcome of the circulation of the defense asso-
ciation was that the Continental Association was elbowed
into the background; for tlie new association by its spirit
not only exacted obedience to the old regulations of commer-
cial opposition, but in explicit terms demanded allegiance
to unnamed radical measures yet to be formulated. Inci-
dentally the propaganda attendant upon the promotion of
the defense association had served the purpose of extend-
ing radical organization into rural parts of New York that
had been untouched on the several earlier occasions.
Of the old British provinces. Georgia had succeeded
thus far in holding off from any union in measures against
Great Britain. The widespread resolutions of censure and
boycott had not been without a chastening influence on her ;
but it was the news of the beginning of hostilities that, by
a curious indirection, now brought Georgia over to the side
of the Continental Association.^ In June, 1775, a defense
^ Wright to Gage, June 2";, 1775 ; Gibbes, Doc'y History, vol. ii, pp. 98-99..
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 347
association, copied verbatim from the New York associa- >
tion of April 29, was circulated in various parts of the
province/ The Georgia moderates perceived that, in spite
of the success of their obstructive tactics hitherto, the flood-
tide of insurrection surging high in other provinces threat-
ened to sweep the malcontents of Georgia into extreme
measures unless discreet concessions were made. Whereas
the moderates had opposed the adoption of the Continental
Association when the alternative was peaceful opposition to
Great Britain or no opposition, many of them were now
willing to join in pacific measures of opposition when the
choice seemed to lie between that alternative and the immi-
nence of violent resistance.^ This at once made possible ay
coalition of the more progressive moderates with the more
conservative radicals of the Savannah stamp/ It was this
union of factions that sought to control the movement for
a provincial congress, called for July 4, 1775.
At a caucus held at Savannah on June 13 and attended by
thirty- four citizens, many of whom later joined the British
side, the program of the coalition was formulated as fol-
lows : ( I ) ''we will use our utmost endeavours to preserve
the peace and good order of this Province; ... no person
behaving himself peaceably and inoflPensively shall be
molested in his person or property " notwithstanding his
^4 Am. Arch,, vol. i, pp. 1136-1137; vol. ii, pp. 1551-1552. Vide also
ibid., vol. ii, p. 471.
' Vide Wright's letter to Dartmouth ; Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. iii,.
p. 183. Read Dr. Zubly's sermon at the opening of the provincial con-
gress in the light of this interpretation. 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 1557-
1567. Zubly became a loyalist eventually.
' " From Georgia we learn that a Coalition of Parties is likely to take
place," said the S. C. & Am. Gen. Gaz., July 7, 1775. "The Tories in
Georgia are now no more; the Province is almost universally on the
right side, and are about to choose Delegates to send to the Congress,"
wrote a Charlestonian on June 29; Pa. Gas., July 19, also 4 Am. Arch.,
vol. ii, p. 1 129.
5^8 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
private sentiments; (2) in the absence of the General As-
sembly, the provincial congress should adopt a petition to
the king for redress of grievances, expressive of the sense
of all who choose to sign it; (3) the interest of Georgia is
inseparable from that of the mother country and all the
sister provinces, and to act apart from the latter would be a
just cause for their resentment; (4) Georgia ought forth-
with to " join the other Provinces in every just and Jegal
measure to secure and restore the liberties of all America
and for healing the unhappy divisions now subsisting be-
tween Great Britain and her Colonies." ^ On June 22 a
meeting of the inhabitants of the town and district of
Savannah at Liberty Pole chose a committee for the pur-
pose of carrying out the Continental Association.^
The moderates were playing with fire, but they were left
with no alternative. The provincial congress of July con-
tained delegates from every part of the province except
the two small parishes of St. James and St. Patrick. Some
parishes which had hitherto been apathetic or else actively
opposed to extra-legal measures " manifested a very Laud-
able Zeal upon this Occasion." ^ On the second day of the
meeting, the resolutions adopted by the Savannah caucus
were presented, and the congress voted that the paper
should " lie upon the table for the perusal of the members."
A few days later the congress voted its opinion that the
paper '' ought not to have been entitled or dressed in the
form of Resolves, but rather as recommendations, or in the
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii. p. 1544.
' For names of the members, vide McCall, Hist. Ga., vol. ii, pp. 44-45.
For a slightly different list, vide Ga. Rev. Recs., vol. i, p. 72.
^ Official communication of the Georgia congress to the Second Con-
tinental Congress; Journals Cont. Cong., vol. ii, p. 193 n. The journal
of the provincial congress may be found in Ga. Rev. Recs., vol. i, pp.
^29-280; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 1543-1568.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 549
nature of a Petition or Address to this Congress." This
was fair warning that the radicals of the St. John's stamp
were making themselves felt in the congress.
The Savannah coalition were permitted to carry things
pretty largely their own way during the first few days.
The congress resolved unanimously on July 6 to " carry
into execution all and singular the measures and recom-
mendations of the late Continental Congress," particularly
the Declaration of Rights and the Continental Association.
The provisions of the latter were re-stated and explicitly
adopted, with no alterations of importance.^ A concession
was even made to the opinion prevalent in the plantation
provinces in favor of a suspension of prosecutions for debt :
no summons was to be issued or civil warrant granted un-
less, in the opinion of the magistrate concerned, there were
good grounds to believe that the defendant intended to
abscond. This was a moderate version of the popular reg-
ulation which gave the supervision of actions for debt to
radical committees rather than to provincial officials. A
petition for redress was sent to the king ; and five delegates,
one of whom was loyalist in sympathies, were chosen to
represent the province in the Second Continental Congress,
then in session.
At this point the radical elements began to assert their
control. Strengthened by the sentiment aroused by the
Lexington affair, they were able to carry through resolu-
^ Such changes of date were introduced as were made necessary by
the fact that the non-importation regulation was going into effect at a
later date than that fixed in the original Association. The provision
in Article x as to the disposition of goods imported before February i
was omitted as no longer applicable. The provision in Article xiv
authorizing provincial bodies to establish further regulations did not
appear. To the list of parliamentary acts which must be repealed were
added the two laws, lately passed, for restraining the trade of most of
the colonies.
r^O THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
tions asserting the right of the provincial congress to levy
taxes and issue paper money, and pledging Georgia to her
share of the " expenses which have or may accrue in the
defence of the violated rights of America." They endorsed
the defense association which had been circulated about
Georgia in June and appointed a committee to present a
copy for the signature of all the inhabitants of the town
and district of Savannah. Finally, they recommended that
in the election of delegates to the next provincial congress
the inhabitants should pledge their lives and fortunes to
support the measures which they might adopt. A general
committee, composed of the Savannah delegates and such
other delegates as might be in town, was appointed to
supervise the execution of the resolutions of the continental
and provincial congresses" and to advise with all the paro-
chial and district committees.
The radicals were in the saddle, although their seat was
by no means secure. The work of establishing committees
to enforce the Association went forward. Governor Wright
wrote to the home government that there " are very few
Men of real Abilities, Gentlemen, or Men of Property in
their Tribunals. The Parochial Committee are a Parcel of
the Lowest People, Chiefly Carpenters, Shoemakers, Black-
smiths &c. with a Few at their Head ; in the General Com-
mittee and Council of Safety there are Some better Sort of
^len and Some Merchants and Planters, but Many of the
Inferior Class; and it is really Terrible, my Lord, that
Such People Should be Suffered to Overturn the Civil
Government and most arbitrarily determine upon, and
Sport with Other Mens Lives Libertys and Propertys." ^
The accession of Georgia to the Continental Association
relieved the province of the ban placed on it by the Conti-
^ Letter of Dec. 19, 1775; Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. iii, p. 228.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 551
nental Congress, although it does not appear that Congress
took any formal step to that effect beyond admitting the
Georgia delegates to their seats/
The non-importation regulations of the Association were
well enforced in Georgia thereafter.^ On August i, Gov-
ernor Wright informed the home government that : " The
Committee here take upon themselves to Order Ships and
Vessells that arrive to Depart again without suffering them
to come up to Town and unload. Some they admit, some
they Order away just as they please, and exactly copy after
Carolina, and are making a very Rapid Progress in the
execution of their Assumed Powers." ' A few days later
he added with reference to the defense association that :
" Every Method has been used to Compell the People to
Sign the Association ; and those who Decline, they threaten
to Proscribe, and for fear of that, and losing their Prop-
erty, or having it Destroyed, Great Numbers have been
Intimidated to Sign, and I suppose by far the greater Part
of the Province have signed it; indeed it is said there are
few in the Country who have not." * On September 2^,
he described the situation in Georgia as : " Government
totally Annihilated, and Assumed by Congresses, Councils
and Committees, and the greatest Acts of Tyranny, Op-
pression, Gross Insults &c &c &c commited, and not the
least means of Protection, Support, or even Personal
Safety . . .'' ^ On October 14 he closed his case by stat-
ing : " The Poison has Infected the whole Province, and
^ The General Committee at Charleston revived trading connections on
August I, 1775- S. C. Gas., Sept. 7, 1775.
^ E. g., Ga. Rev. Recs., vol. i, pp. 81, 90; Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. iii,
pp. 210, 215; Journs. Cont. Cong., vol. ii, pp. 251-252.
■ Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. iii, p. 205.
*Ibid. \
^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 213.
-C2 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
neither Law, Government, or Regular Authority have any
Weight or are at all attended to/' ^
^ The April events had meanwhile been leaving their im-
press on the character and functions of the committees of
observation and inspection in the several provinces. By
.swift, though natural, stages, these committees appointed
% / to enforce the Continental Association became the nuclei
^ of military organization and the engines for crushing loyal-
ist opinion. In the chief commercial provinces, where
political activity radiated from the centers of population,
the new fimctions devolving upon the committees were
frankly recognized by the selection of new city committees."
Where the population was diffused and urban communities
unimportant, the central radical organization usually de-
creed a new establishment of committees for the whole
province, with the dual purpose of standardizing their
method of selection and of entrusting them with the addi-
tional powers necessitated by the imminence of war." In
all cases provincial conventions and congresses were assem-
bled to guide and supplement the committees in the dis-
charge of their new functions.
These committees were of great practical assistance to
the patriot military. The wide scope of their services may
* Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. iii, p. 215.
-Thus, the Boston Committee of Correspondence, Safety and In-
spection, appointed May i ; the New York Committee of One Hundred,
on May i ; the Philadelphia Committee of One Hundred, on Aug. 16.
Bos. Town Recs. (1770-1777), p. 2ZZ\ 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 459; vol.
iii, pp. 145-146.
^ Thus, the South Carolina provincial congress on June 17; the ^^^v
Jersey provincial congress on Aug. 12 ; the Maryland convention' on
Aug. 14; the Virginia convention on Aug. 25; the North Carolina pro-
vincial congress on Sept. 9. Ibid., vol, ii, p. 1016; vol. iii. pp. 42, 114-116,
420-424, 207-208.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION ^-o
be indicated by some illustrative instances in various prov-
inces/ The Kensington, N. H., committee exacted obe-
dience from a man who had refused to equip himself with
arms and ammunition as directed by a resolution of the
provincial congress. The New York committee declared a
boycott against any person who should dispose of arms and
ammunition to any person inimical to American liberty.
The New York provincial congress instructed the local
committees to purchase and rent weapons, and to organize
their jurisdiction into '' beats " for the formation of mili-
tary companies. The Morris County, N. J., committee col-
lected arms and ammunition and promoted the enlistment
of men. All committees of the province were instructed by
the New Jersey congress in October to apprehend deserters
from the American army. The Maryland committees
played an important part in organizing and training the
militia of the province. The Virginia committees under-
took to supervise enlistments and to examine all strangers
and suspects for correspondence and the like. In North
Carolina four committees raised money for the purchase
of gunpowder; and the Newbern committee intercepted
some letters written by the governor.
Efforts that had hitherto been turned to the promotion
of manufacturing in general were now frankly devoted to
the production and increased output of weapons and gun-
powder, saltpetre and sulphur. Some of the money induce-
ments offered for the carrying on of such manufactures
have already been noted. Every province joined in the
movement with zest and determination, through action of
its central organization or its local committees or both.
The Philadelphia committee erected its own saltpetre works.
1 These examples and many others like them may be found in 4 Aiiu
Arch., vols, ii and iii, passim.
^54 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
The Virginia convention established a factory at Fred-
ericksburg for the manufacture of arms.
The most characteristic, if not most important, aspect of
the new work of the committees and conventions was their
' activity in drawing a sharp line between friends and ene-
mies of the American cause and in converting and silencing
all opponents. The phrase, "enemies of American liberty,"
had been used in the Continental Association to stigmatize
persons who had actually violated the commercial regula-
tions of that document; now its meaning was rapidly ex-
tended to comprehend any persons who expressed verbal
disapproval of any phase of radical activities, or who acted
in an unfriendly manner with respect to them. Under the
Continental Association the only punishment visited on
offenders was the sitspension of all dealings with them:
Avith the new developments the boycott gave place, in an
increasing number of cases, to such penalties as fine, im-
prisonment and banishment.
The radicals in Massachusetts had already employed the
boycott in pointing out persons who supported the Massa-
chusetts Charter Act of 1774, especially in designating for
discipline the detested " mandamus councillors." ^ In Jan-
uary, 1775, the town of Marblehead had even deemed it
necessar}' to appoint a committee " to attend to the Con-
duct of ministerial Tools and Jacobites in this Town, and
to report their Names to the Town from Time to Time,
that it may take effectual Measures for either silencing or
expelling them from this Community." ^ With the out-
break of rebellion, committees in the other provinces as-
sumed inquisitorial powers and began a systematic cam-
paign to suppress freedom of speech on the part of the
loyalists.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. i, pp. 984, 1000, 1335. 1346.
' Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Jan. 16. 1775.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 555
Regarding the radicals, ''A Converted Whig" bemoaned :
" In contending for Hberty, they seem incHnable to engross
it all themselves; . . . they are arbitrary and even tyran-
nical in the whole tenour of their conduct; they allow not
to others who differ from them the same liberty of thinking
and acting that they claim themselves, but shamefully abuse
them, and treat them with spite, malice, and revenge." ^
The justification of the radicals was neatly put in a resolu-
tion of the Philadelphia committee in September, 1775 :
'' That, in the opinion of the Committee, no person has a
right to the protection of a community or society he wishes
to destroy; and that if any inhabitant, by speeches or writ-
ing, evidences a disposition to aid and assist our enemies,
or endeavours to persuade others to break the Association,
or by force or fraud to oppose the friends of liberty and
the Constitution, . . . such person, being duly convicted
thereof before the Committee, ought to be deemed a foe to
the rights of British America, and unworthy of those bless-
ings which it is hoped will yet be secured to this and suc-
ceeding generations by the strenuous and noble efforts of
the United Colonies." "
The nature and scope of this new function of the com-
mittees may be suggested by a few typical examples. Abiel
Wood was deprived of the benefits of society by the com-
mittee of inspection of the East Precinct of Pownalborough,
Mass., because, among other offenses, he had declared that
'' Hancock, Adams and others acted out of selfish views in
destroying the tea " and offered his oath that Hancock was
the first man on board, and because he had stated that the
members of the Continental Congress had drunk thirty
bumpers of wine apiece before passing their resolutions
and that the provincial congress consisted of ''dam'd vil-
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 106.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 731; also Pa. Eve. Post, Sept. 23, 1775.
^^6 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
lains." ^ Abijah Brown was found guilty by the Waltham
selectmen of having belittled the general of the Massachu-
setts army and the committeemen as "a set of idiots and
lunaticks ;" but he was restored to public favor by the pro-
vincial committee of safety on the ground that he had tem-
porarily fallen under the influence of "disaffected antag-
onists.'' ^ The committee of Sheffield, Mass., subjected Job
Westover to boycott for holding the sentiment that Pariia-
ment had a right to tax the Americans and that an Amer-
ican victory in the impending war would be prejudicial to
the best interests of the colonies.^ The extra-legal " Gen-
eral Court " recommended to the Corporation and Over-
seers of Harvard College to dismiss from the faculty all
those who by their present or past conduct appeared to be
unfriendly to the liberties of the colonies.* On May 19 the
New Hampshire congress recommended to the committees
to have a watchful eye over all " persons who, through in-
advertence, wilful malice, or immoderate heat, have thrown
out many opprobrious expressions respecting the several
Congresses, and the methods of security they have thought
proper to adopt . . ." ^
The committee at New Milford, Conn., published the
names of seven for having declared their opposition to the
Continental Congress and announced the recantation of
forty others.^ Amos Knapp was found guilty by the Green-
wich committee of " cursing the honourable Continental
^ Bos. Gaz., Sept. 11, 1775. For later proceedings with reference to
Wood, vide 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 151-156, 941.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 720-721.
' Ihid., vol. ii, p. 545.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 145 1.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, p. 652. For examples of enforcement, z'ide ibid., pp.
552, 701, 1652, 1659.
* Conti. Cour., July 3. 1775.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 557
Congress, with all the leading men of the CoMntry, and
threatening to join the enemy, in case the King's standard
was erected." ^ On August 4, the New York committee held
one Archer up as an enemy because he had spread the report
that the Continental Congress had passed a resolution for
independence if American grievances were not redressed by
March i.^ In February, 1776, J. Thorn of Dutchess
County was proscribed for refusing to accept continental
paper money. ^ A boycott was declared against Ezekiel
Beach of Mendham, N. J., for failing to appear before the
committee of observation to defend himself against the
charge of '' unfriendly conversation and conduct towards
the Continental Association." * The committee of Bucks
County, Pa., accepted as satisfactory the contrition ex-
pressed by Thomas Smith '' for having uttered expressions
derogatory to the Continental Congress, invidious to a par-
ticular denomination of Christians, and tending to impede
the opposition of my countrymen to ministerial oppres-
sion." '
The Dover committee in the Delaware Counties found
Daniel Varnum guilty of using such expressions as " he
had as lief be under a tyrannical King as a tyrannical Com-
monwealth, especially if the d d Presbyterians had the
rule of it," and then accepted his recantation.^ George
Munro's unfriendliness was discovered by the committee of
Bladensburgh, Md., through an intercepted letter, and his
protestations of contrition availed him nothing.'^ Thomas
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, p. 941.
2 Ihid., vol. iii, p. 21.
^N. Y. Gaz., Mch. 11, 1776.
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 1610.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 690,
® Ibid., vol. iii, p. 1072.
"^ Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 51-56.
;58
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Anderson of Hanover County, Va., was exempted by the
committee from further prosecution when he expressed his
deep sorrow for " declaring that this Country was in a
state of rebelhon, and aimed at a state of independence
more than opposition to parHamentary taxation." ^ The
commjttee of Pitt County, N. C, advertised John Tison in
May for speaking disrespectfully of the committee and
Congress, and in October he confessed his offense and
promised under oath never to do the like again.^
In the instances here cited, the boycott was the punish-
) ment prescribed. But the boycott was essentially a weapon
to be resorted to by a minority in a community ; as the gov-
ernment of one community after the other fell under con-
trol of the rebels, methods of punishment more immediately
efficacious were adopted. Thus, in May, 1775, the Massa-
chusetts provincial congress recommended to the commit-
tees of correspondence and selectmen of the various towns
to confiscate the arms of those persons who were unfriendly
to the American cause, and forbade any inhabitants to re-
move from the province with their effects, except by leave
of the local committee of correspondence or the provincial
congress. In June the provincial congress directed the
selectmen and committees of correspondence of the several
towns to take charge of the effects and estates of those per-
sons who had fled within the British lines at Boston or
elsewhere, to improve the same to the best advantage, and
to render a true account of the profits arising therefrom to
the congress.' The New Hampshire provincial congress on
June 30 sentenced Colonel John Fenton to an indefinite
confinement in jail for being " an enemy to the liberties of
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, p. 644.
' A^. C. Col. Recs., vol. ix, pp. 1240, 1266; vol. x, pp. 243, 261.
' 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 793, 1804, 1431 n.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION — c^
America." ^ The Rhode Island General Assembly in No-
vember passed a law punishing, with death and forfeiture
of property, any persons assisting the British enemy with
information, provisions or munitions." In September the
New York provincial congress established a series of penal-
ties for persons inimical to America ; and these penalties in-
cluded imprisonment, disarming, fines, and banishment from
the province, according to the enormity of the offence.*
Several persons were sent to jail in October by the Penn-
sylvania committee of safety for unfriendly correspond-
ence with the enemy, and one of them was later released
under bond of £500 for good behavior.* The committee of
Newbern, N. C, ordered the disarming of all those who
had not signed the defense association.'^ In June, 1775, the
secret committee of the General Committee at Charleston
sentenced two men, who had declined the defense associa-
tion, to tar and feathers.'^
The radical committees and organizations in many of the
provinces also found it necessary to limit or prohibit expor-
tations, although the non-exportation regulation of the Con-
tinental Association was not to become effective until Sep-
tember 10. The prime purpose of such regulations was to
distress the British troops ; a subsidiary object was to facili-
tate the provisioning of the American forces. The Connec-
ticut Assembly was the first to act, in April, 1775, by plac-
ing an embargo upon the exportation by water of cereals,
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii. pp. 698, 1180, 1181.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 137^-^377-
' Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 573-574-
* Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 1815, 1822-1823.
* Ibid., vol. iii, p. 100.
* Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 922-923.
56o THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
meats and live cattle, except necessary ship supplies/ In
May the Rhode Island Assembly passed a similar act.^ The
Massachusetts provincial congress in June resolved that no
fish or other provision should be shipped from the province
unless the committee having jurisdiction should decide that
the victuals were intended for the use of the inhabitants of
some New England province.^
Even before the fateful day at Lexington, the populace
at New York had become alarmed at the exportation of
nails, spades and other implements to the British troops at
Boston, and at a mass meeting on April 6 they adopted
resolutions demanding that the practice stop. Two mer-
chants, William and Henry Ustick, who were active in this
traffic, were held up as " inveterate foes to American free-
dom," although, as these gentlemen maintained, they had
not violated any part of the Continental Association.* In
May the One Hundred forbade the exportation of provis-
ions from New York city, and in August the provincial
congress applied the same principle to shipments from the
entire province.^ The Virginia convention resolved, on July
24, to withhold the exportation of cereals and other pro-
visions after August 5 and to prevent even the collection of
them in large quantities in towns or near navigable streams.
The merchants and inhabitants of Norfolk and Northamp-
ton entered vigorous protests; and when word arrived, on
August 8, that the Maryland convention would not join in
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 410, 562; vol. iii, pp. 269, 1018.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, p. 1151.
' Ibid., vol. ii, p. 1404. For subsequent modifications of this resolution,
vide ibid., vol. ii, pp. 1435, 1440, 1462; vol. iii, pp. 320, 362, 1440-1441.
* Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 242-243, 282-283 ; A'. Y. Gac, Apr. 17, 24, 1775.
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 636-637; vol. iii, pp. 445-447, 536-537. More
stringent regulations were adopted later in the month. Ibid., vol. iii,
pp. 558-559, 560, 561, 565.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 361
similar resolutions, the convention rescinded its action/
However, the various county committees endeavored to
keep supplies away from British warships in Virginia
waters.^ The General Committee at Charleston resolved
on May 26, that no rice or Indian corn should thereafter be
exported from the province; and on June 9 the provincial
congress declared that this embargo should continue for
three months.^
The conduct of the fishermen of Nantucket furnished a
knotty problem for the radicals to solve and involved again
the use of non-exportation prior to the time set by the Con-
tinental Association. The islanders had no scruples about
profiting by their exemption from the New England Re-
straining Act in respect to the whale fisheries. Further-
more, they were suspected of furnishing the British ships
and troops in Massachusetts with food, and of carrying pro-
visions to Newfoundland and the fishing settlements. In
order to check this trafftc, the Second Continental Congress
voted on May 29, 1775, that no provisions or necessities of
life should be exported to Nantucket, except from Massa-
chusetts, and then only in suf^cient quantities for domestic
consumption.* This proved to be an impracticable arrange-
micnt because of the difficulty of providing an adequate
supervision. The Massachusetts provincial congress placed
the regulation of exportation under charge of the provincial
committee of safety; but it soon became evident that, not-
withstanding their precautions, the islanders were prepar-
ing a large quantity of provisions with the intention of
availing themselves of their exclusive privilege to engage in
* 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 102. 103, 122, 369, 372, 373, 376.
' Ihid., vol. iii, pp. 218, 655-656.
* Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 710, 938.
* Journals, vol. ii, pp. 70-71.
^62 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the whale fisheries. On July 7, therefore, the provincial
congress decided to withhold all provisions and necessities
from the island until the inhabitants showed proof that the
food they had on hand would be used in domestic con-
sumption/
The islanders apparently gave little heed to this resolu-
tion. They managed to get a little food from other prov-
inces ; " but by September they found themselves in severe
straits. The Massachusetts " House of Representatives,"
successor of the provincial congress, being made cognizant
of this situation, took steps on September 28 to re-open ex-
portation, and they instructed the committee of correspond-
ence of the town of Falmouth to supply the island with
enough food for sustenance of the inhabitants.^ This
method of regulation likewise failed; ^ and on December 11,
1775, the Continental Congress took the matter in hand.
The selectmen of the town of Sherburne in Nantucket were
instructed to prepare an estimate of the provisions and fuel
necessary for the use of the island and to lay it, under their
oath or affirmation, before three or more justices of the
peace of Barnstable County, Mass. The justices were then
empowered to grant licenses to any master or owner of
vessels in the island to import supplies up to the amount
specified.^ This resolution of Congress appears to have
afforded a reasonably satisfactory solution for the difficulty
while the British troops remained at Boston.
The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10,
1775, three weeks after the beginning of war at Lexington.
1 Journals, vol. iii, pp. 420-422.
^ E. g., ibid., vol. iii, pp. 15, 21-22, 60.
' Ibid., vol. iii, p. 1444.
* Ibid., vol. iv, p. 1331.
^Journals, vol. iii, pp. 420-422.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION -63
Similar to the First Continental Congress in the irregularity
of its election, the problem that it had to face was a more
complicated one. The Congress had to solve on a national
scale the problem that the provincial and local organizations
had been trying to solve within their smaller jurisdictions.
As Robert R. Livingston told his fellow-members in a
speech on the floor of Congress, '' We are between hawki
and buzzard; we puzzle ourselves between the commercial^'
and warlike opposition." ^ This was indeed the most seri-
ous dilemma ; but, in addition, it was necessary to settle cer-
tain questions of interpretation and omission arising from
the Continental Association and to adapt the document
frankly to the new war conditions.
Accepting the Lexington affray as a declaration of war,1\/'
the Congress began to assume direction of the rebellion and I
to exercise the powers of a de facto government. In June
Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of the army
of the United Colonies, and rules for regulating the army
and navy vv^ere promulgated. Many other plans for military
operations were adopted in the subsequent months. On
July 6 a declaration was issued, which said, in effect, that
the attempt of the British government to accomplish by
force of arms what by law or right they could never effect
had made it necessary for the colonists to change the ground
of opposition and to close with the British appeal from
reason to arms."
As the interprovincial organization of the radicals, the
Congress undertook to standardize and supplement some of
the new functions which the committees of observation in
the several provinces had assumed of their own accord. In
June it was resolved that no provisions should be furnished
the British army and navy in America and that no bills of
^ Adams, J., Works (Adams), vol. ii, p. 461.
^Journals, vol. ii, pp. 140-153.
564
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763.177i
exchange of army or navy officers should be honored/ In
December vessels employed in transporting British troops
or carrying supplies for them were declared liable to con-
fiscation.^ In October it was recommended to the provin-
cial organizations to arrest every person whose going at
large might endanger the liberties of America ; ' and on
January 2, 1776, these bodies were authorized to invoke the
aid of the continental troops in order to disarm all who
spoke or acted against America, and to arrest or place under
bond the more dangerous among them.* Later in January
it was resolved that any person who refused continental
currency should be published by the local committee or pro-
vincial body as " an enemy of his country " and be sub-
jected to boycott. ■'^^ In March the radical organizations
were instructed to disarm all who had refused to sign de-
fense associations or Avho were notoriously disaffected.^
Congress also sought to encourage widespread activity in
manufacturing, particularly the production of saltpetre, sul-
phur and gunpowder.' Further than this, it was recom-
mended, in March, 1776, that the manufacturing of duck
and sail-cloth and of steel should be introduced into those
provinces where the processes were understood, and that a
society for the improvement of agriculture, arts, manufac-
tures and commerce should be established in even' prov-
^ Journals, vol. ii, p. 78. ' Ibid., vol. iii, p. 437.
' Ibid., vol. iii. p. 280.
* Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 18-20. On January 3, Congress itself enforced this
resolution against the loyalist inhabitants of Queen's County, N. Y.
Ibid., pp. 25-27, 34, 114.
* Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 367-368; vol. iv. p. 49. Vide also ibid., vol, iv, p.
.383; vol v, pp. 475-476.
* Ibid., vol. iv. p. 205.
''Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 345-348, 349; vol. iv, pp. 170-171. '
^ Ibid., vol. iv, p. 224.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 565
Certain questions which had arisen from the omissions
and ambiguities of the Continental Association also re-
ceived careful consideration at the hands of Congress. One
of these grew out of the failure of the Association to pro-
vide a means by which a contrite offender, adjudged guilty
in the usual manner, might be restored to public favor.
Many committees had not waited to ask the opinion of Con-
gress in this matter, but had devised their own measures.
But the question was presented to Congress through a peti-
tion of Robert and John Murray, of New York, asking that
they might be restored " to their former situation with re-
spect to their commercial privileges." In response to this
petition, Congress in May, 1775, established a general regu-
lation to the effect that the convention of the province, in
which the offence was committed, should settle the terms
upon which a repentant offender might receive the forgive-
ness of the public.^
On July 4 Congress added the New England Restrain-
ing Act and the General Restraining Act to the list of those
laws whose repeal was aimed at by the Continental Associa-
tion.^ To settle all doubts as to the meaning of the words,
" Great Britain " and " West Indies," as used in the Asso-
ciation, it was declared in August that the former term in-
cluded all exportation to and importation from the islands
of Jersey, Guernsey, Sark, Alderney and Man, and every
European island and settlement within the British domin-
ions ; and that the latter term comprehended exportation to
all the West India islands, British and foreign, and to the
Summer Islands, Bahamas, Berbicia, Surinam, and every
^ Journals, vol. ii, pp. 49, S3, 67. The boycott against the Murrays was
removed by action of the New Jersey congress on May 31 and of the
New York congress on June 10. 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 689-690,
1284, 1291.
' Journals, vol. ii, p. 125.
r56 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
island and settlement between the latitude of southern
Georgia and the equator/ Congress was called upon for
a further interpretation of the non-importation regulation
when a vessel arrived from London with the books and
household furniture of Dr. Franklin. A resolution was
adopted that such an importation was not comprehended
within the meaning of Article i and should be landed."
,• The most important action taken by Congress with refer-
/ence to the Association was the series of resolutions per-
t taining to the non-exportation regulation. One of these
1 resolutions terminated the painful controversy which had
'grown out of the privileged position enjoyed by the rice
planters in the Association. The method of solution had
been foreshadowed by the embargo placed upon rice by the
General Committee at Charleston in May and by the South
Carolina congress in June.^ Congress took no action in the
matter until November i, although the general non-expor-
tation regulation had been in effect since the tenth of Sep-
tember : and then it was resolved : " That no Rice be ex-
ported under the exception contained in the fourth article
of the Association, from any of the United Colonies to
Great Britain, Ireland or the Islands of Jersey, Guernsey,
Sark, Alderney or Man, or any other European island or
settlement within the British Dominions." *
On July 15, 1775, Congress authorized for a period of
nine months the clandestine importation of munitions in
return for American produce, '*' the non-exportation agree-
ment notwithstanding." " This resolution, which was with-
^ Journals, vol. ii, pp. 238-239.
'•* Ibid., vol. ii, p. 247.
' 4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, pp. 710, 938.
* Journals, vol. iii, pp. 314-315.
^ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 184-185; vol. iii, p. 306. The regulation of this
traffic was left to the committees in the several provinces. On Sept. 19^
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
567
held from the newspapers until October 26, was not alto-
gether clear in its meaning. But whether or not a relaxing
of the non-importation regulation was intended, it clearly
permitted a limited exportation to Great Britain and the
West Indies, even after the date September 10/ and sanc-
tioned a smuggling traffic in munitions with foreign coun-
tries. Incidentally it afforded some relief to the merchants,
shipowners and sailors, who were beginning to suffer from
the straitening effects of the non-importation.^ Without
withdrawing the resolution of July 15, which applied pri-
marily to shipments undertaken upon private initiative.
Congress, on October 26, recommended to the provincial
organizations to export to the foreign West Indies, at the
expense of the province, provisions and other produce in re-
turn for munitions. The secret committee of Congress was
empowered to do the same on the continental account, on
November 8.^ These later resolutions also contravened the
non-exportation provisions of the Association. On January
3, 1776, the breach in the Association was made larger by
a blanket instruction of Congress to the secret committee
to " pursue the most effectual measures for importing "
drygoods and certain other merchandise into America.*
Congress established a secret committee to look after the importation
of munitions for continental military purposes. Ibid., vol. ii, p. 253 ;
vol. iii, p. 280; Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 460-461.
* E. g., vide Journals, vol. iv, pp. 172-173, 183.
' Dyer, of Connecticut, complained in September that there were not
ten men in Connecticut who were worth as much money as the Phila-
delphia firm of Willing & Morris would m.ake out of a contract with
Congress for the importation of powder. Adams, J., Works, vol. ii,
pp. 448-449-
' Journals, vol. iii, pp. 308, 315, 336; vol. iv, p. 414. Certain classes of
live stock were excepted in each instance. For the practice of Congress
in special cases, vide ibid., vol. iii, pp. 408-409, 438-439; vol. iv, pp. 95-96.
108, 120, 176, 193.
* Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 24-25.
r'58 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
This resolution practically annulled both the non-importa-
tion and non-exportation regulations of the Association, so
far as the powers of the secret committee were concerned.
Aleantime, Congress had taken some steps for re-opening
trade with the British West Indies, contrary to the spirit
and wording of the Continental Association. Depending
upon the continental provinces for their food supply, the
British residents in those islands feared a servile insurrec-
tion when the non-exportation regulation should become
effective. In July, 1775. the Bermuda Assembly passed a
law placing an embargo upon the shipping of provisions
from the island.^ Leading inhabitants dispatched a vessel
to Philadelphia to lay their case before the Continental
Congress. When that body took the matter under consid-
eration, in November, 1775, the continent was already be-
ginning to feel the lack of salt and w^as in bad need of war
munitions; and therefore Congress decided that, as ''the
inhabitants of the island of Bermuda appear friendly to
the cause of America," enough food should be sent them
from time to time as might be necessary for their subsist-
ence and home consumption, upon condition that payment
should be made in salt and munitions.^ The distress of the
people of the island of New Providence was alleviated tem-
porarily^ when Congress permitted the exportation of one
hundred bushels of flour, on November 29, in return for
muskets.*
^A^ Y. Journ., July 27, 177$-
^ Journals, vol. iii, pp. 362-364. The annual exportation to Bermuda
was fixed at 72,000 bushels of Indian corn, 2,000 barrels of bread or
flour, 1,000 barrels of beef or pork, 2,100 bushels of peas or beans, and
300 tierces of rice.
* Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 389-390. The Connecticut Ga.cettc, Feb. 16, 1776,
reported that the non-exportation was beginning to be severely felt in
the West Indies, where the most ordinary beef sold for seven or eight
pounds per barrel, common flour at six pounds currency per barrel,
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
569
Congress was confronted with a practical problem of
serious import by the action of Parliament, in April, 1775,
in exempting four colonies from the provisions of the Gen-
eral Restraining Act. The radical organizations in these
colonies had taken active steps to prevent any advantage be-
ing taken of the parliamentary exemption. But as the need
for war supplies became greater, Congress began to con-
sider the practicability of making the United Colonies the
beneficiaries of these privileged trade-channels. Through-
out October the matter was under active consideration by
Congress.^ Willing of Pennsylvania argued: ''Shall we
act like the dog in the manger — not suffer New York and
the lower counties and North Carolina to export because we
can't? We may get salt and ammunition by those ports."
Johnson of Maryland and Jay of New York spoke to tlie
same purpose. Lee of Virginia believed that for the ex-
empted colonies to trade would be exactly answering the
purpose of the British administration, for " jealousies and
dissensions will arise, and disunion and division. We shall
become a rope of sand." Gadsden of South Carolina,
Wythe of Virginia and Chase of Maryland agreed, Chase
adding: "A few weeks will put us all on a footing: New
York &c are now all in rebellion, as the ministry call it, as
much as Massachusetts Bay." John Rutledge of South
Carolina chided the opposition for wanting to break the
and that little was to be had at any price. The islanders were " under
terrible Apprehensions" of the effect of reduced rations upon the negro
slaves. On October 4, this sheet reported further that an insurrection
had broken out among the Jamaica negroes and that some merchant
vessels, just arrived in Connecticut, had been detained because of a
food embargo there and had sailed finally with a short allowance of
provisions.
* Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 452-457, 469-484; Journals, vol. iii, pp.
276, 280, 283, 286, 287, 291-292, 301-302, 307, 312. The exempted prov-
inces were New York, Delaware, North Carolina and Georgia.
570 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1768-1776
Association so soon and reminded the members, with some
bitterness, that *' if we had abided by a former non-impor-
tation, we should have had redress." Finally, on Novem-
ber I, Congress came to a decision. It was resolved that
no persons in the four privileged provinces should apply at
^ the custom houses for clearance papers ; and the thanks of
Congress was voted for their self-denial in the past.^
] The tenth of September, 1775, was the date set by the
tontinental Association for the prohibition of exportation
to Great Britain, Ireland and the West Indies; and for
months the merchants had been looking forward w4th dread
to the event. The non-importation had continued to be
effectively enforced — the British warships proving of un-
intentional service after July in their efforts to prevent the
smuggling of tea, trade with the foreign West Indies, etc.,
under the provisions of the General Restraining Act — and
there was every reason to believe that the non-exportation
regulation would be equall}^ well executed, except of course
in such cases as Congress had chosen to make exceptions.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1775 the merchants
of the North and the planters of the South had increased
their shipments to Great Britain and the West Indies in
order to provide against the approaching abstention. Com-
^ parative figures for the years 1774 and 1775 show that at
New York the value of exports to England increased from
£80,008 to £187,018; at Philadelphia, from £69,611 to
£175,962; in Maryland and Virginia, from £612,030 to
£758,356; in the Carolinas, from £432,302 to £579,549;
and in Georgia, from £67,647 to £103,477; and that even in
New England there was a slight increase from £112,248 to
£116,588." For the colonies as a whole there was an in-
crease of nearly forty per cent.
^ Journals, vol. iii, p. 314.
' Macpherson, Annals of Com., vol. iii, pp. 564, 585.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 571
When news of the Lexington affair electrified the conti-
nent, it was widely rumored that Congress would move for-
ward the date of the non-exportation. In the early days of
May, 1775, owners of vessels at Philadelphia got them out
of the harbor as fast as they could; the millers hurried their
flour to market, some of them near the city selling wheat out
of their mills without grinding. Vessels were not to be had
at any price; flour advanced from 13s. to 14s. 6d.^ Thomas
Mumford, an exporter of horses at Groton, Conn., wrote
to his brother-in-law, Silas Deane, a member of Congress,
for definite information as to the possibility of an earlier
non-exportation, pointing out that he had several vessels
which he was thinking of fitting out. Deane informed his
wife in a letter a few weeks later that it was still uncertain
what action Congress would take, but he added : " Tell my
brother to get his vessel away as quick as possible, some-
where or other, if he sends her at all; this is what the
merchts are doing here." ^
Such precautions proved unnecessary, as Congress did
not tamper with the date originally set for non-exportation.
Considerable public sentiment, however, w^as aroused by the
enterprise of merchants, in several parts of the continent, in
collecting great quantities of flaxseed in the last weeks of
open commerce for exportation to Ireland. While such
exportation did not contravene the terms of the Association,
it was felt that it was nevertheless injurious to the Amer-
ican cause and thus contrary to the spirit of the Association.
When New York merchants sent agents into Connecticut to
buy up flaxseed for this purpose, the committees at New
Haven, Milford, Fairfield and other places sternly warned
the inhabitants against dealing with them.^ On August 12,
^Clifford, Correspondence (L. C. Mss.), vol xxix, letters of May 2,
6, 30, 1775-
' Conn. Hist. Sac. Colls., vol. ii, pp. 263, 276.
* Conn. Journ., Aug. 16, 23, 1775 ; A^ Y. Journ., Aug. 24.
--2 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
fourteen business houses of New York city applied to the
Xew York provincial congress for a definition of their
rights in shipping flaxseed; and that body responded that,
since the Continental Congress had left the provision un-
changed, exportation might continue until September 10/
Nevertheless the Nezv York Journal announced, five days
after this action, that " some Merchants of this City, who
had chartered a \^essel to load her with Flax Seed for Ire-
land, have altered her Voyage, rather than give Dissatis-
faction to our Fellow Citizens." When a town meeting at
Providence, R. I., learned on September 7 that a large
quantity of flaxseed was about to be exported from the
town, they at once placed a ban on its shipment.^
There was a great bustle at Philadelphia in the last week
of open trade; and no doubt the scene there was paralleled
in many ether ports of the continent. Produce of all sorts
was brought to tow^n and in such quantities that not enough
vessels could be found to carry it ofT. On the very last day,
fifty-two ships sailed from port, leaving hardly a vessel be-
hind. Several of these ships had arrived and taken a cargo
in forty-eight hours. "^
?pV With the advent of non-exportation, conditions were far
\ different from those anticipated by the framers of the Con-
tinental Association. Military necessity, as we have seen,
had taken away from the non-exportation regulation its
primary raison d'etre, i. e. a self-denying ordinance for pur-
poses of commercial coercion, and had converted it very
largely into a mechanism for procuring militar)^ supplies.
The work of enforcing the non-exportation regulation in
cases where it applied was zealously undertaken by the rad-
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 96. 529.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 661-662.
'Pa. Joiirn., Sept. 13, 1775; Clifford, Corrcsp., vol. xxix, Sept. 8r
Conn. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. ii, p. 305.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION -73
ical committees, notwithstanding that they were occupied
with a multitude of other duties. The presence of British
warships in American waters, pursuant to the General Re-
straining Act, was a mild deterrent to American ventures
to the foreign West Indies no doubt, and thus assisted the
observance of the non-exportation. The absolute prohibi-
tion of American trade, enacted by Parliament in December,
1775, imposed a heavier burden on the British navy, and,
when the prohibition became effective in March, 1776,
served further to discourage American exportations. How-
ever, smuggling past the British vessels off the coast pre-
sented no insurmountable difficulties; and the real burden
of enforcing the regulation fell upon the local committees.
One of the first questions that arose was whether vessels
that had, for some legitimate reason, been delayed in their
departure should be permitted to sail after September 10 to
any of the forbidden places. The committee of safety at
Wilmington, N. C, had warned the merchants there in ad-
vance that their vessels could not depart after the tenth on
the excuse that their cargoes were not yet completely laden. ^
The Continental Congress permitted a vessel to sail that
had been much damaged in a storm on her outward voyage
and had been forced to return to Norfolk for refitting.*
But when a mercantile house asked permission to charter a
vessel to export a cargo of wheat after the tenth, upon the
plea that the one that they had engaged had foundered in a
storm, the petition was tabled.*
The various privileged exportations, under license of the
Continental Congress or of provincial organizations, com-
^iV. C. Col. Recs., vol. x, p. 151. The provincial convention confirmed
this action. Ibid., p. 183.
^Journals, vol. ii, p. 246. Similar action was taken in some other
cases. Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 354-355-
' Ibid., vol. iii, p. 264.
274 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
plicated the problem of enforcement for the committees.
Thus, in February, 1776, a representation was made to
Congress by the Philadelphia committee that vessels were
loading with produce for Great Britain, Ireland and the
British West Indies. Congress appointed a committee to
examine into the circumstances and then permitted them to
sail as being within the terms of the congressional resolu-
tion of July 15/
Recorded instances of enforcement are not many. The
Newcastle, Del., committee compelled the Peace and Plenty ,
which had arrived from Belfast on September 8, to make
her return voyage in ballast.^ Arthur Upshur, of Accomack
County, Va., was held up to the public by the county com-
mittee for having sent a cargo of grain to the West Indies
after the tenth. ^ The Georgians came under the criticism
of the South Carolina coimcil of safety for their apparent
laxness in enforcing non-exportation : * nevertheless, it is a
matter of record that more than five thousand barrels of
rice, which Governor Wright had prepared for exportation
in 1775, were withheld from shipment through their zeal.'^
Very illuminating was the statement, made by Robert
Haliday, customs collector at Charleston, S. C, that by the
non-importation regulation the emoluments of his office had
been greatly reduced, and by the non-exportation regulation
'' entirely annihilated." ^ Thomas Clifford, the Philadel-
phia merchant, wrote on October 25, 1775, that he was lay-
ing up his ships as fast as they came in, " there being no
^ Journals, vol. iv, pp. 172-173, 183.
'^ Pa. Journ., Sept. 27, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, p. 726.
* Ibid., vol. iii, p. 935; Jefferson, Writings (Ford), vol. ii, pp. 118-119.
'White, Ga. Hist. Colls., pp. 86-87; Ga. Rev. Rccs., vol. i, pp. 89,
108, 111-112.
'Loyalist Claims Transcripts, vol. xxxiv, p. 91.
* Ibid., vol. Iv, pp. 359-360.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION -75
Prospect of Employ abroad worth sending them to seek in
ballast," that most people were doing the same thing, and
that '' this Port and we believe all the others along the Con-
tinent have been strictly kept shut from the Exportation of
Produce agreeable to the Congress Resolves." ^ Indeed,
there is no reason to believe that the non-exportation regu-
lation was otherwise than well kept.
For a period of four months, beginning November 1,^1^
1775, the partial non-exportation established by the Conti- I
nental Association, was converted into a total non-exporta- I
tion by resolution of the Continental Congress. This de- ^
cision was the outcome of warm debates in Congress and
was determined upon in face of a determined effort to
secure the exemption of tobacco and lumber from its terms
and in spite of Robert R. Livingston's insistence that the
non-exportation policy be abandoned instead of extended.^
Edward Rutledge of South Carolina advocated the resolu-
tion that passed as the only absolutely certain way of keep-
ing exports from British ports and as the most effective way
to promote domestic manufacturing. The purpose animat-
ing the majority was probably the desire to prevent food '^
supplies from reaching the enemy through capture by the
British warships off the coast. ^ The resolution of Novem-
ber I provided that no produce of the United Colonies
should be exported until March i, excepting only licensed
shipments for military supplies or for any other purpose
designated by Congress.*
^ Correspondence, vol. xxix, Oct. 25, 1775.
» Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 453-456, 483-484-
^ Cf. Journals, vol. ii, p. 201.
* Ibid., vol. iii, p. 314.
CHAPTER XV
Transformation of the Association (Continued)
r*s The early months of 1776 witnessed further notable
i modifications of the Continental Association. The four
months of total non-exportation had the effect of aggravat-
ing the distresses of the mercantile and agrarian interests
dependent upon the export trade for profit; it also gave
momentum and direction to the sentiment, that had long
been entertained by radicals of the doctrinaire school, for
an entire freedom of trade with the nations of the world.
As early as July 21, 1775, the committee of the Continental
Congress appointed to devise ways and means of protecting
colonial commerce had submitted a report to the effect that
all ports in the United Colonies should on January 20, 1776,
be declared thenceforth " open to the ships of every state
in Europe that will admit our commerce and protect it." ^
The series of resolutions, the first of which was passed on
July 15, had sanctioned smuggling with foreign countries
for the purpose of procuring munitions; the committee's
proposition was far more comprehensive and revolutionary,
nothing less than that the acts of trade and the famous
navigation act should be repudiated and that trade should
be opened with foreign nations in foreign or domestic ves-
sels. The committee's report was postponed from time to
time for further consideration : but in everv^ debate on trade
^ Journals Cont. Cong., vol. ii. pp. 200-201. It would appear that reso-
lutions covering this matter were submitted by both Dr. Franklin and
Richard Henry Lee.
576
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 577
conditions from that time forward, allusion was almost in-
variably made to the proposal as a desirable or unacceptable
or desperate alternative.
On August 26, 1775, a member of the Continental Con-
gress hazarded the opinion in a private letter that in the
course of the coming winter Congress would adopt the
measure, adding : '' Whether that will not be one means of
dissolving our connections entirely with Great Britain, I
shall leave to wiser heads to determine." ^ During the
month of October the matter came up again for active dis-
cussion in Congress; but when a decision was reached to
establish a general non-exportation until March i, 1776, in-
terest again waned, and it was not until it became necessary
to determine what the status of trade should be after that
date that the discussion was renewed, in the weeks after
Christmas Day, 1775.
"^ The chief opposition to opening trade with the world
came from the members who wished to safeguard such J
American shipping as still remained and from those mem-
bers who saw in the measure a virtual declaration of inde-
pendence.^ Willing of Philadelphia, shipowner as well as
exporter, emphasized the fact that the profits of carrying
would go to foreigners. *' Carriage is an amazing revenue,"
he declared. " Holland and England have derived their
maritime power from their carriage." Likewise, Johnson
of Maryland pointed out shrewdly that the measure, while
injuring the merchant and shipbuilder, would leave the far-
mer unscathed. " The grower, the farmer, gets the same,
let who will be the exporter," he declared, " but the com-
munity does not. The shipwright, rope-maker, hemp-
grower, all shipbuilders, the profits of the merchant, are all
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 435-436.
' The October debates are summarized in Adams, J., Works (Adams),
vol. ii, pp. 452-457, 469-483-
378 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
lost, if foreigners are our sole carriers, as well as seamen."
Chase of Maryland asserted that he had not absolutely
abandoned all hope of reconciliation, and until that time
came he would oppose a free trade with foreign nations.
Zubly of Georgia declared that there was no assurance that
the world would trade with the Americans and the measure
gave the appearance of a design to separate from England.
The chief speakers on the other side were Lee and Wythe
of Virginia, Gadsden of South Carolina, and the Adamses
of A'lassachusetts. The point that they stressed in the early
stages of the discussion was that, lacking a navy, the colo-
nists were in danger of being cut off from the world by the
British warships, whereas foreign nations would come in
and protect their own vessels engaged in American trade. ^
On January 20, 1776, the Virginia delegates were instructed
by the Virginia provincial convention to use their endeavors
to have such a measure adopted." It soon became apparent
in Congress that the whole matter was intimately related to
the question of political independence. As Sherman of
Connecticut asserted on February 16: "A treaty with a
foreign power is necessary, before we open our trade, to
protect it;" and Wythe completed the thought when he
said that, to accomplish this, " we must declare ourselves a
free people." ^ John Adams wrote later in his autobiog-
raphy : " This measure of opening the ports, &c, labored
exceedingly because it was considered a bold step to inde-
pendence. Indeed, I urged it expressly with that view, and
as connected with the institution of government in all the
States, and a declaration of national independence. The
party against me had an art and influence as yet to evade,
* Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 453, 454, 45^, 485-486.
'Dixon & Hunter's Va. Gas., Apr. 13, 1776.
' Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, pp. 485-486.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION -yg
retard, and delay every motion that we made. Many mo-
tions were made and argued at great length, and with great
spirit on both sides, which are not to be found in the Jour-
nals." ^
On March i the period of total non-exportation expired,"]
and the partial non-exportation that had subsisted prior to
November, 1775, became effective again. In the weeks im-
mediately following, it became evident that the merchants'
stocks, acquired in the days before the non-importation
regulation, were approaching depletion. There was a grow-
ing scarcity of goods, which exceedingly distressed the poor
and, in view of the inadequate supply of domestic manu- .
factures, made imperative the opening of trade with foreign j
nations^.^^ It was argued also that such a freedom of com- ;
merce would attract specie to the colonies and serve to check
the depreciation of the continental currency. On April 2
the Philadelphia committee of inspection was asked to
bring these facts to the attention of the Continental Con-
gress, in an address from the Committee of Privates of the
local Military Association, signed by the retailer, William
Adcock, as president."^
An added incentive to the adoption of drastic measures
of relief was the news, that had arrived at Philadelphia on
February 26, that Parliament had enacted that after Jan-
uary I, 1776, all American vessels found on the coast of
the British Isles were to be seized and confiscated ; all Amer-
ican vessels sailing into and out of American ports after
March i were to be seized and confiscated ; and all foreign
vessels trading to America after June i were to be seized.
The colonies were to be isolated from the world, save such
districts as would make submission.^ On the day following
* Adams, J., Works, vol. iii, p. 29.
' Pa. Eve. Post, Apr. 4, 1776.
^ 16 George III, c. 5.
58o
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the arrival of the news a Maryland member of Congress,
who had often reprobated the idea of independence both in
public and private, wrote : '' What measures Congress may
pursue in consequence of this act, I know not. With me.
every idea of reconciliation is precluded by the conduct of
Great Britain ; and the only alternative, absolute slavery or
independency." ^
The public prints were meantime urging the opening of
commerce as a measure conditioned by a declaration of in-
dependence.^ But Congress, fearing the potency of an ill-
.timed phrase, preferred to do the seemingly illogical thing.
On April 6, without allusion to political independence, the
fateful step was taken. It was then provided that any
. goods and wares, except staves and empty casks under cer-
tain conditions, might be exported from the United Colo-
nies, in colonial or foreign vessels, to any parts of the w^orld
not under dominion of Great Britain; and that any goods
and merchandise might be imported into the United Colo-
nies in like fashion, except articles produced in or shipped
jfrom British possessions, East India tea, and slaves. It
was further provided that all merchandise and wares im-
ported into the United Colonies directly or indirectly from
Great Britain or Ireland contrary to the regulations of Con-
gress should be forfeited and disposed of under rules made
by the several assemblies."
V After this event a declaration of political independence,
. however great its sentimental importance, was a mere for-
mality. The Adamses, for example, appreciated this fully
and it gave them good occasion for exultation. Not only
has Congress raised armies and a navy, fought battles and
^Robert Alexander; 4 Am. Arch., vol. iv. pp. 1507-1508.
^ Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 470-473, 527-530, 920-922, 1141-1144; vol. v, pp. 225-
227, 860-862, 918-919, 921-926.
^Journals, vol. iv, pp. 257-259.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 381
commissioned privateers against the British, wrote Sam
Adams to a congenial spirit, but now we have " torn into
Shivers their Acts of Trade, by allowing Commerce subject
to Regulations to be made by our selves with the People of
all Countries but such as are Subjects of the British King/' ^
I The nullification of the acts of trade and navigation was
followed by the introduction of two other important changes
in the Continental Association, one relating to the provision
for the non-consumption of tea, the other dealing with the
regulation of prices. Both changes represented concessions
to the merchants who had not yet detached themselves from
the radical cause,.! With reference to the first, it should be
recalled that Article iii had provided for the total disuse of
tea, smuggled as well as dutied, after March i, 1775. This
prohibition expressed a real protest against tea drinking on
hygienic grounds, but it had obtained its widest support be-
cause of the impracticability of distinguishing between Eng-
lish dutied tea and Dutch undutied tea and because of the
desire to refute the charge that the tea smugglers had insti-
gated the uprising against British measures.
In the spring months of 1775 little difficulty had been
experienced by the committees of observation in enforcing
the prohibition ; but by midsummer, cases of violation began
to become numerous. Thus, the committee at Providence,
R. L, forced the recantation of the tea dealer, Nathan
Angell, in October and seized such of his stock as remained
unsold ; but they admitted that they had reason to suspect,
from, the frequent complaints of country people, that some
dealers in Providence still continued the practice.^ It was
openly asserted in Congress in September that ninety-nine
^ To Joseph Hawley, Apr. 15, 1776; Adams, S., Writings (Gushing),
vol. iii, pp. 279-280.
' 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, pp. 975-9/6.
r82 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: j.763-1776
out of one hundred in New York drank tea, although this
was obviously an exaggeration/ A persistent tea seller at
Reading, Pa., was tarred and feathered and ridden on a
horse with his face to the tail, " to the great diversion of the
inhabitants who, I believe, hardly ever beheld a more ridic-
ulous figure." "
The truth was, as the Continental Congress was at length
forced to admit, that the period allowed by the Continental
Association for the consumption of tea, which was then in
stock, was too short, " whereby many zealous friends to the
American cause, who had imported large quantities of that
commodity, with design not merely to advance their for-
tunes, but to counteract the plan then pursued by the min-
istry and India company to introduce and sell in these colo-
nies tea subject to duty, are likely to become great suffer-
ers; the greater part of the estates of many of them being
vested in that article, and they, by that means, rendered in-
capable not only of paying their debts and maintaining their
families, but also of vigorously exerting themselves in the
service of their country." ^
Great pressure was brought to bear upon Congress to
permit the sale of such teas as had been imported before
Article iii of the Association became effective. Alexander
McDougall of New York urged the matter on the attention
of Richard Henry Lee, a member of Congress, in a letter
of June 5, 1775; but the latter replied that, although such
suffering was to be found in all the provinces, " Should
Congress determine to admit the sale and the use of what
^ Adams, J., Works, vol. ii, p. 447-
^ Pa. Merc, Oct. 20, 1775. For other examples, vide 4 Am. Arch.,
vol. ii, pp. 920, 1678; vol. iii, pp. 729, 937-938; Pa. Journ., May 17, 1775 ;
Conn. Cour., Apr. 8, 1776.
3 Preamble to the congressional resolution of Apr. 13, 1776; Journals,
vol. iv, pp. 277-278.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
583
tea is on hand, may not bad men take the advantage of the
impossibihty of distinguishing this from newly imported
Tea . . . ?" ^ The New York provincial congress, in a
letter to the New York delegates at the Continental Con-
gress on July 28, declared that the smuggling merchants had
so much capital tied up in unsalable Dutch teas that they
were deprived of the means of introducing into the prov-
ince Dutch textiles and munitions, which were badly needed.
The delegates were therefore instructed to urge Congress
to authorize the sale of teas in stock, at a fixed price, with
a tax of one shilling imposed as a penalty on " the obstinate
consumers." "
On July 31, 1775, the question of renewing the sale of
teas was formally presented to Congress in the form of two
petitions, one from sundry New York merchants and the
other from sundry merchants of Philadelphia. Due to the
pressure of other business, the matter did not receive con-
sideration for some months. Finally, on November 28, the
petitions were rejected.^ The matter did not rest here, the
Maryland delegates receiving instructions from their pro-
vincial convention to press Congress to permit the consump-
tion of all teas imported before February i, 1775. The
subject was debated for two days in mid- January, 1776,
with Dr. Franklin and Thomas Lynch as the chief oppo-
sition speakers, and was finally lost by a vote of seven
provinces to five.*
Meantime it became increasingly evident that the prohibi-
1 Lee, R. H., Letters (Ballagh), vol. i, pp. i43-i44-
^4 Am. Arch., vol. ii, p. 1805. For the reply of the delegates vide
ibid., vol. iii, p. 750.
' Journals, vol. ii, p. 235 ; vol. iii, pp. 294, 298, 388-389.
* The negative provinces were New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware and Maryland. 4 Am. Arch., vol. iv, p. 887; Am. Hist. Rev.,
vol. i, pp. 308, 309.
-84 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
tion of tea drinking was serving no useful purpose and was,
on the other hand, fomenting divisions within radical ranks.
** Whenever the reason of any law^ ceases," declared "Aescu-
lapius," " the law ceases . . . whether the law is in a
formal manner repealed or not;" and he added: "If we
should drink tea three times a day, we shall not be taxed for
it to Great-Britain — no one can import it from there while
we remain in our present situation." ^ Congress yielded to
the increasing pressure finally on April 13, one week after
trade had been opened with foreign nations. They voted
that all teas imported before December i, 1774, should be
placed on sale, except such as had been imported by the East
India Company. To guard against excessive prices, it was
provided that Bohea tea should not retail at more than
three-fourths of a dollar a pound and that the prices of
other teas should be fixed by the local committees.^
In somewhat similar fashion, the provisions of the Asso-
ciation for maintaining the customary level of prices had,
after the first year of the non-importation, become increas-
ingly difficult to administer. In the plantation provinces
the chief trouble was found in regulating the price of salt.
That commodity was of essential importance as being prac-
tically the only preservative of meat and fish; and the
supply in the South had nearly reached the point of exhaus-
tion by the autumn following the cessation of importation.
Beginning in the spring of 1775, the provincial conventions
of Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas offered pecuniary
inducements to private individuals who would undertake the
manufacture of salt.^ The people in the uplands of Vir-
^ Conn. Coiir., Apr. 8, 1776.
^ Teas found in the cargo of prizes vv-ere also permitted to be sold.
Journals, vol. iv, pp. 277-278.
'Virginia, Mch. 27; Maryland, Aug. 14; North Carolina, Sept. 10;
and South Carolina, Nov. 28; Smith, C. S., "Scarcity of Salt in the
Revolutionary War," / M. H. S. Procs., vol. xv, pp. 221-227.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 385
ginia, suffering from the great scarcity, did not hesitate on
several occasions to descend upon some of the tidewater
merchants and seize such salt as they could lay hands on/
The local committees in these provinces did what they
could to prevent the inevitable rise in prices. For example,
in August, 1775, the Surry County committee in Virginia
published Robert Kennon, a factor, for advancing the price
from 2s. 6d. per bushel to 3s. ^ In November the Baltimore
County, Md., committee established a maximum price for
salt, and authorized past purchasers of salt to collect from
dealers any money charged beyond that amount.^ Such
treatment, however, did not penetrate to the source of the
trouble; so, on December 29, 1775, the Continental Con-
gress took measures to afford relief. Virginia, Maryland
and North Carolina, where the need was greatest, were
authorized to import as much salt from any foreign coun-
try as their conventions or committees of safety might
think necessary and to export produce therefor.'^ The con-
ventions of all the continental provinces were urged to
offer bounties for salt making. Most of the provinces acted
upon this advice in the following year.°
At the leading northern ports and in the rural districts
which were their markets, the regulation of prices had
created more or less trouble from the beginning of non-
importation.^ The cause of high prices in the early months
had been the greed of f orestallers and monopolists ; nor did
the city committees always take prompt action in such cases,
especially if the articles in question were not widely used or
^ Pinkney's Va. Gaz., Dec. 6, 1775.
' Ihid., Aug. 22, 1775.
* Md. Journ., Nov. 22, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, p. 1541.
^Journals, vol. iii, pp. 464-465; Am. Hist. Rev., vol. i, p. 299.
^ Smith, loc. cit.
* Vide supra, chapter xii.
586
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the advance in price moderate. By the winter of i77S-'^77^>
after the non-importation had been effective for about a
year, the upward trend of prices indicated the approaching
depletion of mercantile stocks ; ^ but the radicals in general
still preferred to believe that private avarice was the sole
animating cause. The chief centers of trouble were the
ports of Philadelphia and New York and the markets tribu-
tary to them. The dearth and high price of West India
commodities created greatest uneasiness because of their
former cheapness and wide household use.
At Philadelphia the committee reported in September,
1775, after a careful investigation of the rising price of
salt, that there was a sufficient supply of the article in the
city; and they warned the dealers to charge prices that
would not call for the interference of the committee." In
December the committee fixed wholesale and retail prices
for oil.^ On March 5, 1776, the district committees of
Philadelphia made a careful examination into the prices of
certain West India commodities and others, and reached the
conclusion that the exorbitant prices were the result of en-
grossing. Therefore, on March 6, the committee estab-
lished a schedule of prices, with the w^arning that violators
of the regulation would be published '' as sordid vultures
who are preying on the vitals of their country in a time of
general distress." The commodities regulated were molasses,
common West India rum, country rum, coffee, cocoa, choc-
olate, pepper, several varieties of sugar, Lisbon and Liver-
pool salt, and Jamaica spirits.* Before the month was past
^ Vide a clear analysis of this situation in a circular letter of the
Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, May 22, 1776; Pa. Journ., June
19, 1776.
" Pa. Eve. Post, Sept. 7, 1775.
' Pa. Journ., Dec. 20, 1775.
* Pa. Ledger, Mch, 9, 1776; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. v, pp. 74, 85-86.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION cfij
two inhabitants had violated the resolution: William Sit-
greaves had sold coffee at a penny more than the commit-
tee's rate, and Peter Ozeas had bought and sold two barrels
of coffee at a price higher than the limit. Both offenses
were published, and the men quickly sued for pardon.^ _^
At New York the extravagant price of pins aroused feel-
ing in September, 1775; and the city committee appointed
a sub-committee to inform the offending merchants that
their conduct would be published unless they reformed their
ways.^ In November it was proven to the committee that
Robinson & Price had overcharged for pins and other arti-
cles, and the firm was duly published.^ In March, 1776, the
merchant Archibald M'Vicker was held up for a similar
offence.* The extraordinary enhancement in the price of
West India products caused the New York committee, on
March 9, to establish a scale of wholesale prices after the
fashion of Philadelphia. The committee, however, declared
that they intended, from time to time, to examine into the
circumstances of newly-imported commodities from the
West Indies and to regulate the prices accordingly.^ Five
days later, six or seven hundred mechanics held a meeting
with the Committee of Mechanics and '^ delivered a very
pathetic address of thanks to the general committee of in-
spection for their kind attention to the public good, in par-
ticular for their resolve of the ninth instant limiting the
prices of West-India produce." ^ The committee at New-
^ Pa. Ledger, Apr. 6, 1776.
^ 4 Am. Arch., vol. iii, p. 702.
' Ihid., vol. iii, pp. 1625-1627. They were restored to public favor by
the New York provincial congress in March, 1776, after an expression
of contrition. A^. Y. Journ., Mch. 14, 1776.
*'N. Y. Gas., Mch. 4, 1776.
^ Ibid., Mch. II, 1776; also N. Y. lourn., Mch, 14.
« N. Y. Gaz., Mch. 18, 1776.
-88 THh COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
ark, N. J., followed the example of the New York com-
mittee with reference to West India commodities on March
15, advancing the scale of prices sufficiently to allow for
transportation, waste and retailers' profits. Violators were
not only to be boycotted but were to lose the protection of
the committee for their person and property.^
The people of Connecticut had been complaining since
the early months of trade suspension against the high prices
which the New York merchants charged the Connecticut
merchants and retailers and which the latter had sought to
shift on to the consumers. Various expedients had been
tried to eradicate this evil; but by the early months of 1776
these efforts had definitely failed of their purpose. Many
protests appeared in the local newspapers. The New York
merchants were said to have raised their rates thirty to
forty per cent; the local dealers were accused of '' making
merchandize of their country and its liberties ;" the *' poor
consumer " and the '' poor mechanic and labourer " were
shown to be the victims of this situation.^ Other writers
charged that the farmers were equally guilty of extortion.*
At length the leading towns adopted the device, which had
become popular elsewhere, of establishing prices for the
chief West India commodities. The committees of inspec-
tion of the towns in New London County resolved upon this
measure at a joint meeting on March 14, 1776, and the
committees of the fifteen towns of Hartford County took
like action on the twenty-seventh.*
The same upward climb of prices was to be found in the
^ N. Y. Gas., Apr. 22, 1776; also 2 N. J. Arch., vol. i, pp. 86-87.
^ " R " in Conn. Cour., Jan. 29, 1776 ; " Fabius " in ibid., Mch. 25 ;
" Philo Patriae " in Conn. Gaz., Mch. 8.
*" Fabius" in Conn. Cour., Mch. 25, 1776; "A Small Merchant" in
ibid., Apr. 8.
* Cown. Gaz., Mch. 8, 1776; Conn. Cour.. Apr. 8.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION ^89
other New England provinces. Abigail Adams wrote to
her husband at Philadelphia on December 10, 1775, that at
Braintree English goods of all kinds had doubled in price,
West India molasses had advanced from is. 8d., 1. m., to
2s. 8d., cotton- wool from is. per bag to 3s. ; linens were to
be had at no price. ^ The Providence, R. I., committee re-
ported numerous complaints and issued warnings from time
to time against advanced prices " on any pretence what-
ever." ^ The New Hampshire provincial congress, in a
resolution of September i, 1775, acknowledged gross vio-
lations of the price regulation of the Association and attrib-
uted them to the fact that many members of the committees
of inspection were themselves engaged in trade. The con-
gress therefore resolved that such violators might be cited
before any committee within a radius of ten miles of the
scene of the offense.^
The unavailing efforts of the committees to prevent the \
rise of prices furnished a strong argument in favor of a
frank abandonment of the plan by the Continental Con-
gress. The depletion of the colonial warehouses and thel
opening of trade with the world convinced Congress that
the time for taking the step had arrived. Asserting that
merchant adventurers should be encouraged to import from
foreign countries by the prospect of profits proportionate to
the danger and expense incurred, they resolved on April 30,
1776, that " the power of committees of inspection and ob-
servation to regulate the prices of goods (in other instances
than the article of green Tea) ought to cease." *
^ Adams, John, and Abigail, Familiar Letters (Adams, C. F., ed.,
Boston, 1875), P- 130- Vide also 4 Am. Arch., vol. iv, p. 159 n.
^ Ibid., vol. iii, pp. 662, gjS-
^ Ibid., vol. iii, p. 521.
* Jourfials, vol. iv, p. 320.
390 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Like the resolution of a few weeks earlier for re-opening
the sale of teas, this resolution was a douceur to the mer-
chants within radical ranks and to those wavering in their
allegiance. The merchants availed themselves of these new
opportunities without delay. Teas were everywhere dis-
played for sale, little regard being paid in most cases to the
rates prescribed by the Continental Congress or by the local
committees.^ The prices of other commodities, freed of all
restrictions by Congress, soared beyond anything dreamed
of before. The " enormous rise of the article of rum '*
caused Connecticut innkeepers to agree to buy no more
until the price was somewhat reduced.^ In the middle of
May it was reported that at Boston pins had advanced from
8d. to 6s., cards from 2s. 6d. to 6s. 6d., handkerchiefs from
4s. to I2S., steel from Qd. to 35.^ The worthy spouse of
John Adams declared that the cost of living had doubled
within the space of a year.* In various parts of New Jer-
sey mobs were form^ed to intimidate merchants into lower-
ing prices; and the provincial committee of safety were
forced to warn the people that the enforced reduction of
prices would discourage smugglers from undertaking trade
with foreign countries and would thus work a hardship on
the poorer people in the long run.^
The greatest distress was everywhere caused by the ex-
orbitant charge made for the necessary article of salt; and
Congress intervened on May 30 to advise the committees
^ E. g., Mass. Spy, July 5, 1776; Conn. Coiir., Aug. 5; -V. Y. Gas.,
May 6, June 10; Pa. Gas., Aug. 28; Adamses, Familiar Letters, pp.
182-183.
*At Windham and in Hartford County; Conn. Gas., May 24, 1776;
Conn. Cour., June 10.
^ Conn. Gas., May 17, 1776.
* Adamses, Familiar Letters, pp. 182-183.
^ A^". y. Gas., May 27, 1776.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION -gi
of observation and inspection ''so to regulate the price of
salt, as to prevent unreasonable exactions on the part of the
seller, having due regard to the difficulty and risque of im-
portation; subject however to such regulations as have been,
or shall hereafter be made, by the legislatures of the respec-
tive colonies." ^ Provincial authorities and committees of
observation acted upon the recommendation, not only regu-
lating the price of salt but offering bounties for its produc-
tion.^ In all other respects prices were left undisturbed by
Congress until the latter part of the year 1777, upon the
hope that the influx of goods from foreign countries under
the resolution of April 6, 1776, would bring down prices.^
Before considering the critical decision which confronted £^
the merchants when independence was declared, it seems I
/
desirable to re-state, by way o j summary^ the part which the (\v
merchant class had played in the development of the revo-
lutionary movement prior to that event. Threatened with
bankruptcy by the parliamentary legislation of 1764- 1765,
the merchants of the commercial provinces were the insti-
gators of the first discontents in the colonies. The small
factor class in the plantation provinces, by reason of the
limited nature of their trade, had no interest in the adverse
effects of this legislation, and because of their close connec-
tion with their British employers were not at this or any
other time inclined, as a group, to lend support to the
* Journals, vol. iv, pp. 397- 39^, 404.
"^Contemporary newspapers; Smith, lo£. cit.
' Before this could occur, however, the excessive issues of paper
money served to keep prices in an inflated condition. For a lucid dis-
cussion of the troubles over prices in the later period with special
reference to Massachusetts, vide Davis, A. McF., " The Limitation of
Prices in Massachusetts. 17/6-1779," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs., vol. x,
pp. 1 19-134.
^g2 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
projects of the northern merchants. Their attitude there-
fore need not be considered in the present summary.
The merchants of the great northern ports were startled
by the mob excesses and destruction of property which their
agitation had caused; but only the official class and the
social class with which it was allied were moved to place
themselves squarely on the side of parhamentary authority
thereafter. The developments of the years 1767- 1770,
fomented by the mercantile interests in large part, brought
the merchants to a serious realization of the growing power
of the irresponsible elements and of the drift of events
toward lawlessness. But for the ill-advised attempt of the
British ministry to assist the East India Company to
monopolize the tea market at the expense of the colonial
merchants, it is probable that the great influence of the
trading class would have been thrown on the side of law
and order at this time, and the separation of the colonies
from the mother country postponed or prevented. Some
merchants did indeed abstain from further activity against
parliamentary measures; but a majority joined with the
radicals to defeat the dangerous purposes of the British
trading company.
The disastrous outcome of this unnatural alliance con-
. j vinced the merchants as a class that their future welfare
^ rested with the maintenance of British authority. As a
matter of tactics, many individuals lingered in the radical
movement for the purpose of controlling it; others were
there because persuaded in spite of their self-interest. With
the advent of the First Continental Congress and its brood
of committees, other merchants withdrew from radical
affiliations, some of them becoming active loyalists. The
outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord furnished
another opportunity for decision. Finally, in the spring
^nd summer months of 1776, when the dismemberment of
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION ^qo
the British empire was impending, came the time for the j
supreme choice. The position of the merchants in these
last months needs to be examined in some detail. —
Their natural disrelish for the idea of separation was m-K
creased by the character of the arguments which the rad-!
icals were using at this time to inform and consolidate the!
mechanic and agrarian classes in support of independence.^ \
Thus, Tom Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense, which ap- ^
peared on January 9, 1776, repelled the typical merchant
while it carried ready conviction to the man of ordinary
" common sense," who, impatient of the fine-spun political
disquisitions and cautious policies of past years, was eagei- ■
for a political philosophy of plain, unqualified phrases and
for a definite program of action in which he could take
aggressive part. That this great piece of propagandist
writing, with its crudij:ies and bad taste^ proved entirely
satisfactory to men of this type is shown by the fact that
one hundred thousand copies were quickly needed to spread
the gospel of Common Sense to the uttermost portions of
the United Colonies,^ and that Paine's pamphlet became the
progenitor of a brood of lesser tracts and articles.
^ The radical writers made it clear that merchants were no longer
to be regarded as the directors of public policy. " Remember the
influence of wealth upon the morals and principles of mankind,"
admonished "A Watchman " in the Pa. Packet, June 24, 1776. " Recol-
lect how often you have heard the first principles of government
subverted by the calls of Cato and other Catalines [loyalist writers],
to make way for men of fortune to declare their sentiments upon the
subject of Independence, as if a minority of rich men vt^ere to govern
the majority of freeholders in the province."
' Vide Tyler, M. C, Literary History of the American Re-volution
(New York, 1897), vol. i, pp. 469-474. "The temper and wishes of
the people supplied every thing at that time," says John Adams in his
Autobiography, " and the phrases, suitable for an emigrant from New-
gate, or one who had chiefly associated with such company, such as,
* The Royal Brute of England,' * The blood upon his soul,* and a few
others of equal delicacy, had as much weight with the people as his
arguments." Works, vol. ii, p. 509.
594 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
But such a^peah to passion produced a very different
I effect on the wavering merchants, who regarded themselves
still as the only true conserv^ators of colonial rights. Well
might a writer familiar with the long cherished aspirations
of the merchant class and of the moderates generally, in-
dignantly deny that " all men who oppose the scheme of
Independence are advocates for absolute tyranny. Were
this once proved, as it had been often asserted, the contest
would be at an end, and we should all unite in hand and
heart for their beloved Utopian plan ; but it never has been,
it never can be proved. The opposers of Independence in
every publick body, from the Congress downwards, and in
the mass of the people, are the true Whigs, who are for
preserving the Constitution, as well against the secret
machinations of ambitious innovators as against the open
attacks of the British Parliament; they are the men who
first set on foot the present opposition, and who, I trust,
will, if they are permitted to go on, bring it to a happy con-
clusion." And he added, by wa}^ of warning to his fellow-
citizens, that *' a set of men whom nobody knows . . . are
attempting to hurry you into a scene of anarchy; their
scheme of Independence is visionary; they know not them-
selves what they mean by it." ^
-r- On the other hand, the three resolutions of Congress,
■ passed in April, 1776, for annulling the acts of navigation
and trade, reviving the sale of teas, and removing all price
restrictions, made strong appeal to mercantile self-interest.
This advantage was followed up by radical writers who de-
^"Civis," Philadelphia, Apr. 30, 1776; 4 Am. Arch., vol. v, pp. 1141-
1142. Some months earlier " Phileirene " at Boston had remarked of
independence that " in whatever hght we consider this truly Utopian
project, the more attentively we view it, and the more thoroughly we
scan it, the more impracticable, absurd, and ridiculous it appears.**
Ibid., vol. i. p. 1 188.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 395
picted the presumed materialistic benefits of independence.
They painted a Golden Age of commerce in the future more
glorious than that which had existed before 1763/ They
even restrained their impatience when cautious members o£
the trading class called for a bill of particulars.
Thus, a writer at Philadelphia voiced the opinion of a
good many merchants in the commercial provinces when, in
an open letter to the writers on both sides of the question,
he urged that the whole question of separation be entered
into " fairly, fully and freely." To explain what he meant,
he continued : " wnth respect to Independence, some people
will be satisfied with nothing short of such clear and demon-
strative evidence; you must tell them, also, of the partic-
ular new trades, which will be opened to us ; the prices our
goods will bear at home to the farmer, and what they will
bring at such and such ports, and how much those prices
exceed what we have been used to get for them at the mar-
kets we were allow'd to trade to ; in this you must name the
articles, the prices, and the places; you must then tell us,
the advantages of buying linens, woolens, cottons, silks and
hard ware in France, Spain and Portugal, and other coun-
tries in Europe, and how much cheaper they are than in
England and Ireland; . . . and whether those places will
take in exchange, our lumber, our naval stores, our tobacco,
our flax seed, &c &c and what prices they will give: w^hat
credit it is customary for those several places to allow to
foreigners on what we commonly call dry goods . . . Next
you must shew, that the charge of supporting government
will be less, in a state of Independence, than it hath been
heretofore . . . Lastly you are to consider, after all things
are candidly stated, whether the sums annually raised on
the one hand to protect ourselves, and the absolute gain in
^ Articles were also written to belittle the advantages of the period
before 1763 ; e. g., "An American," ibid., vol. v, pp. 225-227.
-g6 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
trade (over and above what we used to make) on the other
hand, do or do not render it most for our interest to sep-
arate from Britain."
In Hke manner this writer demanded that the opponents
of independence should make a ledger account of their side
of the question : " they must shew . . . what were the cus-
tomary expences of government in America, before the
present rupture ; what are the exclusive privileges, we derive
from exporting goods to Great-Britain; whether there are
acts of Parliament in favour of the Colonies, to the preju-
dice of other nations, . . . and whether these are equivalent
to any loss we may sustain, by having our trade confined to
them ; . . . you are to particularize the ports we may trade
to under the old regulations; and the different articles of
America, which we may carry directly to foreign ports ; you
must also shew that the principal part of the goods we im-
port from England and Ireland could not be supplied us
upon as good terms, from any other country, and that those
nations, with whom we might incline to trade, would not
grant us bounties upon naval stores, and sundry other arti-
cles, in the same manner as England does, the amount of
which, annually paid to the Colonists, you should sum up.
You should also shew cause (if you can) why America
ought not to take credit to herself, for all the taxes paid by
the English manufacturers, before they send their goods to
the Colonies, it being generally granted that the consumer
ultimately pays all charges; you must also shew, whether
taxes on goods imported into America from Holland,
France or Spain (where imposts are very heavy) are or are
not added to the cost of the said goods, in the same manner
as we reckon them on English goods. Also whether the
long established credit, our American merchants have ob-
tained in England in the interior part of the kingdom, with
the original manufacturers, cannot be as well accomplished
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION C597
in the new countries we may go to; or whether we must
take their goods from merchants at the out-ports, with all
the middle men's or intervening dealer's profits added to
them . . .
" Whether it is not a general established custom with all
trading nations, to trust foreigners with whom they have no
legal or political constitutional connexion as freely as their
own subjects in distant parts of the world; if this is not
generally the case, you should shew why America can't
make treaties with such powers, in order to obtain credit
. . . You should also shew ... whether if France, Spain
and Holland should refuse to give credit to every young
merchant going out for a cargo, with a tolerable recommen-
dation, as the traders in England have been accustomed to
do, I say, if this should be the case, and the importations
should fall wholly into the hands of a few rich merchants,
why might not some mode of restriction be entered into, for
preventing the exorbitant exactions they might be guilty of,
to the great injury of the consumers? . . .
" You must also prove that England, on a reunion, would
grant us such protection as would secure our property in
any part of the world . . . ; or if a reunion should not take
place, you are to point out sufficient reasons to justify you
in the supposition that America has not, or may not, have
a naval power competent to the task, of doing herself jus-
tice. . . . And you must lastly shew, that by a reconcilia-
tion on constitutional principles, we shall return to the free
money-getting trade we formerly enjoyed, and that we
shall have it enlarged to us upon a grand national scale^
without any regard to the private emolument of this or that
party; but upon principles of the general interest of the
whole empire, without our paying any taxes for the support
of government more than what we have been used to (the
debt arising from the present dispute only excepted) . That
c^gS THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the administration of justice, and security of property, will
be as upright and safe as heretofore: and that the present
happiness and future Hberty of America would be as well
maintained in a reunion as by a separation. I shall read
your controversy with great attention, and so will thou-
sands beside me : and if, upon an impartial hearing, it shall
appear to be the real interest of America to cut the Gordian
Knot and establish Independence — I declare with the utmost
sincerity and solemnity, that I will give it my hearty con-
currence." ^
While the controversial writers never achieved the par-
ticularity which this writer demanded, the radicals labored
hard to portray the economic advantages which a state of
independence promised for merchants and for men of means
generally. '' Some think they say everything against a
state of independence by crying out that in a state of de-
pendance we enjoyed the protection of Great-Britain . . . ,"
wrote " Salus Populi." " But do we not pay dearly for this
protection ? The restriction of our trade alone is worth ten
times the protection, besides the sums we pay in customs
and other duties to the amount of more than a million an-
nually. The customs of the port of London alone are worth
£2,000,000 sterling per annum. . . . Let us for once sup-
pose an independency, that we may obser\' e the consequence.
We should then trade with every nation that would trade
with us, i. e. with every nation in Europe at least. Suppose
we were attacked by some foreign power in this state of in-
dependency, for this is the bugbear : what then ? The nation
that would be fool enough to do it would raise a hornet's
nest about its ears . . . Every nation which enjoyed a
share of our trade would be guarantee for the peaceable be-
haviour and good conduct of its neighbours ... To ask
1 "A Common Man " in the Pa. Ledger, Mch. 30, 1776.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION rgg
what we should do for fleets to protect our trade, is as ab-
surd as to ask if timber grows in America. . . . But the
war once over, fleets to protect our trade will be nearly un-
necessary. Our trade will protect itself. It never will be
the interest of any nation to disturb our trade while we
trade freely with it, and it will ever be our interest to trade
freely with all nations. As long as the wide Atlantic ocean
rolls between us and Europe, so long will we be free from
foreign subjection were we once clear of Great-Britain:
And as long as we remain free from foreign subjection, so
long will our trade protect itself."^
" What will be the probable benefits of independence?"
queried another writer. "A free and unlimited trade; a
great accession of wealth, and a proportionable rise in the
value of land ; the establishment, gradual improvement, and
perfection of manufactures and science; a vast influx of
foreigners . . . ; an astonishing increase of our people
from the present stock. Where encouragement is given to
industry; where liberty and property are well secured;
where the poor may easily find subsistence, and the middling
rank comfortably support their farms by labour, there the
inhabitants must increase rapidly." ^ In a similar strain,
''A. B." argued the advantages of independence: ''Let us
try what improvements we may be drawn into by a general
correspondence with the whole world, with people who will
require from us every different article our lands, our differ-
ent climates, can produce; and from whom may be had
directly, at first hand, every thing requisite for us. Let us
have access to the lowest and best markets for every com-
modity. Let this be the case, but for half the time the
^ Pa. Journ., Feb. 14, 1776; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. iv, pp. 1142-1143.
2 "Questions and Answers," Feb. 17, 177^; ibid., vol. iv, pp. 1168-1171.
5oo THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Colonies have already existed, and the doubts and struggles
too, concerning independence, will be at an end." '
f- On the other hand, in the plantation provinces, where
I from the outset the factor class had consistently sacrificed
ithe interest of the community at large to that of themselves
and their British employers, no effort was made to win
mercantile support. Due to their British nativity and the
pecuniary indebtedness of the planters to them, the factors
had come to be regarded as a parasitic excrescence on the
community. Chief emphasis was placed by the radical
writers on the fact that political independence would also
mean emancipation from the power of factors and British
mercantile houses. "A Planter" cited Virginia as an ex-
ample of the conditions prevailing in the provinces from
Maryland to Georgia. *' You are without merchants, ships,
seamen, or ship-builders . . . ," he declared to the Virgin-
ians in a newspaper article. '' Your trade is confined to a
single spot on the globe, in the hands of the natives of a
distant Island, who fiix the market of all commodities at
their pleasure, and we may be very sure will rate yours at
the lowest, and their own at the highest prices, they will in
any conscience bear. Every article of merchandise, that is
not the produce of Britain, must first pay its duties to the
Crown, perhaps must be increased in the price a very large
advance per cent there, and then be re-exported to Virginia,
and undergo an additional advance of seventy-five, and
sometimes near one hundred and fifty per cent here." In
the northern colonies, he pointed out, linens and broad-
cloth were sold by the retail merchants at the same price
that the Virginia factors claimed they paid as prime cost in
Britain. "By this means you fairly lose seventy-five pounds
currency on every one hundred pounds sterling worth of
^ " Plain Hints on the Condition of the Colonies," Feb. 28, 1776;
4 Am. Arch., vol. iv, p. 1524.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 6oi
merchandise you import from Great Britain that is not
native to that country ;" a loss amounting annually to prob-
ably £200,000,, which might be saved by the opening up of
a free and independent trade with the world.
Furthermore, he continued, there were probably fifty for-
eign houses or companies and two thousand factors, who
had charge of the trade of Virginia. " It is not unreason-
able to say, that every house or company makes fifteen
thousand pounds a year, net gain, by the trade of this
Colony ; and, consequently, fifty houses will annually export
seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling to Scot-
land and England ; which will be just so much saved to the
Colony, whenever its own natives shall become its mer-
chants." Supposing the factors to lay aside £60 on the
average, here was to be found £120,000 more, which was
expended abroad. The total loss from these two sources
alone amounted to £870,000 sterling, or £1,087,500 cur-
rency.
Another instance of exploitation was to be seen, he de-
clared, in the marketing of the Virginia staple, tobacco,
'* upon which the Government of England and the mer-
chants of Scotland, have it in their power to put what price
they please." The present rate of about 20s. per hundred-
weight was considered a very good average price. This
tobacco was exported to Britain, paid a duty almost four
times the price it bore in Virginia, and their merchants made
their fortunes out of it afterwards.^ By exporting the
tobacco directly to the countries that consumed it, the Vir-
ginia planter would receive five pounds per hundredweight
instead of 20s. Making large allowance for losses, if the
colonies separated from Great Britain which now consumed
^ A reply by "A Virginian " pointed out that this duty was remitted
when tobacco was re-exported from Great Britain. Dixon & Hunter's
Va. Ga2., Apr. 27, 1776.
5o2 ^^£ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a large proportion of the tobacco, its common price would
still be £3, or 40s. more than the planters received at pres-
ent. Figuring on an average exportation of 110,000 hogs-
heads per year, the gain to Virginia in a state of independ-
ence would be £2,200,000.
In summary, this writer estimated the commercial losses
due to dependence on Great Britain, so far as Virginia
was affected, substantially as follows :
1. On imports, as above i200,ooo currency
2. Merchants' net profits 1,087,500
3. Tobacco planters' gross profits 2,200,000
4. On wheat, flour, hemp, flax, &c., at least
half as much ; but say 1,000,000
5. That part of the gross profits of the mer-
chants that would go to the artisans,
seamen, sail-makers, dealers in cordage,
anchors, etc 1,500,000
Sum total £5,987,500 currency
''' That is, it [independence] will increase the real property
among us annually to near six millions. . . . Here is a
fund sufficient for defraying all the expenses . . . for the
preservation of our liberties against the avarice of a nation
much more powerful than the English, and not a farthing
of our present property touched. . . . If we aim only at
interest in the present contest, it appears plainly what part
we ought at once to resolve upon." ^
•- Turning again to the situation in the commercial prov-
inces, it should be recognized that, when the moment for the
crucial decision came, the choice which every merchant had
to make was not, and could not be, a mere mechanical one,
premised upon strict considerations of an informed class
interest. Like other human beings, his mind was aft'ected
\/ or controlled by the powerful influences of temperament,
1 Va. Gaz., Apr. 13, 1776; also 4 Am. Arch., vol. v, pp. 914-917.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 603
environment and tradition. Furthermore, the degree to
which his wealth was removable was an important factor in
his decision, for his business and the good will of his cus-
tomers were not commodities to be packed up and carried
bodily over into British lines. These facts caused many a
merchant to follow the line of least resistance when inde-
pendence was promulgated.
Henry Laurens of South Carolina has left on record that
he wept when he first heard the Declaration of Independ-
ence read; but he aligned himself with the revolutionists.^
John Ross of Philadelphia, who " loved ease and Madeira
much better than liberty and strife," was one type of a
large group who claimed the right to be neutral.^ The
Quakers, whose membership embraced the principal mer-
chants of Philadelphia, took an official stand against inde-
pendence at a meeting of representatives of Pennsylvania
and New Jersey Quakers on January 20, 1776. They re-
solved that : '' The benefits, advantages and favours we
have experienced by our dependence on, and connection
with, the kings and government . . . appear to demand from
us the greatest circumspection, care and constant endeav-
ours, to guard against every attempt to alter, or subvert
that dependence and connection;" and they urged Friends
to unite firmly " in the abhorrence of all such writings and
^ Wallace, Laurens, pp. 224-225, 2>77-
■■^ Graydon, Memoirs of His Own Times, p. 118. Another interesting
example is Peter Van Schaack, a New York lawyer, who had favored
the Continental Association. In May, 1775, he removed to Kinderhook
where he studied Vattel, Pufendorf, Grotius and other writers in the
hope of finding precedents to support colonial resistance. Having made
up his mind to remain neutral, he declined to sign the defense associa-
tion, and in 1777 refused to take the oath of allegiance to the state of
New York. The following year he was banished and went to England
where he remained until 1785. Then he returned to America and re-
sumed the practice of law. Van Schaack, H. C, Life of Peter Van
Schaack (New York, 1842), pc^sim.
6o4 ^^^ COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
measures as evidence a desire and design to break off the
happy connection we have heretofore enjoyed with the
kingdom of Great-Britain, and our just and necessary sub-
ordination to the king and those who are lawfully placed in
authority under him . . ." ^ They attempted, during the
war for independence, to steer a middle course, although
many of the younger members, in defiance of their elders,
joined heartily in the American cause.^
^ Many merchants, on the other hand, actuated by a
\ broader understanding of class interest, frankly cast their
jvlot with the mother country. In Massachusetts, where the
7 conversion of the merchants to the loyalist side had occurred
earlier than in the other provinces, more than two himdred
members of the trade accompanied the British troops upon
the evacuation of Boston in March, 1775." The elder
Thomas Wharton, a foremost member of the merchant-
aristocracy of Philadelphia and a ''non-importer" of
earlier days, had forsaken extra-legal activities when the
results of the First Continental Congress showed that his
efforts to guide events in approved channels had proven
futile. A year or so later he was exiled to Virginia because
his presence in Philadelphia was deemed dangerous to the
patriot cause in view of the proximity of the British army
after the battle of Brandywine. In South Carolina Miles
Brewton, a wealthy merchant who had been a candidate of
the Charleston Chamber of Commerce for nomination to
the First Continental Congress, departed for England with
most of his movable property when independence was de-
clared, a destination he was not fated to reach. ^
^ Pa. Ledger, Jan. 27, 1776; also Sharpless, Quakers in the Revolution,
pp. 125-128.
' Ibid., pp. 130-137.
' Sabine, L., Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American
Revolution (Boston, 1864), vol. i, p. 25.
* McCrady, 6". C. under Royal Gov't, p. 406.
TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 605
In New York the great leader of the mercantile reform-
ers, Isaac Low, had fought a noble battle against the en-
gulfing tide of radicalism, anddid not begin seriously to
doubt his ability to control events until the bloody occur-
rences in mid- April, 1775. Dismayed for the moment, he
declined membership in the provincial convention of x\pril
20-22 and thus deliberately rendered himself ineligible for
election to the Second Continental Congress. But on sober
second thought he accepted the chairmanship of the new
city committee of One Hundred, and sought to guide the
action of the provincial congress which began its sessions
in May. He would probably have accepted election to the
second provincial congress in November, but the radical
party would have none of him. He welcomed the British
troops w^hen they occupied the city in August, 1 776. When
at a later period Low petitioned the British government for
compensation, it is no wonder that his prominence in the
revolutionary movement was misunderstood and that his
application was not at first favorably received. Many other
New Yorkers had followed the same course as Low. There
had been nineteen men of this stripe on the committee of
Fifty-One, thirteen or fourteen on the committee of Sixty,
and perhaps eighteen on the committee of One Hundred.^
Of the merchants who remained in America after the!
Declaration of Independence, many retained the convictions
that had animated their class throughout the ten years' '
struggle for commercial reform; and they made the most
of a difficult situation by becoming passive spectators or
secret abettors of the British in the struggle. They had the
mournful satisfaction, when the war closed, of finding their
worst fears confirmed in the inefficient government which .
the radicals established and in the enfeebled state of Amer- '.
* Becker, A^. Y. Parties, 1760-1776, pp. 116 n., 168 n., 197-198. Some
of these men served on all three committees, of course.
5o6 'I'HE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
lican commerce and business at home and abroad. In the
I troubled years that followed, the merchants of the country
, regardless of their antecedents drew together in an effort
to found a government which would safeguard the interests
of their class. Thus, once more united, the mercantile inter-
ests became a potent factor in the conservative counter-
revolution that led to the establishment of the United States
Constitution.^
^ Marshall, J., Life of Washington (1850), vol. ii, p. 99; Beard, C. A.,
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States
(New York, 1913), pp. 40-49, 56-57, 149- 151, I75, and passim.
APPENDIX
The Continental Association ^
[The footnotes refer to pages of the Journals of the Continental
Congress on which subsequent aherations of the Association may be
found.]
We, his majesty's most loyal subjects, the delegates of
the several colonies of New-Hainpshire, Massachusetts-Bay,
Rhode-Island, Connecticut, New- York, New-Jersey, Pennsyl-
vania, the three lower counties of New-Castle, Kent, and
Sussex, on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, and
South-Carolina, deputed to represent them in a continental
Congress, held in the city of Philadelphia, on the 5th day of
September, 1774, avowing our allegiance to his majesty, our
affection and regard for our fellow-subjects in Great-Britain
and elsewhere, affected with the deepest anxiety, and most
alarming apprehensions, at those grievances and distresses,
with which his Majesty's American subjects are oppressed;
and having taken under our most serious deliberation, the
state of the whole continent, find, that the present unhappy
situation of our affairs is occasioned by a ruinous system of
colony administration, adopted by the British ministry about
the year 1763, evidently calculated for inslaving these colonies,
and, with them, the British empire. In prosecution of which
system, various acts of parliament have been passed, for rais-
ing a revenue in America, for depriving the American subjects,
in many instances, of the constitutional trial by jury, exposing
their lives to danger, by directing a new and illegal trial beyond
1 The text is taken from the Journals of the Continental Congress
(Library of Congress Edition, Ford, W. C, and Hunt, G., eds.), vol.
i, pp. 75-81.
607
6o8 APPENDIX
the seas, for crimes alleged to have been committed in
America: and in prosecution of the same system, several late,
cruel, and oppressive acts have been passed, respecting the town
of Boston and the Massachusetts-Bay, and also an act for
extending the province of Quebec, so as to border on the
western frontiers of these colonies, establishing an arbitrary
government therein, and discouraging the settlement of British
subjects in that wide extended country ; thus, by the influence
of civil principles and ancient prejudices, to dispose the in-
habitants to act with hostility against the free Protestant
colonies, whenever a wicked ministry shall chuse so to direct
them.
To obtain redress of these grievances, which threaten de-
struction to the lives, liberty, and property of his majesty's
subjects, in North ^'\inerica, we are of opinion, that a non-
importation, non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement
faithfully adhered to, will prove the most speedy, • effectual
and peaceable measures : and, therefore, we do, for ourselves
and the inhabitants of the several colonies whom we represent,
firmly agree and associate, under the sacred ties of virtue
honour and love of our country, as follows :
1. That from and after the first day of December next, we
will not import, into British America, from Great-Britain or
Ireland, any goods, wares, or merchandise whatsoever, or
from any other place, any such goods, wares, or merchandise,
as shall have been exported from Great-Britain or Ireland ; ^
nor will we, after that day, import any East-India tea from
any part of the world ; nor any molasses, syrups, paneles, coffee,
or pimento, from the British plantations or from Dominica;
nor wines from Madeira, or the Western Islands ; nor foreign
indigo.^
2. We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported
after the first day of December next; after which time, we
^ Journals, vol. ii, pp. 238-239, 247,
^ Ibid., vol. iv, pp. 257-259.
APPENDIX
609
will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be con-
cerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our
commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it.
3. As a non-consumption agreement, strictly adhered to, will
be an effectual security for the observation of the non-importa-
tion, we, as above, solemnly agree and associate, that, from
this day, we will not purchase or use any tea, imported on
account of the East-India company, or any on which a duty
hath been or shall be paid; and from and after the first day
of March next, we will not purchase or use any East-India
tea whatever ; ^ nor will we, nor shall any person for or under
us, purchase or use any of those goods, wares, or merchandise,
we have agreed not to import, which we shall know, or have
cause to suspect, were imported after the first day of Decem-
ber, except such as come under the rules and directions of
the tenth article hereafter mentioned.
4. The earnest desire we have, not to injure our fellow-
subjects in Great-Britain, Ireland, or the West-Indies, induces
us to suspend a non-exportation until the tenth day of Septem-
ber, 1775; at which time, if the said acts and parts of acts of
the British parliament herein after mentioned are not repealed,
we will not, directly or indirectly, export any merchandise or
commodity whatsoever to Great-Britain, Ireland, or the West-
Indies, except rice to Europe.-
5. Such as are merchants, and use the British and Irish
trade, will give orders, as soon as possible, to their factors,
agents, and correspondents, in Great-Britain and Ireland, not
to ship any goods to them, on any pretence whatsoever, as they
cannot be received in America; and if any merchant residing
in Great-Britain or Ireland, shall directly or indirectly ship
any goods, wares, or merchandise, for x\merica, in order to
break the said non-importation agreement, or in any manner
contravene the same, on such unworthy conduct being well
1 Journals, vol. iv, pp. 277-278.
"^Ihid., vol. ii, pp. 184-185, 238-239; vol. iii, pp. 308, 314, 2^S, Z2>^, 3^-
364, 389-390. 464-4^5; vol. iv, pp. 257-259.
6io APPENDIX
attested, it ought to be made public; and, on the same being
so done, we will not, from thenceforth, have any commercial
connexion with such merchant.
6. That such as are owners of vessels will give positive or-
ders to their captains, or masters, not to receive on board
their vessels any goods prohibited by the said non-importation
agreement, on pain of immediate dismission from their service.
7. We will use our utmost endeavours to improve the breed
of sheep, and increase their number to the greatest extent;
and to that end, we will kill them as seldom as may be, es-
pecially those of the most profitable kind; nor will we export
any to the West-Indies or elsewhere ; and those of us, who are
or may become overstocked with, or can conveniently spare
any sheep, will dispose of them to our neighbours, especially
to the poorer sort, on moderate terms.
8. We will, in our several stations, encourage frugality,
economy, and industry, and promote agriculture, arts, and the
manufactures of this country, especially that of wool; and
will discountenance and discourage every species of extra-
vagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all
kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shews, plays,
and other expensive diversions and entertainments ; and on the
death of any relation or friend, none of us, or any of our
families, will go into any further mourning-dress, than a black
crape or ribbon on the arm or hat, for gentlemen, and a black
ribbon and necklace for ladies, and we will discontinue the
giving of scarves at funerals.^
9. Such as are venders of goods or merchandise will not
take advantage of the scarcity of goods, that may be occasioned
by this association, but will sell the same at the rates we have
been respectively accustomed to do, for twelve months last
past. — And if any vender of goods or merchandise shall sell
any such goods on higher terms, or shall, in any manner, or by
any device whatsoever violate or depart from this agreement,
no person ought, nor will any of us deal with any such person,
1 Journals, vol. iv, p. 224.
APPENDIX (5: I
or his or her factor or agent, at any time thereafter, for any
commodity whatever.^
10. In case any merchant, trader, or other person, shall
import any goods or merchandise, after the first day of
December, and before the first day of February next, the
same ought forthwith, at the election of the owner, to be
either re-shipped or delivered up to the committee of the county
or town, wherein they shall be imported, to be stored at the
risque of the importer, until the non-importation agreement
shall cease, or be sold under the direction of the committee
aforesaid ; and in the last-mentioned case, the owner or owners
of such goods shall be reimbursed out of the sales, the first
cost and charges, the profit, if any, to be applied towards
relieving and employing such poor inhabitants of the town of
Boston as are immediate sufferers by the Boston port-bill;
and a particular account of all goods so returned, stored, or
sold, to be inserted in the public papers; and if any goods
or merchandises shall be imported after the said first day
of February, the same ought forthwith to be sent back again,
without breaking any of the packages thereof.
11. That a committee be chosen in every county, city, and
town, by those who are qualified to vote for representatives
in the legislature, whose business it shall be attentively to
observe the conduct of all persons touching this association;
and when it shall be made to appear, to the satisfaction of a
majority of any such committee, that any person within the
limits of their appointment has violated this association, that
such majority do forthwith cause the truth of the case to be
published in the gazette ; to the end, that all such foes to the
rights of British-America may be publicly known, and uni-
versally contemned as the enemies of American liberty; and
thenceforth v/e respectively will break off all dealings with
him or her.^
1 Journals, vol. iv, pp. 320, 404,
^ Ibid., vol. ii, p. (>7.
5i2 APPENDIX
12. That the committee of correspondence, in the respective
colonies, do frequently inspect the entries of their custom-
houses, and inform each other, from time to time, of the
true state thereof, and of every other material circumstance
that may occur relative to this association.
13. That all manufactures of this country be sold at reason-
able prices, so that no undue advantage be taken of a future
scarcity of goods.
14. And we do further agree and resolve, that we will have
no trade, commerce, dealings, or intercourse whatsoever, with
any colony or province, in North-America, which shall not
accede to, or which shall hereafter violate this association, but
will hold them as unworthy of the rights of freemen, and as
inimical to the liberties of their country.
And we do solemnly bind ourselves and our constituents,
under the ties aforesaid, to adhere to this association, until
such parts of the several acts of parliament passed since the
close of the last war, as impose or continue duties on tea,
wine, molasses, syrups, paneles, coffee, sugar, pimento, indigo,
foreign paper, glass, and painters' colours, imported into
America, and extend the powers of the admiralty courts beyond
their ancient limits, deprive the American subjects of trial
by j'^^^0% authorize the judge's certificate to indemnify the
prosecutor from damages, that he might otherwise be liable
to from a trial by his peers, require oppressive security from
a claimant of ships or goods seized, before he shall be allowed
to defend his property, are repealed. — And until that part of
the Act of the 12 G. 3. ch. 24, entitled "A-U act for the better
securing his majesty's dock-yards, magazines, ships, ammuni-
tion, and stores," by which any persons charged with com-
mitting any of the offences therein described, in America,
may be tried in any shire or county v/ithin the realm, is re-
pealed— and until the four acts passed in the last session of
parliament, viz. that for stopping the port and blocking up the
harbour of Boston — that for altering the charter and govern-
ment of the Massachusetts-Bay — and that which is entitled
"An act for the better administration of justice, &c." — and
APPENDIX
613
that " for extending the limits of Quebec, &c." are repealed.^
And we recommend it to the provincial conventions, and to
the committees in the respective colonies, to establish such
farther regulations as they make think proper, for carrying
into execution this association.
The foregoing association being determined upon by the
Congress, was ordered to be subscribed by the several mem-
bers thereof; and thereupon, we have hereunto set our respec-
tive names accordingly.
In Congress, Philadelphia, October 20, 1774.
^ Journals, vol. ii, p. 125.
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C. NEV/SPAPERS AND PERIODICALS, 1 763- 1 776
The Annual Register, i'/63-iyj6. London, 1764-1777.
Connecticut. The Connecticut Courant, 1764-1774. Title varies: The
Connecticut Courant and Hartford Weekly Intelligencer, 1774-
1776. Published at Hartford.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 62 1
. The Connectkut Gazette, lyGyiyGy. Published at New Haven.
. The Connecticut Journal and New-Haven Post-Boy, 1767-1775.
Title varies: The Connecticut Journal, 1775-1776. Published at
New Haven.
. The New-London Gazette, 1764-1773. Title varies: Connecticut
Gazette and the Universal Intelligencer, 1774- 1776. Published at
New London.
. Norwich Packet, and the Connecticut, Massachusetts, New-
Hampshire, and Rhode-Island Weekly Advertiser, ^TJZ-^T]^- Pub-
lished at Norwich.
Georgia. The Georgia Gazette, 1763-1770, 1774-1775. Published at
Savannah.
Maryland. Dunlap's Maryland Gazette; or the Baltimore General Ad-
vertiser, 1 775- 1 776. Published at Baltimore.
. The Maryland Gazette, 1763-1776. Published at Annapolis.
. The Maryland Journal, and the Baltimore Advertiser, 177Z-
1776. Pubhshed at Baltimore.
Massachusetts. The Boston Chronicle, 1767- 1770. Published at Boston.
. The Boston Evening Post, 1763-1775. Pubhshed at Boston.
. The Boston Gazette, and Country Journal, 1763-1776. Published
at Boston 1763-1775 and at Watertown and Boston i77S-'^77^-
. The Boston News-Letter, 1763. Title varies: The Massachusetts
Gazette and Boston News-Letter, 1763-1765; The Massachusetts
Gazette, 1765-1766; The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-
Letter, 1766-1768; The Boston Weekly News-Letter, 1768-1769;
The Massachusetts Gazette: and the Boston Weekly News-Letter,
1769-1776. Pubhshed at Boston.
. The Boston Post-Boy & Advertiser. Title varies: Green &
Russell's Boston Post-Boy & Advertiser, 1763; The Boston Post-
Boy & Advertiser, 1763-1769; The Massachusetts Gazette, and the
Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, 1769-177$. Pubhshed at Boston.
. The Continental Journal, and Weekly Advertiser, 1776. Pub-
lished at Boston.
. The Essex Gazette, 1768-1775. Title varies: The New-England
Chronicle, or the Essex Gazette, 177S-1776; The New-England
Chronicle, 1776. Pubhshed at Salem 1768- 1775 and at Cambridge
and Boston 177S-1776.
. The Essex Journal and Merrimack Packet: Or the Massachusetts
and New-Hampshire General Advertiser, i77Z-i77S- Title varies:
The Essex Journal or the Massachusetts and New-Hampshire Gen-
eral Advertiser, 177$', The Essex Journal or New-Hampshire
Packet, i77S-'^776; The Essex Journal or the New-Hampshire
Packet, and the Weekly Advertiser, 1776; The Essex Journal, 1776.
Published at Newburyport.
622 BIBLIOGRAPHY
. The Salem Gazette, and Newbury and Marhlehead Advertiser,.
ly 7 4-177$. Published at Salem.
. The Massachusetts Gazette, i7(^-i76g. Published at Boston.
. The Massachusetts Spy, 1770-1772. Title varies: The Massa-
chusetts Spy Or, Thomas's Boston Journal, 1772-177$; Thomas's
Massachusetts Spy, or American Oracle of Liberty, 177S-1776.
Published at Boston 17/0-1775 and at Worcester 1775-1776.
New Hampshire. The X ew-Hampshire Gazette and Historical
Chronicle, 1763-1775. Title varies : Freeman's Journal, or New-
Hampshire Gazette, 1776. Published at Portsmouth.
New York. The Albany Gazette, 1771-1772. Published at Albany.
. The Constitutional Gazette, 1776. Published at New York.
. The New York Chronicle, 1769. Published at New York.
. The New York Gazette, or. The Weekly Post Boy, 1763-1773,
Published at New York.
. The New York Journal, or the General Advertiser, 1766-1776.
PubHshed at New York 1766-1776 and at Kingston 1776.
. The New York Mercury, 1763-1768. Title varies: The New
York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, 1768-1776. Published at
New York 1763-1776 and at Newark and New York 1776.
. Rivington's New York Gazetteer; or the Connecticut, New
Jersey, Hudson's River, and Quebec Weekly Advertiser, 1773-177$.
Published at New York.
. Weyman's New York Gazette, 1763-1767. Published at New
York.
Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Chronicle, and Universal Advertiser,
1767-1774. Published at Philadelphia.
. The Pennsylvania Evening Post, 177$-1776. Published at
Philadelphia.
. The Pennsylvania Gazette, 1763-1776. Pubhshed at Philadelphia.
. The Pennsylvania Journal; and the Weekly Advertiser, 1763-
1776. Published at Philadelphia.
. The Pennsylvania Ledger: Or the Virginia, Maryland, Penn-
sylvania and New Jersey Weekly Advertiser, 1775-1776. Pub-
lished at Philadelphia.
. The Pennsylvania Packet, and the General Advertiser, 1771-
1773. Title varies: Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet, or, the General
Advertiser, 1773-1776. Published at Philadelphia.
. Story & Humphreys's Pennsylvania Mercury and Universal
Advertiser, 1775. Published at Philadelphia.
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lished at Philadelphia.
Rhode Island. The Nezvport Mercury, or the Weekly Advertiser^
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
623
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Virginia. The Virginia Gazette, iyys-^77^- Published at Williams-
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. The Virginia Gazette, 1766-1776. Published at Williamsburg by-
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624
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INDEX
Acts of trade. Vide: British colo-
nial policy.
Adams, Abigail, on high cost of
living, 589. 590.
Adams, John, on molasses as an in-
gredient of independence, 59;
affairs of, interrupted by Stamp
Act, 70-71 ; at meeting of Sons
of Liberty, 72; grows tired of
fighting for people's rights, 241,
254; hopes he drank smuggled
tea, 244; journey of, to Phila-
delphia, 405-407; on diversity of
interests in First Continental
Congress, 409, 411; notes of, on
First Continental Congress, 415;
part played by, in First Conti-
nental Congress, 416, 429 n. ;
favors opening of trade i)y Sec-
ond Continental Congress, 57S-
579.
Adams, Samuel, on execution of
non-importation (1769-1770), 183;
warns against dependence on
merchants, 254, 345 n. ; tries to
keep opposition alive, 254-257;
secures establishment of Boston
Committee of Correspondence,
257-258; writes report of Boston
Committee of Correspondence,
258-259; defect of plan of, 260-
261 ; urges local committees in all
provinces, 261 ; directs anti-tea
riots in Boston, 283-289, 555 ;
fails to persuade Boston m,er-
chants to adopt non-importation,
318; is present at town meeting
to unseat the committee of cor-
respondence, 321-322; says he
favors an interproyincial con-
gress, 394; leads radicals in First
Continental Congress, 411; mem-
ber of the Sixty-Three at Bos-
ton, 441 ; favors opening of trade
by Second Continental Congress,
578, 580-581.
Albany, merchants of, adopt non-
importation (1765), 78; mer-
chants of, adopt non-importation
(1769), 125; merchants of, rescind
and renew agreement (1770), 215;
merchants of, rebuke New York
for abandoning agreement, 227;
committee of, protests against
rice exemption, 439.
Andrews, John, reaction of, to
pubHc events, 434 n.
AnnapoHs. non-importation agree-
ment of inhabitants of (1769),
138; difficulties in, over price of
tea, 211-212; mass meeting at,
adopts non-intercourse resolu-
tions (1774), 360-361; affair of
Peggy Stewart at, 389-392; en-
forcement of non-importation in,
505..
Association. Vide: Continental As-
sociation ; defense associations ;
loyalist association ; non-consump-
tion ; non-exportation; non-im-
portation ; Solemn League and
Covenant; Sons of Liberty.
Baltimore, merchants of, adopt non-
importation (1769), 138; good
faith of, suspected by Philadel-
phia committee, 199-200; mer-
chants of, abandon agreement,
-33-234; merchants of, limit
agreement to dutied articles, 234;
enforcement of non-importation
(1775) in, 505-506; committee of,
regulates price of salt, 585.
Boston, important as trading cen-
ter, 25, 27, 314; merchants of,
oppose land bank, 29; merchants
of, complain regarding naval
stores, 31 ; identity of interests
of, with leading northern ports,
32; merchants of, employ Otis in
writs' case, 47; bankruptcies in,
57; organization of merchants
(T^y^o) in, 59-60; non-consump-
631
632
INDEX
tion agreement in, 63, 64, 76;
domestic manufacturing in, 65 ;
Stamp Act riots in, 71-72 ; non-
importation agreement at, 78, 80;
petition of merchants of, (1767),
87-88; Customis Board breaks
power of smugglers in, ^, 102-
104; punishment of informer in,
100; adopts non-consumption,
107-109; domestic manufacturing
in, (1767-1770), 109-110, 121, 122-
124; conditional non-importation
agreement of merchants of,
(1768), 114-115; non-importation
agreements of merchants of,
(1768-1770), 120-121 ; non-con-
sumption of tea in, 121-122;
merchants of, seek to extend
agreement, 131-133; merchants
of, publish Obserz'afions, 133-
134; enforcement of non-impor-
tafion in, (1769-1770), 156-183,
217; Massacre, 179-181 ; com-
plaints of high prices at, 212 ;
miCrchants of, boycott Rhode
Island and Portsmouth, 215-216 ;
merchants of, oppose rescinding
of agreement, 219, 221, 227; mer-
chants of, rescind agreement
(1770J. 232-233; merchants of,
limit non-importation to dutied
articles, 233 ; importation of dutied
tea at, 246, 264-265, 282 n., 299;
conservative state of pubHc opin-
ion in, 254-255; establishment of
committee of correspondence at,
255-259, 260-261 ; arguments used
in, to arouse opposition to ship-
ments of East India Company.
265-277; opposition to tea ship-
ments in, 264-265, 281-290; Tea
Part5% 287-288; adoption of tea
non-consumption at, 300-301 ; pas-
sage of act for closing port of,
305 ; movement for non-inter-
course in, 311-323; adopts cir-
cular letter (]\Iay 13. 1774), 313;
problem^ of unemplo\'ment in, 314-
315 ; merchants of. adopt condi-
tional non-importation agreement,
315-316, 318; committee of cor-
respondence of, launches Solemn
League and Covenant, 319-320;
m.erchants of. oppose Solemn
League, 320-321, 322-323; efforts
to unseat committee of corres-
pondence of, 321-322; working-
men of, boycott Gage. 386-388;
appoints Committee of Sixty-
Three, 441 ; enforcement of non-
consumption in, 481-482; commit-
tee of, endorses use of certifi-
cates in coast trade, 534; high
prices in, 590; merchants of, de-
part with troops, 604.
Boston Massacre, preliminaries to,
179-180; occurrence of, 180-181 ;
effect of, on non-importation
movement in New England, 155,
T81-182, 185-186, 194.
Boston Port Act, passage of, 305;
presents a new issue to colonists,
306-307 ; crystallizes colonial
opinion, 30S-311, 359-360; indus-
trial conditions in Boston as re-
sult of, 314-315; reception of, in
separate colonies : Massachusetts.
311-325; Rhode Island, 325-326,
327; Connecticut, 326, 327; New
Hampshire, 325, 327; New York,
327-341; Pennsylvania, 341-35^;
New Jersey, 356-357; Delaware,
357-358; Maryland, 360-362; Vir-
ginia, 362-370; North Carolina,
370-373; South Carolina, 373-379;
Georgia, 379-386.
Boston Tea Party, preliminaries to,
281-287; occurrence of, 287-288;
participants in, 288-290; approved
by Philadelphia m^eeting, 291 ;
effect of, on New^ Yorkers, 292 ;
fails to arouse colonists gener-
ally, 298-304; second, 302 n. ; offi-
cial utterances of First Conti-
nental Congress concerning. 430-
431.
Boycott. J'^ide: Continental Asso-
ciation ; loyalist association ; non-
consumption ; non-exportation ;
non-importation ; Solemn League
and Covenant.
British colonial policy, contrast in
application of, in insular and con-
tinental colonies, 15 ; navigation
act (1660) and effects, 16; regu-
lation of colonial imports and
eft'ects. 16-17, 19; regulation of
colonial exports and effects, 17-
19; molasses act (i733), 19; reg-
ulation of manufactures and
INDEX
633
. effects, 19-21 ; act for collection
of debts (173-), 21, 36; prohibi-
tion of legal tender issues in New-
England (1751), 21-22; absence
of colonial dissatisfaction with,
prior to 1760, 22; measures
against smuggling during Fourth
Intercolonial War, 45-48; Gren-
ville acts (1764), 50-54; colonial
opposition to Grenville acts, 54-
65; Stamp Act (1765), 62-63, 65-
66; incidence of Stamp Act, 66-
71 ; colonial opposition to Stamp
Act, 71-82; modification of Gren-
ville acts (1766), 82-84; recep-
tion of modifications in America,
84-90; Townshend acts (1767),
93-95 ; partial repeal of Town-
shend acts ( 1770), _ 212-213, 239;
reception of partial repeal in
America, 213-236, 240, 2/^4-250;
currency act to relieve New York
(1770), 224; currency act (i773),
243-244; tea legislation (1767-
1773), 249-251, 262-263, 270, 272;
provision for paying Massachu-
setts judges (1772), 255; appoint-
ment of royal commission to in-
vestigate Gaspce affair, 253, 261 ;
reception of tea act of 1773 in
America, 264-298; coercive acts
(1774). 305-306; effect of coer-
cive acts on colonial opinion, 305-
311; colonial opposition to coer-
cive acts, 311-536; New England
Restraining Act (i775), 538;
General Restraining Act (1775),
539; Prohibitory Act (i775), 540,
573, 579. .
Brown, V/illiam and John, mer-
chants of Norfolk, violate non-
importation (1770), 199; violate
non-importation (i775), 5ii, 5I5.
Charleston, important as trading
centre, 34; attitude of people of,
toward Stamp Act, 73-74; non-
importation in, (1765), 82; non-
importation movement in, (1769-
1770), 140-146, 202-208; ^ mass
meeting in, boycotts Georgia and
New York, 209, 229 n. ; mass
m^eeting in, abandons non-impor-
tation, 235-236; importation of
dutied tea at. 245, 246, 295 ; argu-
ments used to arouse opposition
to shipments of East India Com-
pany, 265 ; opposition to tea ship- .
ments, 295-298; formation of
Chamber of Commicrce of, 296-
297; activity of Cham.ber of Com-
merce of, in pubhc affairs, 375,
377 ; non-intercourse movement
in, (1774), 374-379; appointment
of General Committee, 378; en-
forcement of non-importation in,
525-527,529; enforcement of non-
exportation in, 574.
Coercive acts. Vide: Boston Port
Act; British colonial policy.
Colden, Cadwallader, lieutenant
governor of New York, on trade
conditions, 46, 49; on attitude of
merchants in 1764, 60; on New
York lawyers, 69; on attitude of
micrchants in 1767, 92; on move-
ment to abandon non-importation,
223; on distaste of men of prop-
erty for riots, 240, 328-329; on
smuggling, 247, 248, 248-249; on
political apathy of rural New
York, 332, 340; believes majority
against non-importation, 339 n.;
on attitude of merchants toward
Continental Association, 448 ;_ on
election of Sixty, 449; on intimi-
dation, 454 n. ; on execution of
non-importation, 493 ; on news of
Lexington fight, 544; and defense
association, 545.
Commerce. Vide: British colonial
policy ; commercial^ provinces ;
Continental Association; factors;
Great Britain ; merchants ; non-
exportation ; non-importation ;
plantation provinces; smuggling;
colonies by namiC.
Commercial provinces, definition of
term. 22-23; economy of, 23-27;
dominance of merchants in, 27-
28; methods of m.erchants in, 28-
29; prevalence of smuggling in,
40-49 ; aft'ected by Grenville acts,
54-55 ; opposition in, to Grenville
acts, 5S-6i ; affected by Stamp
Act, 66; opposition in, to Stamp
Act, 71-73 ; stages of non-impor-
tation movement in, (1767-1770),
105-106; reasons for growing dis-
content with non-importation
(1769-1770). 209-214; eft'ect of
634
IXDEX
coercive acts upon merchants of,
306-311, 359; combination of
workingmen of, against Gage,
386-388; instructions in, concern-
ing non-intercourse, 398; efforts
to regulate prices in, 585-589.
Committees of correspondence, sys-
tem of, origin of, in Massachu-
setts towns (177^), 255-261; ap-
pointment of Virginia legislative
committee (i773) and extension
of plan elsewhere, 261-262; estab-
lishment of local committees
in Rhode Island, 304; legislated
against by Parliament, 306 ; estab-
lishment of local committees in
Connecticut, 326; in Xew York.
33^-332; in Pennsylvania. 347; in
New Jersey, 357; in Maryland,
361. Vide also: colonies and
towns by name.
Connecticut, trade of, 26; non-con-
sumption movem.ent in, (1767-
1768), 112; non-importation move-
ment in, _ (1769- I 770), 150-152,
196; meetings in, boycott New
York, 228-229; Assembly disap- :
proves of Solemn League and :
Covenant, 325; to^^ms of, endorse |
Boston circular letter. 326; com- ;
mittee of correspondence elects :
delegates to First ^ Continental j
Congress, 327: ratification of i
Continental Association and estab- j
lishment of committees in, 444- i
447; vv^orkings of Continental I
Association in, 486-488; adoption \
of defense association in, 542 ; ,
Assembly lays embargo, 559-5^0; ;
resolutions in, against exporta- !
tion of flaxseed, 571-572; regula-
tion of prices in, 486-487, 588.
Continental Association, similarity
of, to Virginia Association, 368-
370, 424; evolution of, in First ;
Continental Congress, 412-421 ; ;
passage of, 421-423 ; analysis of.
423-429; greeted by siorm of;
nrotest, 435-439 ; ratification of,
and estabhshment of committees
in separate provinces : Massa-
chusetts, 440-442; New Hamp-
shire, 442-444; Rhode Island,
444: Connecticut, 444-447; New
York, 447-455; New Jersey, 455;
Pennsylvania, 456-460; Delaware,
460; Maryland, 461; Virginia,
461-462; North Carolina. 462-
464; South Carolina, 464-469;
failure of Georgia to accept, 469-
472 ; vast importations in antici-
pation of, 473-475; change in
character of, with outbreak of
war, 475-476, 541 ; generalizations
as to operation of, 476; workings
of, in separate colonies : Massa-
chusetts, 476-483; New Hamp-
shire, 483-485; Rliode Island,
485-4S6; Connecticut, 486-488;
New York, 489-493; New Jersey,
493-495; Pennsylvania, 495-502;
Delaware. 502-503 ; Maryland,
504-509; Virginia, 509-519; North
Carolina, 519-525: South Caro-
hna, 525-529; boycott of Georgia
under, 529-530,^ 531-533 ; boycott
of Quebec, Nova Scotia, the
Floridas etc., under, 530-533;
regulation of coast trade under,
534; decline of im.portation re-
sulting from, 035-536; effect of,
on Great Britain, 536-540; largely
superseded by defense associa-
tions, 543, 546; ratification and
enforcement of, in Georgia, 548.
549. 550-552; change in functions
of committees of, 552-559, 5^3-
564; amended by Second Conti-
nental Congress, 565-56S; advent
of non-exportation regulation of.
and its enforcement, 570-575 ;
text of, 607-613.
Continental Congress. Vide: First
Continental Congress ; Second
Continental Congress.
Debts, act of Parliament for col-
lection of, (1732), 21, 36; of plan-
ters to merchants, 36, 135 ; legis-
lation of Virginia relative to, 3y-
38; of planters, a source of Whig-
ism, 39, 359-360; movement in
South for restrictions on. 359-
360, 360-361, 366, 371; press dis-
cussion as to desirability of with-
holding payment of, 404-405 ; ex-
istence of, influences enforcement
of Continental Association in
plantation provinces, 504; factors
in Virginia press for pa3'ment of,
511; restrictions on collection of.
INDEX
635
in separate colonies: 'Maryland,
504-505; Virginia, 512; North
Carolina, 522-523 ; South Caro-
lina, 468, 528-529; Georgia, 549.
Declaratory Act (1766), 83.
Defense associations, adoption of,
542-546; in Georgia, 54^547, 55a
551 ; action of Newbern commit-
tee respecting, 559; resolution of
Second Continental Congress re-
specting, 564; Van Schaack re-
fuses to sign, 603 n.
Delaware, non-importation move-
ment in, (1769-1770), 149-150,
196 ; convention elects delegates to
First Continental Congress, 357-
358; ratification of Continental
Association and establishrnent of
committees in, 460; workings of
Continental Association in, 502-
503; enforcement of non-expor-
tation in, 574.
Dick, James, and Stewart, Anthony,
merchants of Annapolis, own
goods imported in Good Intent,
200-201 ; involved as principals in |
Peggy Stewart affair, 389-392;
accede to non-importation, 505.
Dickinson, John, author of Late
Regulations, 54-55, 6y; denounces
mob violence. 96; author of Far-
mer's Letters, 114; makes speech
for non-importation, 118; im-
pugns motives of Philadelphia
merchants, 1 19-120; opposes ship-
ments of East India Company,
269 n,, 275-276; explains meaning
of tea act, 272 ; is induced to re-
enter pubhc affairs, 341-344: dis-
approves of Boston Tea Party,
342; is chosen chairman of Fort}'-
Three, 346, 347; is antagonist of
Gallowa}'-, 348; takes part in
Pennsylvania convention (1774),
352, 354; is chosen member of
First Continental Congress, 355-
356, 408 n. ; favors holding inter-
provincial congress. 394; is chosen
member of Sixty-Six, 458.
Drayton, William Henry, character-
ization of, 202; engages in con-
troversy with Gadsden. 202-205 5
leaves America as result of boy-
cott, 203, 206; joins radical party
after coercive acts, 310; favors
compensation plan in South Caro-
lina congress, 468; comments on
South Carolina congress, 469; op-
poses landing of horses, 527.
Dulany, Daniel, author of Consid-
erations, 68-69; repelled by Stamp
Act riots, 92.
East India Company, efforts of, to
escape bankruptcy, 250 ; acts of
Parhament concerning tea, (1767-
1773), 249-251, 262-263; becomes
exporter of tea, 263-264; union
of_ northern merchants against
shipments of, 264-265 ; arguments
used to arouse colonial opposi-
tion to, 265-277; nature of busi-
ness of, 268-269; seeks to destroy
china manufactory at Philadel-
phia, 280 ; opposition to shipmicnts
of, in Philadelphia, 279-281, 290-
291; in Boston, 281-290; in New
York, 291-294; in Charleston,
295-298; beneficiary of Boston
Port Act, 305; efforts of colo-
nists to secure compensation for,
312, 316, 317-318, 344, 353, 357,
394. 398, 407; resolutions in Vir-
ginia against, 363, 366. Vide also :
tea.
Factors, activities of, in plantation
provinces, 35-36; attitude of plan-
ters toward, 3^-39, I35 ; opposed
to mob outrages, 74-75 ; not in-
clined to S3^mpathize with distress
of northern merchants, 591-592;
profi-ts of, an argument for inde-
pendence, 600-602. Vide also :
southern provinces by name.
Fairfield County, Conn., contest of
certain towns of, against ratifica-
tion of Continental Association,
445-447; execution of Continental
Association in, 488.
First Continental Congress, pro-
posals for a, 326, 393-396; elec-
tion of delegates to, 327, 340-341,
354-355, 357, 358, 362, 368, 372,
377-379, 396; instructions of dele-
gates to, 339-340, 351-355, 357,
362, 369-370, 372, Z77, 396-400;
sources of support for holding,
393-395, 406-407 n. ; factors de-
termining policy of, 396: news-
paper discussion of issues con-
fronting, 400-405; journey of
6s6
INDEX
Massachusetts delegates to, 405-
407; characterization of member-
ship of, 407-410; proceedings of,
410-431 ; oiiicial utierances of, as
to tea troubles, 274, 430-431; sig-
miicance of radical victory in,
432-435.
Franklin, Benjamin, on incidence
of Stamp Act, 68, 69-70; on rea-
sons for colonial opposition, 83 ;
pleased with remedial legislation
of 1766, 85; urges continuance of
non-im.portation (1770), 220; com-
ments on reluctance of British
merchants to petition Parliament,
238; disapproves of Boston Tea
Party, 299-300; changes mind as
to Tea Party, 309-310; gives ad-
vice as to non-exportation, 422 n. ;
books of, are permitted to land,
566; talces part in Second Conti-
nental Congress, 576 n., 583.
Franklin, William, governor of
Xev/ Jersey, on trade conditions,
49; reports ^ erection of slitting
mill, 243; views of, on an inter-
provincial congress, 393, 394-395;
on efficacy of Continental Asso-
ciation, 494.
Gadsden, Christopher, opposes
Stamp Act, 75, 76; leads non-im-
portation forces (1769-1770), 140,
142, 143, 145; has controversy
with Drayton, 202-206; circulates
agreement for tea non-importa-
tion, 296; leads movement for
non-intercourse (1774), 373; eco-
nomic interests of, ^73 n. ; is
chosen delegate to i:^irst Conti-
nental Congress, 377, 378; takes
part in First Continental Con-
gress, 414, 417; seeks to have rice
exemption repudiated, 464, 467,
468; .opposes landing of horses,
527; takes part in Second Conti-
nental Congress, 569, 578.
Galloway, Joseph, repelled by Stamp
Act violence. 92-93 ; writes against
non-importation, 116-117; on sig-
nificance of tea act (1773), 263-
264 ; viev/s of, prior to First Con-
tinental Congress, 347-349; takes
part in election of delegates to
Congress, 349-350, 354-356; ap-
proves of interprovincial con-
! gress, 393-394; leads minority in
First Continental Congress, 410-
415, 422-423 ; characterizes Sam-
uel Adams, 411; withdraws from
extra-legal activities, 433, 456;
seeks to win over Assembly
against measures of Continental
Congress, 459-460.
Gaspee, burning of, 252-253; stirs
Virginia to action, 261.
Georgia, economxy of, 33-34; atti-
tude of merchants of, toward
Stamp Act, 75; boycotted by
Charleston, 82; non-importation
movement in, (1769-1770), 147-
148, 209; non-intercourse move-
ment in, (1774), 379-386; reasons
for dependence of, on Great Brit-
ain, 379-380; conventions (1774),
381-384; failure of, to ratify Con-
tinental Association, 469-472 ; pro-
vincial congresses (1775), 470-
472, 548-550; boycott of, 529-530,
531-533; increase of imports into,
(1774-1775), 536; accedes to Con-
tinental Association, 546-551; re-
strictions on collection of debts,
549; establishment of committees
and enforcement of Continental
Association in, 550-552; enforce-
ment of non-exportation regula-
tion in, 574.
Good Intent, enforcement of non-
importation in case of, 200-201.
Great Britain, effect of non-impor-
tation upon, (1765-1766), 82-83;
effect of non-importation upon,
(1769-1770), 236-239; effect of
Continental Association upon,
536-540. Vide also : British colo-
nial policy.
Grenville acts, analysis of, 50-54;
colonial opinion of. 54-56; eco-
nomic effects of and colonial op-
position to, 56-65 ; Stamp Act, 62-
63, 65-66; classes affected by
Stamp xA.ct, 66-71 ; colonial oppo-
sition to Stamp Act, 71-82 ; modi-
fications of, (1766), 82-84; recep-
tion of modifications in colonies,
84-90.
Hancock, John, on trade conditions.-
57, 66-67; on repeal of Stamp
Act, 86; and the Liberty, 103-104;
orders dutied glass, 106; visits
INDEX
637
Dickinson, 132; vessels of, carry
goods debarred by agreement 166,
167-169; entertains friends with
tea, 244; permits dutied tea to be
carried in his ships, 246; cools
toward Samuel Adams, 254-255;
declines mxcmbership in commit-
tee of correspondence, 257; part
of, in tea troubles in Boston, 284,
289, 555 ; member of Sixty-Three,
441.
Henry, Patrick, and Parsons' Case,
38; favors non-importation in
Virginia (1769), 136; influential
in House of Burgesses, z^Z \ takes
part in First Continental Con-
gress, 414.
Hopkins, Stephen, author of Rights
of Colonies, 54; opposes powers
of Gaspee commission, 253.
Hutchinson, Thomas, on Stamp Act
riots, 71, 72 n. ; alienated from
merchants, 92 ; on merchants and
non-importation, 121, 163, 172, 173,
182; relatives of, violate non-
importation, 159, 164; rebukes
m.ob, 176; seeks to stop merchants'
meeting, 177; on tea smuggling,
179, 247; promotes an association
against non-importation, 181 ; on
popular excesses, 181 ; on obser-
vation of non - importation in
.Rhode Island, 195 ; on tea prices
in England, 250; seeks to con-
ciliate Hancock, 255 ; on compo-
sition of town meetings, 256; has
dispute with town meeting over
judges' salaries, 257; expresses
opinion of committee of corres-
pondence, 258, 259, 260; on oppo-
sition of tea traders to act of
1773, 264-265 ; has interest in
sons' tea business, 2S2 ; conduct
of, during tea riots in Boston,
281-289 ; on public indifference to
loss of East India Company, 289-
290; address to, upon departure
from Boston, 316-317.
Illicit commerce. Vide: smuggling.
Independence, New York commit-
tee suppresses false report of,
557; opening of trade with world
as a step toward. 577, 5/8, 580-
581 ; passage of Prohibitory Act
as incentive to, 580 ; Paine's Com-
\ mon Sense on, 593; criticized as
visioparv. 594; statement of eco-
j nomic advantages of, requested,
' 595-598; economic advantages of,
j depicted, 598-602; course adopted
I by merchants upon declaration
j of, 602-606.
; Jefferson, Thomas, on economic
j bondage of planters, Z^\ orders
I goods debarred by agreement, 236,
Laurens, Henry, disapproves of
Stamp Act, 74; aroused by vice-
admiralty regulations, 102 ; pre-
sides at meeting to consider
abandonment of non-importation
(1770), 235; weeps on hearing of
Declaration of Independence, 603.
Lee, Richard Henry, favors imme-
diate resolutions in behalf of
Boston, 362; disapproves of meas-
ures adopted by House of Bur-
gesses, 364; takes part in First
Continental Congress, 414, 419,
424 n. ; takes part in Second Con-
tinental Congress, 569, 576 n., 578,
582-583.
Low, Isaac, merchant of New York,
characterization of, 186; works
for abandonment of non-importa-
tion (1770), 225; discourages use
of violence against tea shipments,
293 ; chairman_ of Fifty-One, 329,
330; takes active part in election
of delegates to First Continental
Congress, 334, Z2>7, 340 ; takes
part in First Continental Con-
gress, 416, 419, 420; decided to
continue on committees for the
time, 433-434, 448; chairman of
Sixty, 449; becomes loyaHst, 605.
Loyalist association, in Massachu-
setts, 477-478; in New Hamp-
shire, 484; in New York, 493.
McDougall, Alexander, of New
York, heads public meeting favor-
able to non-importation (1770),
226; takes part in anti-tea agita-
tion, 292 ; promises New York
support to Boston, 327-32S; as re-
garded by moderates, 328; mem-
ber of Fifty-One, 329; part played
by, in election of delegates to
First Continental Congress, ZZZ-
ZZ^', cautions Massachusetts dele-
gates, 406-407; member of Sixty,
6.^,8
INDEX
450; favors relaxing of tea non-
consumption, 582,
Macknight, Thomas, of Currituck
County, N. C, circumstances sur-
rounding boycott of, 523-524.
Madison. James, leads Princeton
demonstration to protest against
New York's defection (1770),
227; analyzes opposition to pop-
ular measures in Virginia, 364.
Manufactures, superiority of Brit-
ish, 16; restraints on colonial, and
effects, 19-21 ; movement for do-
mestic, (1764-1766), 64-65, 77; de-
cline of, 86; movement for do-
m.estic, (1767- 1770), 107, 109-111,
121, 122-124, 130- 131, 146, 148,
151-152, 243; attempt of East
India Company to suppress, of
chinavi^are in Philadelphia, 280;
provisions for promotion of, in
Continental Association, 427, 612 ;
movement for domestic, (1774-
1776), 482-483, 484. 486, 487, 492,
495, 500-502, 517-518, 524, 528, 553-
554: provisions for promotion of,
by Second Continental Congress,
564.
Alarblehead, merchants of, appoint
com.mittee, 60 ; non-importation
in, (1765-1766), 80; non-importa-
tion in, (1768-1770), 121, 184-185;
appoints committees of corres-
pondence (1772), 260; endorses
Boston circular letter (1774),
314; appoints committee of ob-
servation, 440-441 ; enforcement
of non-importation in, (1774-
1775), 479-480; enforcement of
non-consumption in, 481-483 ;
suppresses loyalists, 554.
Maryland, _ trade of, 32-33; non-
importation in. (1769-1770), 139,
199-202; merchants of, capture
trad€ of Philadelphia, 218; break-
down of non-importation in,
(1770), 233-234; importation of
dutied tea in, 244-245, 246, 389;
county resolutions regarding non-
intercourse (1774), 361; appoint-
m.ent of delegates to First Conti-
nental Congress in, 362; affair of
Peggy Stewart ^ in, 389-392 ; ratifi-
cation of Continental Association
and establishment of committees
in, 461; conventions (1774), 361-
2,62, 461, 507; increased importa-
tion into, in anticipation of Con-
tinental Association, 474 n. ; work-
ings of Continental Association
in, 504-509; restrictions on col-
lection of debts in, 360-361, 504-
505 ; convention boycotts Georgia,
^t(^-j 531 5 decHne of importation
as result of Continental Associa-
tion. 535 ; form of defense asso-
ciation in, 543 ; committees assist
mihtia, 553 ; convention refuses
to lay embargo, 560; convention
favors relaxing of tea non-con-
sumption, 583 ; convention en-
courages making of salt, 584-585.
Vide also: Annapolis, Baltimore.
3.Iason, George, suggests form of
non-importation for Virginia,
136; shows inner workings of
House of Burgesses, 363.
Mason, Thomson, author of British
American, 36/- 268.
Massachusetts, non - consumption
movement in, (1767-1768), iio-
III ; domestic manufacturing in,
(1767-1770), 122-124; enforce-
ment of non-importation in, (1768-
1770), _ 183-186; appointment of
com.mittees of correspondence in,
(1772), 259-260; adoption of non-
consumption of tea in, 301 ; popu-
larity of Solemn League and
Covenant in, 323-325 ; miovement
in, to boycott Gage, 387-388 ; elec-
tion of delegates to First Conti-
nental Congress in, 396; ratifica-
tion of Continental Association
in, 440-442; workings of Conti-
nental Association in, 476-483 ;
provincial congress (1774), 478;
congress requires bond of coast
traders, 535; congress recom.-
mends confiscation of arm.s, 558;
congress lays embargo, 560 ; diffi-
culties of, with Nantucket, 561-
562. Vide also chief ports by
name.
^lein, John, has controversy with
Boston merchants over non-impor-
tation, 157. 159, 178, 179; author
of pamphlet, 169-170; familiar
with Drayton's views, 202.
^.lerchants, colonial, satisfied with
INDEX
639
British commercial policy, 22;
character of business of, in com-
mercial provinces, 24-27, 40-45;
dominant position of, 27-29; atti-
tude of, toward England, 30-32;
oppose smuggling regulations dur-
ing Last Intercolonial War, 45-49 ;
enjoy wartime prosperity, 56-57;
experience hard times (1764-
1766), 57-59; affected by stamp
duties, 66-68, 70; partially satis-
fied by acts of 1766, 86-87; posi-
tion of, in early 1767, 91-93; posi-
tion of, after passage of Town-
shend acts. 95 ; determine upon
orderly resistance, 96 ; methods of
opposition employed by, 96-97,
105 ; become discontented with
non-importation, 209-214; become
alienated from_ radicals, 240-244;
unite in opposition to shipments
of East India Company, 264-265,
279; shocked by Boston Tea
Party, 299; effect of coercive acts
upon, 3C^-309; only eleven, in
First Continental Congress, 409;
effect of First Continental Con-
gress upon, 432, 433-435 ; increase
importations in anticipation of
Continental Association, 473-475 ;
depletion of stocks of, 579, 586,
589; accused of forestalling, 585-
586; connection with revolution-
ary movement (1764-1775). 591-
593 ; position of, on eve of Dec-
laration of Independence, 593-
600; decision of, when independ-
ence declared, 602-606. Vide also :
factors ; separate provinces and
chief ports by name.
Middle colonies, commerce of, 26-
27', importance of merchants in,
27-32.
ivlolasses, act of Parliament (1733),
19, ZT^-Z^, 42-43; importance of, as
article of commerce, 25-26, 27, 43;
smuggling of, prior to 1764, 42-
49; reduction of duty on, (1764),
52-53; colonial opinion of act of
1764 concerning, 55-56, 58; as an
ingredient of independence, 59;
reduction of duty on, (1766), 84;
effect of reduction on smuggling j
of, 97; reception of news of re-
duction on, in America, 84-85, 87 ;
importance of duty on, as source
of revenue, 131 ; effort of Boston
merchants to have duties on, in-
cluded as object of non-importa-
tion, 131.-133; trade in, criticized
as violation of taxation principle,
134, 191, 218, 230, 275; decline in
smuggling of, 251 ; resolutions of
First Continental Congress re-
specting, 421, 425, 608, 612.
Morris, Gouverneur, on rise of rad-
icals in New York, 307-308 n. ;
describes election of Fifty-One,
330-331.
oMurray, Robert and John, mer-
chants of New York, involved in
violation of non-importation, 491 ;
removal of boycott against, 565.
Navigation acts. Vide: British
colonial policy.
Newburyport, non-importation in,
(i765-i766),8o, 82; appoints com-
mittee of correspondence (1772),
260; merchants of, endorse Bos-
ton circular letter (1774), 314 n. ;
appoints committee of observa-
tion, 440-441 ; enforcement of
non-consumption in, 481, 483.
New England, commerce of, 24-26;
importance of merchants in, 2^-
32 ; non-consumption movement
in, (1767-1768), 106-114; increased
importation into, in anticipation
of Continental Association, 474;
decline of importations into, as
result of Continental Associa-
tion. 535 ; provinces of, place
militia on war footing, 542.
New Hampshire, non-importation
movement in, (1770), I55, I94-I95;
agreements against importation
of tea in, (i773), 302-303; con-
vention elects delegates to First
Continental Congress, 327; rati-
fication of Continental Associa-
tion and establishment of com-
mittees in, 442-444; workings of
Continental Association in, 483-
485; resolutions of provincial
congress of, 556, 55^-559, 589.
Vide also: Portsmouth.
New Haven, merchants of, adopt
non-importation agreement
(1769), 150; meeting in, boycotts
New York (1770), 228, 229; en-
640
INDEX
dorses Boston circular letter
(1774), 326; visited by Massachu-
setts delegates, 406; resolves to
boycott Fairfield County deputies,
446.
New Jersey, non-importation move-
ment in, (1769-1770), 150, 196;
meetings in, denounce New York
for defection, 228; Assembly re-
plies to Boston circular letter,
2>S^-2)S7', movement for non-inter-
course in, {1774), 356-357; con-
vention elects delegates to First
Continental Congress, 357; ratifi-
cation of Continental Association
and establishment of committees
in, 455; workings of Continentil
Association in, 493-495; provin-
cial congress endorses boycott of
Georgia, etc., 532; adoption of de-
fense association in, 542; provin-
cial congress instructs committees
to apprehend deserters, 553; diffi-
culties over prices in, 587-588, 590.
Newport, important as trading cen-
tre, 25, 27; hard times in, 58;
burning of Liberty at, loi ; adopts
non-consumption agreement
(1767), 112; attitude of mer-
chants of, toward non-importa-
tion (1769-1770), 153-155, 195-196,
215-216; adopts non-importation
of tea (1773), 3^3', endorses Bos-
ton circular letter (1774), 325-
326; appoints committee of obser-
vation, 444; enforcement of non-
importation in, 485 ; non-exporta-
tion of sheep in, 485.
New York city, important as trad-
ing centre, 26-27; identity of in-
terests of, with leading northern
ports, 32 ; merchants of, organize
(1764), 60-61 ; promotion of man-
ufacturing in, 64, 77; opposition
to Stamp Act in, 73 ; non-con-
sumption agreement at, (1765-
1766), 76-77; non-importation
agreement at. 78; merchants of,
petition Parliament (1766), 87-
88; punishment of informer in,
100; mass meeting adopts plan of
retrenchment, 113; merchants of,
adopt conditional non-importation
agreement (1768), 115-116; for-
mation of Chamber of Commerce
of, 116; merchants and tradesmen
adopt non-importation (1768),
124-125 ; merchants refuse to ex-
tend scope of agreement (1769),
133; merchants boycott Newport,
154-155, 215 ; enforcement of non-
importation in, (1768-1770), 186-
190; difficulties over price of tea,
211; breakdown of non-importa-
tion in, (1770), 217-218, 220-227;
opposition to rescinding of non-
importation in, 219, 220, 223;
adoption of agreement against
dutied articles (1770), 226-227;
enforcement of tea boycott in,
246-248, 251; smuggling of tea in,
247-251 ; arguments used in, to
arouse opposition to shipments of
East India Company, 265-277; op-
position to tea shipments, 291-294;
movemicnt for non-intercourse in
(1774), 327-341, 406-407 n.; ap-
pointment of Fifty- One in, 329-
330; Com^mittee of Mechanics as
new radical organization in, 330,
333-33^, 339-340, 447, 449; Fifty-
One at, answer Boston circular
letter (i774), 331 ; contest for
election of delegates to First
Continental Congress in, 333-340;
workingmen of, boycott Gage,
386-387; m.erchants in, furnish
supplies to Gage, 388; Massachu-
setts delegates visit, 406-407;
Fifty-One at, instruct departing
delegates, 407; election of Sixty
in, 448-450; increased im.portation
in, in anticipation of Continental
Association, 472, 474; enforce-
ment of non-importation in, 489-
491, 493; enforcement of non-
exportation in, 489, 587; regula-
tion of prices in, 491-492 ; enforce-
ment of non-consumption in, 492,
581-582; promotion of manufac-
turing in, 492; comimittee boy-
cotts Georgia, etc., S32; enforces
boycott against Canada, 533 ; de-
cline of importations into, as result
of Continental Association, 535 ;
appointment of One Hundred in,
454. 544-545; committee_ withholds
weapons, =^'^3; committee sup-
presses false reports, 557; preven-
tion of exportation in, 560. 571-
INDEX
641
572 ; merchants petition for relax-
ing of tea non-consumption, 583,
New York province, act of Parlia-
ment to relieve currency shortage
in, 90 n., 224; appointment of
committees of correspondence in,
ZZ}-Z32>', election of delegates to
First Continental Congress in
rural, 340-341 ; delegates of, in
First Continental Congress op-
posed to measures adopted, 438-
439, 447; establishment of com-
mittees in, 447-452, 454-455, 54^;
failure of Assembly to ratify
Continental Association, 452-454;
workings of Continental Associa-
tion in, 489-493; provincial con-
gress requires bond of coast trad-
ers, 535; decline of importations
into, as result of Continental As-
sociation, 535; history of defense
association' in, 543-546; resolu-
tions of provincial congress of,
554, 559. 583.
Non-consumption, in 1764-1765, 63-
64, 76-77 ;_ in 1 767- 1 768, 106-109,
111-114; in 1769-1770, 146. 181-
182, 184, 185-186, 194, 196, 209; of
tea (1773-1774), 300-301; in Bos-
ton (1774), 316; in Virginia, 2PZ,
369; resolutions of First Conti-
nental Congress concerning, 414,
426, 609; enforcemicnt of, in sep-
arate provinces : Massachusetts,
481-483; New Hampshire, 484-
485 ; Connecticut, 486-488 ; New
York, 492, 493, 581-582; New Jer-
sey, 495; Pennsylvania, 500-501,
582 ; Delaware, 503 ; Maryland,
506-507, 508-509; Virginia, 516;
South Carolina, 525-526, 528;
Rhode Island, 581. Vide also:
Continental Association ; non-im-
portation ; Solemn League and
Covenant.
Non-exportation, of tobacco sug-
gested in Virginia, 136; of leather
in South Carolina, 146; Boston
circular letter proposes, 313; ar-
guments for, in Philadelphia, 350-
351 ; resolutions in Maryland
favoring, 360-362 ; resolutions in
Virginia favoring, 366, 369 ; reso-
lutions in North Carolina favor-
ing, 372 n. ; instructions of dele-
gates of First Continental Con-
gress respecting, 398-399; press
discussion prior to First Conti-
nental Congress concerning, 400;
resolutions of First Continental
Congress concerning, 415-419. 427,
609; enforcement of, of sheep,
480-481, 483, 485-4S6, 488, 489; of
munitions at Charleston, 525 ;
adoption of, for military purposes,
559-562; resolutions of Second
Continental Congress respecting,
565-568; advent of, and its en-
forcement, 570-575. Vid.e also :
Continental Association.
Non-importation, in 1765-1766, 77-
80; as political protest, 80-81; en-
forcement of, 81-82; effect of, on
British trade, 82-83; stages of,
in commercial provinces (1767-
1770), 105-106; agreement of, at
Providence (1767), 111-112; ef-
forts for league of (1768), 114-
120 ; movement in Massachusetts
(1768-1770), 120-121, 156-185;
movement in New York, 124-125,
186-190; movement in Philadel-
phia, 125-130, 191-194; proposal
of Boston merchants to extend
scope of, 131-133; movement in
plantation provinces (1769- 1770),
134-135, 197-198; movement in
separate provinces (1769- 1770) :
Virginia, 135-138, 198-199; Mary-
land, 138-139, 199-202; South
Carolina, 140-147, 202-208; Geor-
gia, 147-148, 209; North Carolina,
14^149, 208-209; Delaware, 149-
150; New Jersey, 150; Connec-
ticut, 150-152; Rhode Island, 152-
155, 195-196; New Ham.pshire,
155, 194-195, 216; diiTiculty of
judging degree of enforcement
of, 156; growth of discontent in
northern provinces with, 209-214;
effect of, on colonial trade. 210-
212, 241-243; merchants of Al-
bany and Rhode Island rescind
and resume, 215 ; breakdown of,
in chief ports (1770) : Philadel-
phia, 218-220, 229-232 ; New York,
220-227; Boston, 232-233; Mary-
land, 233-234; South Carolina,
235-236; Virginia, 236; limitation
of, to dutied articles, 226-227, 231,.
642
INDEX
23Z, 234, 23S-236, 236; effect of, on
Great Britain {1769-1770), 236-
239; extent of enforcement of, of
dutied articles, 244-251, 264-265,
2S2 n., 295; adoption of new
agreements of, of tea (i773).
281, 285-2S6, 292, 296-297, 302, 303-
304; execution of, of tea against
East India Company (1773), 279-
298; Boston circular letter (i774)
proposing, 313 ; merchants of Bos-
ton adopt conditional, 315-316,
318; provided by Solem.n League
and Covenant, 319-327; argu-
ments over, in Philadelphia, 350-
351 ; resolutions of Pennsylvania
concerning, 351-354; movement
for, (1774), 311-386; instructions
of delegates of First Continental
Congress concerning, 398-399 :
press discussion concerning,
(1774). 400-404; resolutions of
First Continental Congress con-
cerning, 413, 420-421, 425-426. 608,
610; enforcement of, facilitated
by large advance importations,
475 ; enforcement of, in separate
provinces (1774-1775) : Massa-
chusetts, 478-480, 534; New Hamp-
shire, 483; Rhode Islai^, 485,
534; Connecticut, 486 ; New York,
480-491, 493; New Jersey. 494;
Penns5dvania, 498-490, 502 ; Tslary-
land, 505-506, 507-508. 5C^; Vir-
ginia, 510-51 1, 514-516, 519, 534;
North Carolina, 520-521, 525;
South Carolina, 526-527, 529;
regulations concerning, in coast
trade, _ 534-535 ; decline of trade
resulting from, 535-536; enforce-
ment of, in Geore-ia, 551 ; resolu-
tions of Second Continental Con-
gress concerning, 565-5^58. Jlde
also : Continental Association ;
Solemn League and Covenant.
Xorth Carolina, economy of, 34;
non-importation movement in,
(1769-1770), 148-149. 208-209;
non-intercourse movement in,
(1774). 370-373; convention
(1774), 37^-373; election of dele-
gates to First Continental Con-
gress in. 372; ratification of Con-
tinental Association and establish-
ment of comimittees in, 462-464;
convention (1775), 463-464; en-
forcement of Continental Asso-
ciation in, 519-525; restrictions on
collection of debts in, 522-523 ;
decline of importations mto, as
j result of Continental Association,
{ 535 ; convention encourages mak-
I ing of salt, 584-585.
I Otis, James, on writs of assistance,
47; author of Rights of Colonies,
54; spokesman for merchants, 54
n. ; denounces mob violence, 96 ;
fights wdth customs commissioner,
179; pursues reactionary course,
254; becomes chairman of Boston
i Committee of Correspondence,
■ 257-258.
Paine, Thomas, author of Common
Sense, 593.
Paper money, legal tender, prohibi-
tion of, in New England (1751),
21-22; prohibition of, in all colo-
nies .(^764), 53-54; shortage of,
1 in Virginia and South Carolina.
j 73-74; absence of, a colonial
i grievance, 56, 83 ; failure of Brit-
j ish Government to remedy strin-
I gency of, 89-90; act authorizing,
I in New York (1770), 224; act of
j ParHament concerning, (1773),
j 243-244; repeal of restrictions
(1764) on, demanded by First
: Continental Congress. 430; Sec-
I ond Continental Congress provides
I boycott for refusers of conti-
j nental, 564.
j Parsons' Case, 37-38.
I P^'ggy Stewart, statement of ship-
I pers regarding tea in, 245 ; affair
j of the, 389-392.
I Pennsylvania, hard times in, (1764-
i -766), 58; establishment of com-
j mittees of correspondence in
j rural, 347; convention (i774),
' 351-354^ election of delegates to
First Continental Congress in.
354-355; ratification of Conti-
nental Association and establish-
ment of committees in. 456-460;
workings of Continental Associa-
tion in. 495-502. Vide also :
Philadelphia.
Newspapers, colonial, printers of,
affected by Stamip Act, 69-70, 71 ;
radical activities of Bradford of
INDEX
643
Pennsylvania Journal, 72, n., 458;
free advertisements in Newport
Mercury, 112; use of, for propa-
gandist purposes recommended,
136; Boston Chronicle, most en-
terprising of, 160, 178; radical
activities of Edes of Boston Ga-
zette, y2 n.. 282 ; paper for use of,
permitted to land at Wilmington,
521.
Philadelphia, important as trading
centre, 26-27; merchant-aristoc-
racy of, 28; identity of interests
of, with leading northern ports,
2)2; merchants of, organize (1764),
61 ; non-consumption agreement
in, 64, 76-77 ; opposition to Stamp
Act in, 72) ; domestic manufactur-
ing in, (1765-1766), 77 \ non-im-
portation agreement in, 79, 81 ;
trouble over smuggled wine at,
loi ; meeting in, fails to adopt
non-consumption (1768), 113;
merchants of, fail to adopt non-
importation, 1 16-120; merchants
of, adopt non-importation (1769),
125-130; domestic manufacturing
in, (1769-1771), 130-131; mer-
chants of, refuse to extend scope
of agreement, 132-133, 230; mer-
chants of, threaten to boycott
Newport, 154-15S; enforcement of
non-importation in, 191-194; diffi-
culties over price of tea in. 211;
boycott of Rhode Island by, 215-
216; breakdown of non-importa-
tion in, (1770), 218-220, 229-232;
opposes alteration of agreement,
agreement against dutied articles
222, 222 ; mass meeting of, boy-
cotts New York, 227 ; adoption of
agreernxnt against dutied articles
in, 231 ; observation of boycott of
tea in, 246-248, 251 ; smuggling of
tea in, 247-251 ; mob in, rescues
detained vessel, 252; arguments
used to arouse opposition to East
India Company in, 265-277; oppo-
sition to tea shipments in, 264-
265, 279-281, 290-291 ; public opin-
ion of, veers in favor of Boston,
309-310; movement for non-inter-
course in, 341-356; election of
Nineteen, 344; Nineteen replies to
Boston circular letter (1774),
344; election of Forty-Three, 347;
election of delegates to First
Continental Congress in, 349-356;
merchants of, refuse supplies to
Gage, 388; election of Sixty- Six,
456-458; increased importation
into, in anticipation of Continental
Association, 473; enforcement of
non-importation in, 498-499, 502;
regulation of prices in, 499-500,
586-587; promotion of manufac-
turing in, 501-502 ; enforcement
of non-consumption in, 500-501 ;
committee boycotts Georgia, etc.,
531; committee enforces boycott
against Newfoundland, 533; com-
mittee requires use of certificates
in coast trade, 534; decline of
trade in, as result of Continental
Association, 535 ; committee erects
saltpetre works, 553 ; committee
justifies suppression of free
speech, 555; alarm, of merchants
of, over rumor of non-exporta-
tion, 571 ; enforcemient of non-ex-
portation in, 572, 574, 574-575,
m^erchants of, petition for relax-
ing of tea non-consumption, 583.
Plantation provinces, definition of
term, 23; economy of, 32-34;
leadership of planters in, 34-35 ;
factors manage commierce of, 35-
27; bankruptcy acts in, 27-2^\
place of planters of, in revolu-
tionary movement, 38-39; slow to
oppose Grenville acts, 62', aroused
by Stamp Act, 65-66; opposition
in, to Stamp Act, 73-75 ; non-im-
portation movement in, (1769-
1770), 134-135, 197-198; effect of
coercive acts upon people of, 3S9-
360; violent opposition to tea duty
in, 388-389; instructions in, con-
cerning non-intercourse (1774),
398-399, 409; distinctive feature
of operation of Continental Asso-
ciation in, 504; regulation of price
of salt in, 584-585; economic ad-
vantage of, assured by independ-
ence, 600-602.
Planters, leadership of, in southern
provinces. 34-35; in debt to fac-
tors, 26, 39, 13=;; role of, in revo-
lutionary movement, 38-39; take
lead in non-importation (1769-
644
INDEX
^770), 135; active in agitation
against Parliament (i774), 359-
360; asked to support independ-
ence on basis of self-interest, 600-
602.
Portsmouth, non-importation in,
(1770), 194-195, 216-217; non-im-
portation of tea in, (i773-i774)>
302-303 ; committee sends out
Solemn League, 325; appoints
Forty-Five. 443; enforcement of
Continental Association in, 483-
484.
Prices, regulation of. provided m
Continental Association, 426, 427,
610; in Connecticut, 486-487; in
New York. 491-492; in Pennsyl-
vania, 499-500; in Maryland, 507;
in Virginia, 516-517; in North
Carolina, 521 ; in South Carolina,
525; of tea provided by Second
Continental Congress, 584; of salt
in plantation provinces, 584-585 ;
of salt provided b3- Second Con-
tinental Congress. 585 ; in com-
mercial provinces, 585-589; aban-
doned iDy Second Continental
Congress, 589; results of aban-
donment of, 590; of salt revived
by Congress, 590-591.
Providence, adopts non-importation
agreement (1767), 111-112; non-
importation movement in, (1769-
1770), 153; rescinds and renews
agreement (1770), 215-216; burn-
ing of Gaspee near, 252-253 ; en-
dorses Boston circular letter
(1774), 2>^->-2^\ proposes holding
of interprovincial congress. 326,
393; appoints committee of ob-
servation, 444; enforcem.ent of
non-importation in, 485, 534; en-
forcem^ent of non-exportation in,
485 ; enforcement of non-con-
sumption in. 486. 581 ; stops ex-
portation of flaxseed. 572; regu-
lation of prices in, 589.
Quakers of Pennsylvania, favor
non-importation during Stamp
Act. 191, 497; warn members
against non-importation (1769),
191-192 ; m.ember of. skeptical of
patriotism, 212; help form slate
of candidates, 346; are chief
source of opposition to Conti-
nental Association, 456, 460, 495-
498; oppose demonstrations
against Boston Port Act, 496;
oppose independence, 603-604.
Randolph, Peyton, connives at smug-
gling, 42; favors non-importation
in Virginia, 136, 198; presides
over ex-burgesses (1774), 2>^x
364; is chosen president of First
Continental Congress, 412 ; thanks
Williamisburg merchants. 509 ; an-
swers complaint regarding mer-
cantile credits, 511.
Rhode Island, economy of, 25-26;
non-importation movement in,
(1769-1770), 152-155, 195-196, 215-
216 ; importation of dutied tea in,
(1773), 303-304; establishment of
committees of correspondence in,
304; towns of, object to Solemn
! League, 325 ; Assembly elects dele-
' gates to First Continental Con-
gress. z^7, 396; ratification of
Continental Association and estab-
lishment of committees in. 444;
increased im.portation into, in an-
ticipation of Continental Associa-
tion, 474 ; workings of Continental
Association in. 485-486; resolu-
} tions of Assembly of, 559, 560.^
'Rice, enumerated, 18; direct ship-
ment of, south of Georgia, 51, 57;
effect of fall in price of, on non-
j importation sentiment (1770),
{ ^2)S \ planters of, opposed to non-
j exportation in South Carolina,
i 374; effort in First Continental
! Congress to exempt, from non-
I exportation, 417-419. 421-422; pro-
tests against exemption of. 439;
contest in South Carolina over
! exem.ption of, 464-469; non-ex-
j portation of, provided for in
I South Carolina, 561 ; exemption
'■ of. repealed bj'' Second Continen-
tal Congress. $66.
St. John's Parish, Georgia, a centre
of radicalism, 380, 469; meeting
in, nominates delegate to First
Continental Congress. 385-386;
adoption of Continental Associa-
tion in. 470: delegates of. refuse
to participate in Georgia congress,
471-472; people of, seek to escape
boycott, 472, 529-530; is exempted
INDEX
645
from boycott by Second Conti-
nental Congress, 532; influence
of, in Georgia congress (i775).
549.
Salem, merchants of, employ Otis
in writs case, 47; merchants of,
appoint committee, 60; non-im-
portation in, (1765-1766), 80; non-
importation in, (1768-1770), 121,
184, 185 ; endorses Boston circular
letter (1774), 314; appoints com-
mittee of observation, 441 ; en-
forcement of non-importation in,
(1774-1775), 479, 480; enforce-
m.ent of non-exportation in, 480-
481 ; committee corrects Ne\vport
as to interpretation of Continen-
tal Association, 486; committee
issues certificates, 534-
Savannah, non-importation in, (1769-
1770), 147-148; importation of
dutied tea in, 246; a centre of
radicalism, 3S0; protest of inhabi-
tants of, against provincial con-
vention, 383-384; radicals of, dif-
fer with those of St. John's Par-
ish, 470; caucus at, 547-548; meet-
ing at. appoints committee of ob-
servation, 548.
Second Continental Congress, boy-
cotts Georgia, Quebec, etc., 532,
550-551; regulates trade with
Nantucket, 561-562 ; difficulties
confronting. 562-563; becomes de
facto government, 563 ; increases
functions of committees of obser-
vation, 563-564; encourages m.an-
ufacturing, 564; elaborates Conti-
nental Association, 565-566; re-
peals rice exemption, 566; author-
izes munitions trade, 566-568; re-
solves to ignore parliamentary
exemption, 569-570 ; passes reso-
lutions respecting non-exporta-
tion, 573-574, 575; debates open-
ing of trade with world, 576-580;
opens trade with world, 580 ; de-
cides to relax regulation for non-
consumption of tea. 5S2-584, 589;
provides for regulation of price
of salt. 585 : removes _ restraints
on prices, 589; authorizes regu-
lation of price of salt, 500-591.
Slaves, non-importation of, in Vir-
ginia (1769), 137; action against
I importation of, in South Carolina
i (1769-1770), 143, 146, 207; non-
importation of, in Georgia, 148;
action against purchase of, in
North Carolina, 149; resolutions
in Virginia against importation
of (1774). 366-367, 369; resolu-
tions in North Carolina against ^■
importation of, 371, ZJ^^ n.; non-
importation of, provided by Con- ■,
tinental Association. 426, 428, 6o8,
609; enforcement of non-impor-
tation of, 515, 521-522; non-im.-
portation of, continued by Second
Continental Congress, 580.
Smuggling, prior to Last Inter-
colonial War, 39-44; a political
error, 44-45 ; during Last Inter-
colonial War, 45-49, 50; regula-
tions against, (1764), 52; colonial
opinion of regulations on, 55, 60,
61 ; political influence of merchants
in. 59, 60; defiance of trade laws
by merchants in, 88-89; regula-
tions against, (1767), 94-95 J
changed character of, 97-99; ac-
tivities of Customs Board against,
99-100; defiance of trade laws by
merchants in, loo-ioi ; suppressed
in Boston, 102-104; affair of Lib-
erty, 103-104; chief centres of,
after 1770, 247; character and ex-
tent of, after 1770, 247-253; affair
of Gaspee, 252-253; effect of tea
act (1773) upon, 263-265. 266-267;
regulation of, in act of 1774. 306;
merchants in, disturbers of law
j and order, 312; mentioned in
i First Continental Congress, 420,
j 421; merchants in, affected by
; non-consum.ption of tea, 426, 582,
' 583.
Solemn League and Covenant,
launching of, by Boston Commit-
tee of Correspondence, 319-320;
opposition of Boston merchants
to. 320-323 ; popularity of, in rural
\ ^Massachusetts, 323-325; failure
of, to win favor outside of Massa-
: chusetts, 325-327-
Sons of Liberty, m.eeting place of,
in Boston, 72 ; composed of un-
privileged classes, 92; growing
antagonism between New York
merchants and, 189; of Cape Fear
646
INDEX
warn merchants to observe non-
importation, 208; misconceive
purpose of merchant-reformers,
210; Association of, at Ne\y York,
292; superseded by Committee of
'Mechanics in New York, 330.
South Carolina, economy of, 33-34;
non-importation movement in,
(1769- 1770), 140-147, 202-208;
General Com.mittee urges South
Carolina association on other
provinces, 214; breakdown of
non-importation in, 235-236; non-
intercourse movement in, (1774),
Z72>-2,74\ convention (i774), 375-
378; appointment of General
Committee in, 37S-379; delegates
of, in First Continental Congress
seek to protect rice and indigo
interests, 417-419, 421-422; ratifi-
cation of Continental Association
and establishment of committees
in, 464-469; congress (i775), 4^7-
469; restrictions on collection of
debts in, 527-528; enforcement of
Association in, 525-529; General
Committee boycotts Georgia, 529-
530; decline of importations into,
as result of Continental Associa-
tion, 535 ; form of defense asso-
ciation in, 543; resolutions of
provincial congress of, 561, 584,
Stamp Act, passage of, 62-63, 65-66 ;
classes affected by, 66-71, 230;
violent opposition to, 71-75 ; Con-
gress, 23-24, 75-76; economic g^p-
position to, 76-82; repeal of, 83.
Sugar Act (1764). Vide: Grenville
acts.
Tea, non-consumption of, (1767-
1770). 108-109. 121, 181-182, 184.
185-186, 194, 196, 209; importation
of dutied. at Boston, 178; open
sale of smuggled, 179; regulation
of price of, (1770), 211-212; limi-
tation of non-importation to
dutied, etc., 226-227, 231, 233, 234,
235-236, 236 ; popular acquiescence
in duty on, (1770-1773), 244-246.
264-265, 274, 282 n., 295. 389; ob-
servance of boycott of, in New
York and Philadelphia, 246-247;
smuggling of. after 1770, 247-251 ;
acts of Parliament concerning,
(1 767- 1 773). 94. 97-98, 249-251,
262-26^), 270, 272; effect of act of
'^772) upon private trade in, 264-
265 ; arguments used to arouse
opposition to East India Com-
pany's shipments of, 265-277; op-
position to shipments of, at chief
ports : Philadelphia, 279-281, 290-
291; Boston, 281-290; New York,
291-294; Charleston, 295-298;
agreements against smugghng of,
297, 300-301 ; adoption of new
agreements against, (1773), 281,
285-286, 292, 296-297, 300-301, 302,
303-304; defeat of motion to re-
peal tax on, 306; non-consump-
tion of, (1774), 324, Z^2>y 369; non-
importation of, at Charleston,
379; and Peggy Stewart affair,
389-392; boycott of, provided by
'Continental Association, 425, 426,
608, 609; repeal of duty on, de-
manded by Continental Associa-
tion, 425. 612; enforcement of
non-consumption of, as provided
by Continental Association, 481-
482. 484, 485, 486, 493, 494, 495,
507, 514, 516, 525-526, 581-584;
partial repeal of non-consumption
of, by Second Continental Con-
gress, 584, 589, 590. J'ide also:
East India Company.
Thomison, Charles, on repeal of
Stam.p Act, 86; argues for non-
importation. 1 18- 1 19; opposes re-
scinding of non-importation, 219,
231 ; on influence of merchants in
opposition to East India Com-
pany, 279- 2&); induces Dickinson
to re-enter public affairs, 341-344;
on purpose of petition for calling
Assembly, 345; clerk of Penn-
sylvania convention (1774). 35i,
352 n. ; secretary of First Conti-
nental Congress. 411; member of
Sixty-Six. 458.
Timoth}', Peter, chief lieutenant of
Gadsden, 140, 143 ; assists in non-
intercourse movement, Z73 ' secre-
tary of South Carolina General
Committee, 378 n. ; secretary of
provincial congress (i774), 4^7-
Townshend acts, analysis of, 93-95;
economic effects of and colonial
opposition to, 95-217; only one
source of mercantile discontent.
INDh.
647
131 ; partial repeal of, 212-213,
239.
Virginia, trade of, Z2-2i2)', debtors'
acts and Parsons' Case in, 2>7-Z^\
whigism of planters of, due to
debts, 39; hard times in, (1764),
62, 74; non-importation move-
ment in, (1769- I 771), 135-138, 198-
199, 236; importation of dutied
tea in, 246; establishment of com-
mittee of correspondence of, 261-
262; public opinion of, veers in
favor of Boston, 311; non-inter-
course movement in, 362-370 ; con-
vention (1774), 368-370; ejection
of delegates to First Continental
Congress in, 2)^?'-, efforts of dele-
gates of, in First Continental
Congress to protect tobacco in-
terests, 416-417; ratification of
Continental Association and estab-
lishment of committees in. 461-
462; convention (1775), 462; in-
creased importation into, in an-
ticipation of Continental Associa-
tion, 474 n. ; hostilit}^ of factors
of, to Continentaf Association,
509-511, 513, 516-517; restrictions
on collection of debts in, 512; en-
forcement of Continental Asso- j
ciation in, 5i3-5i9» 534; House of ;
Burgesses boycotts Georgia, etc., '
532 ; decline of importations into, j
as result of Continental Associa-
tion, 535 ; committees of, super- |
vise enlistments, 553 ; convention j
passes war resolutions, 554, 560-
561, 584-585; enforcement of non- 1
exportation in, 574 ; economic ad-
vantages assured to, by independ-
ence, 600-602.
Washington, George, complains of
poor crops, 62 ; works for non-
importation in Virginia, 135-138;
violates non-importation agree-
ment, 197 n.
Wine, duties on, (1764), 53; smug-
gling of, 98, loi ; importance of
duties on, as source of revenue,
131 ; non-importation of, in South
Carolina, 144, 146; non-importa-
tion of, in Georgia, 148; efforts
of Boston merchants to include
duties on, as object of non-impor-
tation, 131-133; trade in, criti-
cised as violation of taxation
principle, 191, 218, 230, 275; de-
cline in smuggling of, 251; reso-
lutions of First Continental Con-
gress concerning. 421, 425, 426,
608, 612; enforcement of non-
importation of, 499, 505.
Workingmen, colonial, dependence
of, on merchants, 28; organized
as Sons of Liberty, 72, 92 ; enter
intO' politics in Charleston, 140;
protest against Drayton's asper-
sions, 204; declare for continu-
ance of non-importation at Phila-
delphia (1770), 219; enter into
poHtics in Philadelphia, 280, 345,
351 ; discontented with high price
of tea in Philadelphia, 290; com-
•bine against Gage, 386-388. Vide
chief ports bv name.
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