CHAPTER I.
THE REVOLUTION IMPENDING.
BY MELLEN CHAMBERLAIN,
Librarian Boston Public Library.
THE American Revolution was no unrelated event, but formed a part of the history of the British race on both continents, and was not without influence on the history of mankind. As an event in British history, it wrought with other forces in effecting that change in the Constitution of the mother country which transferred the prerogatives of the crown to the Parliament, and led to the more beneficent interpretation of its provisions in the light of natural rights. As an event in American history, it marks the period, recognized by the great powers of Europe, when a people, essentially free by birth and by the circumstances of their situation, became entitled, because justified by valor and endurance, to take their place among independent nations. Finally, as an event common to the history of both nations, it stands midway between the Great Rebellion and the Revolution of 1688, on the one hand, and the Reform Bill of 1832 and the extension of suffrage in 1884, on the other, and belongs to a race which had adopted the principles of the Reformation and of the Petition of Right.
The American Revolution was not a quarrel between two peoples,—the British people and the American people,—but, like all those events which mark the progress of the British race, it was a strife between two parties, the conservatives in both countries as one party, and the liberals in both countries as the other party; and some of its fiercest battles were fought in the British Parliament. Nor did it proceed in one country alone, but in both countries at the same time, with nearly equal step, and was essentially the same in each, so that at the close of the French War, if all the people of Great Britain had been transported to America and put in control of American affairs, and all the people of America had been transported to Great Britain and put in control of British affairs, the American Revolution and the contemporaneous British Revolution—for there was a contemporaneous British Revolution—might have gone on just the same, and with the same final results. But the British Revolution was to regain liberty; the American Revolution was to preserve liberty. Both peoples had a common history in the events which led to the Great Rebellion; but in the reaction which followed the Restoration, that part of the British race which awaited the conflict in the old home passed again under the power of the prerogative, and, after the accession of William III., came under the domination of the great Whig families. The British Revolution, therefore, was to recover what had been lost. But those who emigrated to the colonies left behind them institutions which were monarchical, in church and state, and set up institutions which were democratic. And it was to preserve, not to acquire, these democratic institutions that the liberal party carried the country through a long and costly war.[1]
The American Revolution, in its earlier stages at least, was not a contest between opposing governments or nationalities, but between two different political and economic systems, to each of which able and honest men then adhered, and now adhere. The motives and conduct of each party, therefore, ought to be stated with exact impartiality. It was not only inevitable, but wise, and on the whole wisely conducted in accordance with the traditions and methods of political action to which our British race had been accustomed. It was also honestly and fairly opposed by those who neither accepted revolutionary principles, nor recognized the validity of the reasons assigned for their application to the existing state of affairs.
Readers of American history from the Restoration of Charles II., in 1660, to the Revolution find frequent reference to the King's Prerogatives, Navigation Laws, Acts of Trade, and in later years to Writs of Assistance, as subjects of complaint between Great Britain and her colonies; and as these were among the immediate causes of the war, they require explanation. When the Earl of Hillsborough (April 22, 1768) required the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, through Governor Bernard (June 21st), in his majesty's name, to rescind the resolution which had given birth to their Circular Letter of February 11, 1768, the order was a claim of right by the king to control the legislative action of that province; and the refusal of the House was regarded by the prerogative party both in Great Britain and in the colonies as in derogation of the king's constitutional power.
What was the foundation of this alleged authority of the king over the colonies? By the public law of all civilized nations in the fifteenth century, the property in unoccupied lands belonged to the crown of the country by which they were discovered;[2] and if, as was generally the case, these lands were inhabited by savages, still the fee was in the crown, subject only to such use as might be made of them by wandering tribes. Such is the law to-day. This title to the English colonies was not in the people of England nor in the state, but in the crown, and descended with it. The crown alone could sell or give away these lands. The crown could make laws for the inhabitants, and repeal them; could appoint their rulers, and remove them. Parliament could do neither. The political relations of the colonists were to the crown, not to the government of England; nor were they in any respect subject to parliamentary legislation.[3] They were not citizens within the realm, nor, except in a qualified sense, of the empire, but subjects of the crown, having only such rights as it granted to them in their charters; and even these charters the crown claimed, and exercised the right to amend or revoke. James I. amended that of Virginia in 1624, and Charles II. revoked that of Massachusetts in 1684. They were regarded merely as charters of incorporated land companies, and, as such, subject to revocation by the king who granted them; and when these companies had developed into municipal governments, they were considered as still subject to alteration or repeal by the sovereign power,[4] although in both cases rights of property were saved to the owners. Strange as this doctrine may seem, it is now substantial law in England and in America.
To all these rights, privileges, and disabilities the emigrants agreed when they purchased lands from the crown; and the rights and duties, whether of the crown or of its subjects, descended to their respective successors. With such rights, though not in all cases with such views in respect to them, the colonists came to America; and such rights, and no more, their children possessed, under the British Constitution, at the time of the American Revolution, in the days of George III.
These claims of the crown every colony resisted as incompatible with its essential rights, and yet they were legal and constitutional prerogatives, admitted by the greatest judges of England, and most necessarily have been admitted in the colonies not only by Hutchinson and Oliver, but by James Otis and John Adams, had they sat as judges. It was on this legal and constitutional ground that the prerogative party stood both in England and in America.
But in England from the time of James I., and in America from the coming of Winthrop, there had been an anti-prerogative party; and as the prerogative party in England and the prerogative party in America were one and the same, so the anti-prerogative party in England and the anti-prerogative party in the colonies were one and the same, having similar views, and, though separated by a thousand leagues, working to the same end. On this question came the first political contest of the Revolution; that of parliamentary supremacy came later. The strength of one side was in legal and constitutional principles, as they were then interpreted by judicial tribunals; that of the other lay in the changes which were taking place in the British Constitution,—in short, in revolution. The revolutionary party succeeded in both countries: in America, by war; in England, by more silent influences which have greatly modified, if not destroyed, the prerogative.
Although the prerogative was a cardinal right in the British Constitution, and freely exercised by popular sovereigns like Elizabeth, it began to be questioned under James I., and resisted under Charles I., who lost his life in its defence, as James II. lost his crown.[5] But the progress of this revolution was not steady, nor did it always hold what it had gained. There came periods of reaction, one of which was in the early days of George III. He was strenuous in maintaining his prerogative, and, by the support of the "King's Friends", probably held it with a firmer hand than any of his predecessors since Elizabeth. The contest about the prerogatives encountered this difficulty: that successful resistance in a particular instance settled no principle, but left all other cases untouched.[6] The extension of the navigation acts to the colonies by Parliament, though assented to by King Charles II., was in derogation of his prerogatives; and so in the time of William III. (1696) was the attempt to transfer certain colonial affairs from the Privy Council, which represented the king, to a proposed Council of Commerce, which would have been the creature of Parliament. In consistency with these proceedings, the king's power over the colonies ought to have been transferred to Parliament; and instead of remaining the king's colonies, they ought to have become a part of the empire, and his authority over them no greater than that over the territory within the four seas. But it was otherwise. The colonists remained the king's subjects. He appointed their governors; he frequently set aside their laws, and over them he exercised his royal prerogatives. One capital point, however, had been gained by the revolutionary party on both sides of the water. Successful invasions of the prerogative had at length created what was called the "spirit of the constitution."[7] The loyalists, however, seemed to be firmly entrenched in their constitutional position, nor did the anti-prerogative party avoid a dilemma: how to escape out of the hands of the king without falling into the hands of Parliament. If, as some claimed when they resisted the royal prerogative, they were British subjects, entitled to the same rights and privileges as native-born subjects within the realm, why then should they, more than other subjects, be free from the burdens imposed by the imperial policy? But when, in pursuance of that policy, Parliament undertook to tax the colonies, then they were forced by the logic of the situation to claim that, though subjects of "the best of kings", they owed no more allegiance to Parliament than the Scotch did before the union.[8]
Probably no one more heartily detested the claims of the prerogative than Franklin; and yet the phase which the controversy had assumed compelled him to take high prerogative ground. Such was his position with regard to the Stamp Act, as is seen in the note below.[9] Andros himself could have asked for nothing better, in 1686; and when Franklin was asked what the king could do, should the colonies refuse just requisitions, he had no other answer than this,—that they would not refuse!
Such is the doctrine of the prerogative which gave rise to constant conflicts between the king and the colonists, from 1660 to 1774, and in every colony was among the political causes which led to the Revolution. But it was an English question as well as an American question,—a party question in both countries, and it was finally settled with the same result in each, though by different means. We must look further for the real controversy between the English people and the American people.
Another cause of the Revolution, but one which, in no strict sense, concerned the political relations between the people of Great Britain and the American colonists, was the attempt of the British merchants to monopolize the trade of the colonies, not for the benefit of the British people, but for their own. This also was a party question, on one side of which were arrayed the adherents of the Mercantile or Protective System, and on the other those of the Economic or Free Trade System. The mercantile class endeavored to subordinate colonial interests to the protective system by navigation laws and acts of trade; and the resistance of the colonists to these acts was a claim for free trade which finally involved them in a war with the mother country.
What were those navigation laws and acts of trade which called forth the invective of James Otis when he argued the Writs of Assistance, and revived in the bosom of the octogenarian John Adams the hearty curse he bestowed upon them in his youth; and on what foundation did they rest?[10]
Nations acquire new territories, and maintain and defend them, to promote their own interests, and not the interests of those who inhabit them; still less the interests of other nationalities. This has been the case in all ages and under all forms of government, to which our own age and nation form no exception. By the right of discovery the British crown became possessed of the territory included in the thirteen American colonies, settled mainly by British subjects. Lands were granted to individuals, or companies, with the expectation that they would build up prosperous communities, to contribute by their products and trade to the wealth of the mother country. On these purely selfish considerations she protected them; and when their trade was grown to be considerable and their markets valuable, the British merchants took measures to secure both, instead of sharing them with other nations, or allowing them to follow the interests of the colonists. Such was the policy of Great Britain at the dictation of the mercantile class; and in the maintenance of that policy, in sixty years between 1714 and 1774, she paid out of her Exchequer the enormous sum of £34,697,142 sterling, a sum greater than the estimated value of the whole real and personal property in the colonies.[11]
Between 1660 and 1770 Parliament enacted various laws whose enforcement produced irritation from the beginning, and had no inconsiderable influence in promoting the final rupture. These acts may be classed as,—First, navigation laws, designed to secure the naval and maritime supremacy of Great Britain throughout the world; these were aimed at the Dutch. Second, acts of trade, procured by the mercantile class, to monopolize the trade of the British colonies. Like the corn-laws of a later generation, these formed part of the protective system, and were dictated by class interest. Third, acts for the protection of British manufactures by preventing their growth in the colonies, where their best market was found. Fourth, acts designed to secure the strict execution of the preceding acts by establishing colonial admiralty courts, custom-houses, and boards of customs. Fifth, acts which imposed and regulated duties and port charges in commercial towns. In no sense were these acts for revenue, British or colonial. They brought nothing into the British Exchequer, but drew large sums from it.[12] They were passed solely in the interest of the mercantile and manufacturing classes, whose protection had much to do with bringing on the Revolution, but whose clamors happily prevented efficient measures for its suppression. These demonstrations, which gained them great credit in the colonies, grew out of their fear of losing not only the £4,000,000 due by their colonial debtors, but also their future trade.
Before the Grenville Act of 1764 no measures had been taken to relieve the Exchequer from demands on account of the colonies. The people and the government had suffered the mercantile and manufacturing classes to dictate their colonial policy. Not that the prosperity of these classes did not contribute to the general prosperity of the realm; for, on the contrary, it had made Great Britain the most affluent and powerful country on the globe. But this system did not promote the welfare of all classes alike; and when the time came, as it did after the frightful expenditure in the French War, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was compelled to ask for ready money to pay the interest on the debt and to meet current expenses, neither the merchants nor the manufacturers, who had grown rich by the war, offered on that account to pay larger taxes, but they were quite willing that the British farmer should do so, or that a revenue should be sought from the American colonies.
Some account of these famous laws is essential at this point. There were three statutes embraced under the general term Navigation Laws and Acts of Trade, in which are to be found the principles of the Mercantile System. They were passed in 1660, 1663, and 1672, during the reign of Charles II., and may be found in the Statutes at Large,[13] with the following titles respectively: "An Act for the Encouraging and Increasing of Shipping and Navigation", "An Act for the Encouragement of Trade", and "An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and for the Better Securing the Plantation Trade."[14]
The navigation laws will be more readily understood if we attend solely to their effect on the American colonies, and disregard unimportant exceptions and limitations. By the act of 1660, none but English or colonial ships could carry goods to or bring them from the colonies. This excluded all foreigners, and especially the Dutch, who at that time were the principal carriers for Europe. The result was that the colonists lost the advantage of their competition. Far more serious was the provision which restricted them from carrying sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, fustic and all other dyeing wood, the product of any English colony, to any part of the world, except Great Britain, or some other English colony. This affected the English sugar islands of the West Indies and the Southern colonies, which were obliged to send their products to the overstocked English or colonial markets, more than it affected New England, whose great staples, lumber, fish, oil, ashes, and furs, were free to find their best market, provided only they were sent in English or colonial vessels.
British merchants not satisfied with this monopoly procured a more stringent act in 1663, which provided that no commodity, the growth, product, or manufacture of Europe, should be imported into the colonies, except in English-built ships, sailing from English ports. By this act England became the sole market in which the colonists could purchase the products or manufactures of Europe, nor could they send their own ships for them, unless English-built or bought before October 1, 1662. They were obliged to buy in English markets and import in English vessels.[15] This discouraged ship-building for the European trade in a country full of timber, and compelled the payment of charges and profits to English factors dealing in Continental goods for the American market.
By these two acts British merchants had undertaken to monopolize, with certain exceptions, the carrying trade of the colonies and their markets for the sale and the purchase of goods. But avarice was not satisfied. There had grown up a trade, especially profitable to New England, with the Southern colonies which were without shipping. By the act of 1660, foreign and intercolonial trade in certain articles was permitted, with the expectation that it would be limited to necessary local supply. But Boston merchants, shipping to that port tobacco and some other colonial products in excess of the local demand, sent the surplus to Continental Europe, without payment of British or colonial duties, and thus undersold the British trader, who had paid heavy import duties. To suppress this profitable irregularity, it was enacted in 1672 that the enumerated products shipped to other colonies should be first transported to England, and thence to the purchasing colony. The colonial merchants had the option, however, of bringing tobacco, for instance, from Virginia direct to Massachusetts, first paying an export duty equivalent to the English import duty.[16]
These enactments subjected colonial interests to those of British ship-owners and merchants; and as they had been thus duly protected, the manufacturers in turn claimed similar protection by statutes which should prevent the colonists from setting up competing manufactories.[17] How could there have been any difference of opinion among the colonists respecting such statutes? A general answer is, that the colonial system, which regarded the colonies as feeders for the navigation, trade, and manufactures of the parent state, was the accepted doctrine of European statesmen. Pitt was its stanchest advocate, and Burke its rational friend. Adam Smith, who assaulted it in 1776,[18] did not succeed in overthrowing it. Twenty-five years later, Henry Brougham controverted Smith's views.[19] It is not strange, therefore, that it found advocates among the colonists themselves. It was also far from being a one-sided question.
James Otis's arguments on the Writs of Assistance and John Adams's letters to William Tudor, by dwelling on the injurious features of these acts, and passing over all compensating considerations, give an erroneous notion of them. The idea that they originated in a hostile disposition of the British people or merchants towards the colonists is not entitled to a moment's consideration. They formed a commercial policy, not a political policy. The more numerous, wealthy, and prosperous the colonists became, the more useful they were to the British merchants, so long as they could monopolize the trade. That was their object; and where the freedom of colonial trade would not interfere with British trade, it was left free. For example, the most profitable trade of New England was with the French and Spanish West India Islands and the Spanish Main. The short distance favored small vessels and small capitals. The exchange of lumber, grain, cattle, and fish for sugar and molasses, with an occasional voyage to the coast of Africa for slaves, during that traffic,[20] yielded rich returns. This trade was free; and so was that of Asia and Africa, and some ports of Europe, except for certain enumerated articles. It was not only permitted, but with respect to some commodities was encouraged by bounties. Between 1714 and 1774, the colonists, chiefly those of New England, received £1,609,345 sterling on their commodities exported to Great Britain;[21] and through a system of drawbacks, by which the duties on goods imported into England were repaid on their exportation to America, the colonists often bought Continental goods cheaper than could the subjects within the realm. These favors no more indicated good will than the restrictions indicated hostility. Both rested on purely commercial considerations. There were other compensations. The naval supremacy of Great Britain, due chiefly to the navigation laws, protected colonial commerce in whatever seas it was pushed; and the stimulus of monopoly withdrew British capital from other less lucrative enterprises, and directed it to the colonies, where it was freely used by planters in developing lands which otherwise would have been uncultivated for lack of capital.[22] And although certain colonial produce was obliged to find its only European market in England, it had the monopoly of that market.
If it was a hardship to the tobacco growers of Maryland and Virginia to be compelled to send that product to England, they had this advantage, that no Englishman could use any other. He was forbidden by penal statutes to grow his own supply even in his own garden. As to those laws which restrained manufactures in the colonies, it was the opinion of Henry Brougham,[23] who cites Franklin as an authority, that they merely prohibited the colonist from making articles which could have been more cheaply purchased.[24] He could import a hat from England for less than it cost to make one, and he did so. But the best ground for nominal submission to the navigation laws and acts of trade was found in their easy evasion, and the fact that they never were, and never could have been, rigidly enforced. From the first, all attempts to enforce them led to dissatisfaction. Randolph's revenue seizures in the time of Charles II. and James II. had no small influence in overthrowing Andros's government in the revolution of 1689, and so had Charles Paxton's in bringing on the American Revolution.
Before the new policy of enforcing these laws was entered upon, the colonies enjoyed British naval protection; they possessed the monopoly of the British market; they drew bounties from the British Exchequer; they purchased European goods more cheaply than the British people could do; and, stating the facts somewhat broadly, they manufactured whatever they found to be for their advantage, and sent their ships wherever they pleased, notwithstanding the navigation laws and acts of trade. The result was that the colonies, especially barren and frozen New England, engrossed most profitable commerce which England had attempted to monopolize, and increased in wealth beyond all colonial precedent.[25] But these halcyon days were destined to pass under clouds. British merchants had seen from the beginning the amassing of fortunes in the colonies by illicit trade, and the falling off of their own. They had striven to enforce the laws, and Parliament had lent its assistance,—but in vain. Under the first charter of Massachusetts, the collector of customs was the governor, whose annual election depended upon the good will of those who were evading the navigation laws; under the second charter, the governor was appointed by the king, and sworn to enforce those laws. But colonial juries generally checkmated the king's representative. Then followed admiralty courts without juries, which produced indignant protests. The new system was irritating rather than efficient on a long line of coast filled with bays, creeks, and ports not patrolled by revenue cutters. The British merchant was foiled, and anger was the result. The attempt to monopolize the commerce of the colonies was a failure; and so long as the navigation laws were a dead letter the advantages of the situation were with the colonists. They were content.
But the time came at the close of the French War when the mercantile system was subordinated to a revenue system, and the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade, made more stringent by some new ones, became the policy of the government. Its instruments were admiralty courts with enlarged jurisdiction, commissioners of customs, writs of assistance, and an adequate naval force. When that time came, the Revolution was not far off![26]
In 1755, Shirley, then governor of Massachusetts, had persuaded the General Court to attempt by a stamp act to meet the expenses of the French War. This produced an irritation like that which followed in 1765 the act of the British ministry;[27] and to Shirley, as much as to any other man, perhaps, was due the suggestion of those parliamentary measures which led to the Revolution. Long residence in Boston and his profession as a lawyer had made him familiar with the evasions of the navigation laws; and his larger duties as commander-in-chief, in which he found much difficulty in bringing the colonial assemblies into concerted and efficient action, doubtless suggested measures which were adopted by the British ministry. However this may have been, the enforcement of the navigation laws was taken in hand for the first time by the government, and no longer left to depend upon private interests. This unwonted activity was shown as early as 1754. Its most formidable weapon was the Writ of Assistance.
More than four years before the passage of the Stamp Act, James Otis had resisted the granting of these writs before the Superior Court of Massachusetts. John Adams, then a student of law, took notes of Otis's argument, and fifty-six years later wrote: "Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born."[28] This was no mere rhetorical phrase.[29] The influence of this controversy in producing the Revolution is not wholly due to the fiery eloquence of Otis, whose words, said John Adams, "breathed into the nation the breath of life", nor to the range of his argument, which called in question the mercantile and political systems of Great Britain, but to their effect upon the commercial interest—then the leading one—of New England; for if the latent powers of these writs were set free, and used by the revenue officers, the commerce of Boston, Salem, and Newport would have been effectually crippled. Authorized in England, they were extended to the colonies by an act of William III.[30] The officers of customs, however, instead of applying to the courts for them, relied upon the implied powers of their commissions, and forcibly entered warehouses for contraband goods. The people grew uneasy, and some stood upon their rights against the officers, whose activity was stimulated by documents like that given in the note below.[31]
Governor Shirley issued these writs, though the power to do so was solely in the court.[32] But they would have held a less important place in the history of the Revolution had it not been for the concurrence of several circumstances. All writs become invalid on the demise of the crown and six months thereafter. George II. died October 25, 1760, and the news reached Boston December 27th. The government had already resolved upon a more vigorous enforcement of the revenue laws. The king had instructed Bernard, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, to "be aiding and assisting to the collectors and other officers of our admiralty and customs in putting in execution" the acts of trade. Pitt also directed the colonial governors to prevent trade with the enemy and a commerce which was "in open contempt of the authority of the mother country, as well as to the most manifest prejudice of the manufactures and trade of Great Britain."[33] Seizures of uncustomed goods were frequent. The third part of the forfeiture of molasses which belonged to the province amounted before 1761 to nearly five hundred pounds in money. Bernard arrived in August, 1760. Chief Justice Sewall, who had expressed doubts as to the legality of writs of assistance, died September 11th; and Hutchinson, his successor, took his seat January 27, 1761. As the outstanding writs had become invalid, their renewal became necessary. But when Charles Paxton, the surveyor at Boston, appeared for that purpose in the Superior Court, February term, 1761, he was confronted by a petition signed by sixty inhabitants of the province, chiefly merchants of Boston, who desired to be heard in opposition, in person and by their counsel, James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher. Otis, Advocate-General for the crown, had resigned his office to avoid supporting the writ.[34] Gridley, the Attorney-General, appeared in his stead. No complete report of the arguments has been preserved.[35] Gridley, who treated the question as purely one of law, to be determined by statutes and precedents, said of Otis's argument, that "quoting history is not speaking like a lawyer;" and as to the arbitrary nature of the writ which allowed the entry of private houses in search of uncustomed goods, he reminded him that by a province law a collector of taxes, without execution, judgment, or trial, could arrest and throw a delinquent taxpayer into prison. "What! shall my property be wrested from me? Shall my liberty be destroyed by a collector for a debt unadjudged, without the common indulgence and lenity of the law? So it is established; and the necessity of having public taxes effectually and speedily collected is of infinitely greater moment to the whole than the liberty of any individual."
Otis's argument is well known. Carried to its logical results, it was a plea for commercial and political independence of the colonies, and was fully vindicated by the result of the conflict it precipitated. But as a legal argument it is less conclusive.[36]
The majority of the court, however, were with Otis; and had judgment been given at the time, the decision would have been in his favor. But Hutchinson counselled delay until the practice in England could be learned; and as it appeared that such writs were issued, of course, from the Exchequer, on the 18th of November, the court, after re-argument, pronounced them to be legal. Thenceforth they were freely used. Otis's argument, without doubt, secured his election to the General Court in May, in which his influence was second to that of no other in bringing on the struggle which ended in independence. Nor was its effect limited to Massachusetts. It reached the remotest colonies, and, as John Adams said, led to "the revolution in the principles, views, opinions, and feelings of the American people."[37]
Revolution, however, had been long impending. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October, 1748, which put an end to the long war between England and France, opened with the declaration that "Europe sees the day which the Divine Providence had pointed out for the reëstablishment of its repose. A general peace succeeds to a long and bloody war." But neither the peace, nor the treaty by which it was secured, was satisfactory to one of the belligerents; for England had failed to secure the commercial advantages for which the war had been undertaken, and the terms of the treaty, requiring her to give hostages for the restoration of Cape Breton to France, excited the indignation of the British people. Nor were other causes for the renewal of the war wanting. The aggressive policy of France in respect to the English possessions in Acadia and along the Ohio and the Mississippi, notwithstanding the treaty, soon produced its legitimate results. The Seven Years' War followed. In Asia and in the West Indies, the maritime powers measured their strength by sea. At the same time in North America, England and her colonies on the one side, and France on the other, contended for the empire of the continent. Led by Clive, Wolfe, Amherst, and Rodney, and inspired by the genius of Pitt, the forces of England everywhere prevailed, and she took the first place among the nations.
On the 10th of February, 1763, at Paris, was signed the treaty that recognized the extinction of the French empire in North America. This treaty marks an epoch in the history of America, as well as in that of England and of France. To the latter it was a period of humiliation, not only in the loss of colonies upon which, for nearly a century, she had expended vast sums without any adequate return, but also in the frustration of her purpose of gaining sole possession of the continent.
By England it was regarded as the close of a contest to maintain her power on the same continent, and make it subservient to her commercial and manufacturing interests, which had lasted for nearly a hundred years. Yet there was a well-founded apprehension, expressed at the time, that her colonies, relieved from the fear of French aggressions, would throw off the authority of the mother country.[38] What was the fear of the mother country, on the other hand, was the hope and expectation, more or less remote, of the colonies. For the experience gained in the French wars was of great value to them in the revolutionary struggle. Officers had become familiar with the direction of large bodies of troops, and with the means of their transport and supply; and soldiers had learned that efficiency depended upon discipline. Provincial assemblies also had been taught to look for safety in strategic operations remote from their own territory. But at no time before the assembling of the congress of 1754 had the colonies been called to consider such a union of all as would give unity to military operations, and secure the semblance, at least, of a general government. The union proposed at that time would have involved some loss of independence, without securing any efficient means of enforcing the recommendations of the congress, and so the colonies hesitated, and finally laid it aside. But there can be no doubt that the consideration given to it by the several colonies led them more readily to come together for concerted action in the congress of 1765.
The year 1763 is usually regarded as the beginning of the American Revolution, because in that year the English ministry determined to raise a revenue from the colonies. This led to a contest, which, like most civil wars, was long and embittered. It engendered feelings which have not yet passed away,—feelings which interfere with a calm and dispassionate review of the motives of the parties concerned, and of the circumstances which attended their controversy. It was a war between Britons and the descendants of Britons, who, with a common ancestry, laws, and manners, retained their essential race characteristics in spite of the lapse of time or the change of place: everywhere and always lovers of liberty, but in power haughty, insolent, and aggressive on the weak, and in subjection turbulent and impatient of restraint; proud of ancestry, partial to old customs and precedents, but quick to resist laws which impede the course of equity, and never permitting forms to prevent the accomplishment of substantial justice. Such was the parent and such was the child: and in the light of these facts we are to read the history of the Revolution. It exhibited the race in no new light, nor did the contest involve any new principle. Its sentiments were expressed in the old idiomatic language,—petition, remonstrance, riot, war.
For more than a hundred years the colonies had been regarded as appendages to the crown rather than as an integral part of the empire; and when Parliament, at the instigation of the mercantile classes and in derogation of royal prerogative, began at the close of the seventeenth century to assume control over them, and, a few years later, to vote large sums from the imperial treasury for their protection, and, in some cases, for the support of their civil governments, that body looked for reimbursement to the profits which would inure to British merchants from the monopoly of colonial trade and navigation, and flow indirectly into the national Exchequer. But with the close of the French War a new policy seemed to become necessary. The debt had swelled to frightful proportions. The British people were groaning under the weight of the annual interest and their current expenses. Every source of revenue seemed to be drained, and the ministry turned their eyes for relief to the colonies; not, indeed, for relief from the present debt, but from the necessity of adding to it the whole expense of defending the colonies. This was the fatal mistake which precipitated the Revolution. On this subject, however, there seems to be some misapprehension. The popular idea was, and still is, that the colonists were to be taxed to pay the interest on the national debt and the current expenses of the government, and that all moneys raised in the colonies were to pass into the British Exchequer (thus draining them of their specie), there to remain subject to the king's warrant. Such, however, was not the scheme of the ministry. Not a farthing was to leave America. All sums collected were to be deposited in the colonial treasuries, and only certificates thereof were to be sent to the Exchequer. These were to be kept apart from the general funds, and, after defraying the charges of the administration of justice and the support of the civil government within all or any of the colonies, they were to be subject to parliamentary appropriation for their defence, protection, and security, and for no other purpose.[39]
The alleged necessity was this: The government had broken the French power in Canada, and shaken its hold upon the lakes and great rivers of the West. This achievement, so glorious to the empire, and therefore to the colonies as parts of it, and more immediately for their benefit, had added one hundred and forty millions to the national debt, under which the subjects within the realm were staggering. While some colonies had been tardy or negligent in furnishing their quotas of men and money for the war, yet it was acknowledged that as a whole they had borne their fair proportion of the expense, and that some had exceeded their share. So far all was clear. Although Canada had been conquered mainly for the colonies, still the conquest added to the security and glory of the empire, and the accounts for past expenditures were squared. But what of the future? As these possessions had been acquired, a stable government was needed for them, both for the safety of the colonies and for the honor of England. They were still inhabited by Indians under French influence, and they might become dangerous unless controlled by military power. Choiseul, the great French minister, informed by the reports of his secret agent, foresaw the complications likely to arise in the government of the colonies, and was not without hope of retrieving by diplomacy the losses which had occurred from war. Forts and garrisons were necessary. Although the Northern colonies were comparatively secure, the Carolinas and Georgia were menaced by powerful and hostile tribes. The government must regard the colonies as a unit, of which all parts were entitled to imperial protection. To this view of the case there could be no sound objection. Twenty thousand troops,—Pitt thought more would be needed,—besides civil officers to regulate such affairs as did not fall within colonial jurisdictions, were to be sent to the colonies. At whose expense ought these military and civil forces to be maintained? The British farmer objected to pay for the protection of his untaxed colonial competitor in the British market. If the colonies were to continue to be governed in the interest of the mercantile classes, upon them might reasonably fall the expense of their protection. But the acquisition of vast territories required a new policy, and it was deemed equitable that they should be defended at the expense of the empire of which the colonies were a part. They had claimed and received imperial protection, and they ought to bear a proportional part of the cost, which might be collected under the imperial authority with the same certainty and promptness as were taxes on other subjects of the king. This was the ministerial view of the matter as I gather it from the debates in Parliament.
This claim of the ministry was met by the liberal party on both sides of the water in two ways. It was asserted that the late war, and in fact all the wars which affected the colonies, had been waged in the interest of commerce and for the aggrandizement of the realm of which they were no part, and that the newly acquired territories were of doubtful advantage to colonies as yet sparsely populated. But if these considerations were not conclusive, still the colonists ought not to be taxed, because the imperial government by monopolizing their trade received far more than the colonial share of the expense attending their defence. The liberals also asserted that there was no disposition on the part of the colonists to seek exemption from a reasonable share of these imperial expenses; but as in the past they had voluntarily contributed their part, and in some cases even more, so they would in the future; and that in the future, as in the past, these contributions ought to be voluntary, and the frequency and amount to be determined by the provincial assemblies. Moreover, as the colonists neither had, nor could have, any equitable or efficient representation in the imperial Parliament, they could not consent to have their property taken from them by representatives not chosen by themselves.
The ministry and their adherents replied that the foregoing arguments, even if sound, were such as no party charged with the administration of affairs, and obliged to raise a certain amount of money from a people clamorous for relief from present taxes, could accept; that no reliance could be placed on voluntary contributions; that the necessities of government required that money should be raised by some system which would act with regularity and certainty, and reach the unwilling as well as the willing; that even in the last war, when the existence of the English colonies was threatened by a foe moving with celerity by reason of its unity, the movements of English troops had been delayed by the backwardness of the colonies in furnishing their quotas; and now that the pressure of the French power was removed from New England, that section would leave the Middle and Southern colonies to their own resources, especially when it was remembered how remiss those colonies had been in assisting the north and east when attacked.[40] It was also answered that so far from the monopoly of the colonial trade being a set-off to the expenses incurred by the mother country in defending the colonies, the fact was notorious that by the evasion of the navigation laws and acts of trade the colonists had escaped the restrictions intended by those laws, and at the same time had received bounties and drawbacks from the British Exchequer which enabled them to undersell the British merchants in the markets of Europe.
Here was a deadlock. The arguments on both sides seemed conclusive. No practical solution of the difficulty was proposed at the time, nor has been since. Both parties were firm in their convictions. Neither could yield without the surrender of essential rights. A conflict was unavoidable unless one party would relinquish the authority claimed by the imperial government; unavoidable unless the colonies, essentially free by growth, development, and distance, would yield to pretensions incompatible with their rights as British subjects. The new policy contemplated after the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 was carried into effect after the treaty of Paris in 1763. But nothing could have been more unfortunate than the time at which Great Britain inaugurated this policy, and no ministers than those by whom it was to be carried out. On essential political questions which divided the colonists and the mother country Great Britain herself was in the midst of a revolution. The new policy which was inaugurated fell into the hands of those opposed to it. Whig ministers were charged with the execution of an illiberal and reactionary scheme. Consequently, the administration of American affairs was weak and vacillating. The result was inevitable. Had Pitt, with his large views and great administrative abilities, been at the head of affairs for ten years after the peace, the Revolution might have been postponed. On the other hand, had the mercantile system during the same period been administered with the unity of purpose and thoroughness of measures which characterized Carleton's administration in Canada, and had it been enforced by the military genius of Clive, the rebellion might have been temporarily suppressed.
In the journals and statutes of the provincial assemblies we find from the beginning a similarity of causes leading to the final rupture. There are the same quarrels about the royal prerogative; the same repugnance to the navigation laws and acts of trade; the same unwillingness to make permanent provision for the support of the royal governors and judges, and the same restiveness under interference with their internal affairs; but owing either to differences in their original constitutions or of interests, commercial and agricultural, or because of varied nationality and religion, or by reason of all these causes combined, discontent was less general in the Southern than in the Northern colonies. Of the Northern colonies, in Massachusetts we find the causes which brought on the war operative and continuous from the beginning. Party strife between friends and opponents of prerogative existed in other colonies, but in Massachusetts the conflict broke out with special virulence between the adherents of Otis and those of Hutchinson. It was also intensified by the pecuniary interests of a large part of the inhabitants of Boston, which were affected by the enforcement of the navigation laws through the aid of writs of assistance. It was for this enforcement that Hutchinson was held responsible when the mob sacked his house, and were ready to do violence to his person.
The province had received from the British Exchequer more than £60,000 sterling for the war expenses of 1759, and nearly £43,000 for those of 1761. Money was plentiful, and more was expected from the same source. There was a lull in the angry storm of local politics when news of the preliminaries of peace reached Boston in January, 1763. With this came assurances that Parliament would reimburse the colonies for expenses incurred, beyond their proportion, in the last year of the war; and the two Houses of the General Court agreed upon an address expressing gratitude to the king for protection against the French power, and full of loyalty and duty. But quiet was not of long continuance. The close of the war dried up several sources of profitable trade or adventure,[41]—some legal, such as furnishing supplies to the king's forces, and some illicit. Then came orders from the Board of Trade to enforce the navigation laws, heretofore chiefly evaded, but now to be enforced with the aid of writs of assistance. At the same time plans were entertained by the cabinet for making changes in the constitutions of the colonies; and what was hardly less opportune, the English bishops incessantly pressed upon the ministry the adoption of archbishop Secker's scheme of introducing an episcopal hierarchy into America, which would have carried with it some of the worst features of the prerogative.[42] The history of the period from the treaty of 1763 to the meeting of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia in 1774 is a narrative of an attempt by the British ministry to enforce certain measures upon unwilling colonists, and of the resistance of the colonists to those measures. Who were the ministers, what were their measures, and how did the colonists resist them?
Pitt had carried the country through a long and glorious war; but he was not satisfied with the results. The cost had been heavy, and as a guaranty against future expense he meditated the substantial annihilation of the French power. He knew that France and Spain had entered into the Family Compact with a view to a war with England. War with Spain was only a question of time, and he would have anticipated its declaration by seizing the immense treasure belonging to that power, then on the sea. This would have replenished the British Exchequer, and perhaps have deferred a resort to American taxation. Pitt urged this measure at a cabinet meeting, September 18, 1761. His advice was not followed, and he resigned October 5. But war was declared against Spain, January 1, 1762, and carried on with brilliant results, though the golden opportunity of securing the Spanish treasure was lost. The preliminaries of peace were signed at Fontainebleau, November 3, 1763.
GEORGE III.
(From Andrews's Hist. of the War, London, 1785, vol. i. It follows a painting by Reynolds. Cf. cut in Murray's History, vol. i.—Ed.)
This virtually ended Pitt's connection with the ministry and with the conduct of American affairs as a leader; for although he was again at the head of the ministry from August 2, 1766, to October, 1768, his direction was merely nominal. It was during his administration that the Townshend Acts were passed, and the Mutiny Act extended to the colonies,—facts which show divided counsels and the lack of uniform purpose. Pitt seldom appeared in the ministry except to oppose his own government. Whenever his great powers were most needed by sore-pressed colleagues to devise some practicable policy for replenishing the Exchequer, or for governing the colonies, he was in the country wrestling with the gout. This was a serious loss to the mother country, but it hastened the independence of America.
LORD NORTH.
From Doyle's Official Baronage, ii. 89. It follows Dance's picture. Cf. J. C. Smith's Brit. Mez. Portraits, i. p. 135; Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 365; Walpole's Last Journals.—Ed.
The terms of peace with France were settled by Bute and Bedford, against the views of Pitt; but on April 16, 1763, Bute retired from the ministry, before the new policy for the government of the colonies had been fully developed. He was succeeded by George Grenville, who continued at the head of the government until July, 1765. Grenville was able, well informed, and thoroughly honest. His knowledge of financial matters was extensive and accurate, and, as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the preceding administration, he had become familiar with the difficulties of providing for the expenses of government. No question could have been more perplexing at this time. A certain amount of revenue was required to meet the interest on the public debt, and to defray current expenses. Economic theories of commercial policy would not serve as an item in the budget. The minister needed the money, and the Stamp Act was framed and passed. He also encountered other difficulties when public sentiment had become inflamed by the question of General Warrants. His relations to the king were unfriendly. Pitt threw his influence into the scale of the opposition, and Grenville's administration was a failure.
The Rockingham ministry began July 13, 1765, and ended August 2, 1766. The colonists themselves could hardly have chosen one more to their mind. It was weak and vacillating. It repealed the Stamp Act, and passed the Declaratory Bill. To Dowdswell, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Massachusetts House voted their thanks. Then came the Chatham-Grafton ministry, which was in power until December 31, 1769. This was nominally Pitt's ministry; but his elevation to the peerage impaired his influence with the people, and after nine months he retired from public affairs by reason of ill health. Men of such opposite views and character as Shelburne, Hillsborough, Charles Townshend, and Lord North were of this ministry.
Lord North was premier from February 10, 1770, to September 6, 1780. Long after he wished to retire he continued to hold power at the personal solicitation, and even by the command, of the king. He was able, faithful, and patriotic; but his heart was not in the work of subduing the colonies, nor could he pilot the ship of state through dangerous seas.
Such were the ministers at one of the most critical periods in English history. No first-class man is to be found among them save Pitt, and his real attitude was that of opposition. He raised the storm, but when his hand ought to have been on the helm he was prostrate in the cabin.
Nor were the governors of Massachusetts, during a period when affairs needed a firm hand, although worthy gentlemen, altogether such as a far-seeing ministry would have chosen to carry out the new policy. Shirley was the only governor of Massachusetts who possessed the favor of the people; and yet he believed in the king's prerogative, and valued himself highly as its representative. He endeavored to suppress illicit trade and to enforce the navigation laws; and from his conferences with Franklin, it is certain that he contemplated some radical changes in the constitutions of the colonies.[43] But he got more money from the people for public uses than any previous governor, and even persuaded them to pass a provincial stamp act.[44] The secret of Shirley's influence may have been that he was less eager to secure his own salary than some of his predecessors had shown themselves to be, and that he had displayed unequalled activity in conducting the French war, which engaged the attention of the people. Pownall, who succeeded Shirley, belonged to the popular party. He gave no particular attention to the navigation laws, and was on the opposite side from Hutchinson, who was lieutenant-governor during the latter part of his term, which closed in 1760.
After Pownall came Bernard, and with him the beginning of the Revolution. Bernard was not without ability, accomplishments, and good intentions; but he was a Tory. More firmly even than Shirley, he believed in the royal prerogatives, and in some modification of the provincial charters to bring their action into harmony with the imperial system. During his administration, and in some cases at his suggestion, the ministry entered upon that series of measures which lost the colonies to Great Britain: the enforcement of the navigation laws; the use of writs of assistance; Grenville's revenue acts in 1764; the Stamp Act of 1765; the Townshend duties of 1767; and the arrival of military forces in 1768.
The purposes contemplated by these successive administrations were not unreasonable, nor were the measures by which they sought to accomplish them unwise in themselves. The general policy was the same as that afterwards pursued by the colonies when they had become a great empire,—homogeneity, equal contributions to expenses, a preference for their own shipping, and protection to their own industries.
The difficulty arose from a misconception of the relations of the colonies to the mother country. They were not a part of the realm, and could neither equally share its privileges nor justly bear its burdens. The attempt to bring them within imperial legislation failed, and could only fail. They were colonies; and the chief benefit the parent state could legitimately derive from them was the trade which would flow naturally to Great Britain by reason of the political connection, and would increase with the prosperity of the colonies.
Early in 1763 the Bute ministry, of which George Grenville and Charles Townshend were members, entered upon the new policy. To enforce the navigation laws, armed cutters cruised about the British coast and along the American shores; their officers, for the first time, and much to their disgust, being required to act as revenue officers. To give unity to their efforts, an admiral was stationed on the coast. To adjudicate upon seizures of contraband goods, and other offences against the revenue, a vice-admiralty court, with enlarged jurisdiction, and sitting without juries, was set up.[45] Royal governors, hitherto chiefly occupied with domestic administration, were now obliged to watch the commerce of an empire. It was seen long before this time that the successful administration of the new system would require some modification of the provincial charters; but the difficulties were so serious that the matter was deferred.
Such was the new order of things. The student who reflects upon the complete and radical change effected or threatened by these new measures, so much at variance with the habits and customary rights of the colonists, breaking up without notice not only illicit but legitimate trade, and sweeping away their commercial prosperity, is no longer at loss to account for the outburst of wrath which followed the Stamp Act, a year later.[46] To avert these hostile proceedings, the colonists memorialized the king and Parliament. They employed resident agents to act in their behalf. They availed themselves of party divisions and animosities in England. They alarmed British merchants by non-importation and self-denying agreements. When these measures seemed likely to prove ineffectual, they aroused public sentiment through the press, by public gatherings and legislative resolutions, by committees of correspondence between towns and colonies, and finally by continental congresses. They did not scruple to avail themselves of popular violence, nor, in the last extremity, of armed resistance to British authority.
So far as trade and commerce were concerned, it was a struggle between British and colonial merchants. The colonial merchants desired freedom of commerce; the British merchant desired its monopoly. But this does not state the case precisely; for the colonial merchants were desirous of retaining what they possessed rather than of acquiring something new. By the navigation laws the British merchant had a legal monopoly of certain specified trades; but by evading these laws, the colonial merchants had gained a large part of this trade for themselves. One party, standing on legal rights, wished to recover this lost trade; the other party, basing their claim on natural equity and long enjoyment, wished to retain it. This was an old question, a hundred years old; but it had acquired new interest since the government, with the aid of writs of assistance, had undertaken to enforce the navigation laws and acts of trade. Such was the first issue between the parties. The second was this, and it was new: As has been said, Great Britain had never undertaken to raise a revenue from the colonies, though she had often contemplated doing so, and especially during the French war just closed. At the close of the war it was estimated that £300,000 would be required to man the forts about to be vacated by the French, and to maintain twenty regiments to hold the Indians in check, who were still under French influence and might become dangerous, as happened in Pontiac's time; and to give efficiency to civil administration by granting to governors, judges, and some other officers fixed and regular salaries, instead of having them depend on irregular and fluctuating grants of colonial assemblies. One third of these expenses—£100,000—the ministry proposed to raise by laying duties on importations, reserving a direct tax by stamps for fuller consideration.
The colonists met this proposition by denying both the necessity and the right of raising a revenue,—at first distinguishing between external and internal taxes, and finally objecting to all taxes raised by a Parliament in which they neither were nor practically could be represented. These issues were complicated with several others of long standing, but which may be left out of the account here.
The popular idea has been that the Revolution began with the Stamp Act. But it seems strange that prosperous colonists, in whose behalf the British people had expended £60,000,000 sterling, should refuse to pay £100,000, one third of the sum deemed necessary for their future defence, and that months before they were called upon to raise the first penny they should fall into a paroxysm of rage, from one end of the continent to the other, and commit disgraceful acts of violence upon property and against persons of the most estimable character.
This view, however, overlooks several facts. If we disregard the chronic quarrels in all the colonies, growing out of the exercise of the royal prerogatives, Virginia and Massachusetts especially had been aroused on the abstract questions concerning the relations of the colonies to Great Britain, and in them the earliest demonstrations of hostility to the Stamp Act were manifested. In the famous "Parsons Case" argued by Patrick Henry in December, 1763, in words which rang through Virginia because they affected every man in that colony, he drew the prerogative into question, not only in regard to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Anglican hierarchy, but also on the right of the king to negative the "Two-penny Act" of the colonial assembly. In Massachusetts, James Otis, in 1761, arguing the writs of assistance, assumed the natural rights of the colonists to absolute independence. But the promulgation of none of these theories of abstract rights accounts for the general outbreak in 1765. Its most potent influence was the enforcement of the navigation acts in the great commercial centres, and the ruin threatening New England through the breaking up of her trade with the French West Indies and the Spanish Main[47] by the modification of the Sugar Act in 1764. The staples of New England were fish, cattle, and lumber. The better quality of fish found a market in Europe, but this trade was subject to competition. For the poorer quality the chief market was in the French West Indies, where by the French law it could be exchanged only for molasses. This was shipped to New England, and used not only in its raw state, but distilled into rum, which, besides supplying home consumption, was to some extent exported to Africa in exchange for slaves. This trade and commerce with the Spanish Main was the chief source of the wealth of New England. But in 1733, to protect the sugar industry of the English West India islands, a duty amounting to prohibition was laid on all sugar and molasses imported into the American colonies from the French islands. So long as this act was not enforced, it did little harm; but if enforced, it would not only ruin the trade in rum and lumber, but injure the fisheries also, for the English islands were limited in population and had no liking for poor fish. The French, besides being more numerous, were less particular as to their diet; but if they could not sell molasses, they would not buy fish. It was proposed to modify and enforce this act. Minot[48] says: "The business of the fishery, which, it was alleged, would be broken up by the act, was at this time estimated in Massachusetts at £164,000 sterling per annum; the vessels employed in it, which would be nearly useless, at £100,000; the provisions used in it, the casks for packing fish, and other articles, at £22,700 and upwards; to all which there was to be added the loss of the advantage of sending lumber, horses, provisions, and other commodities to the foreign plantations as cargoes, the vessels employed to carry fish to Spain and Portugal, the dismissing of 5000 seamen from their employment, the effects of the annihilation of the fishery upon the trade of the province and of the mother country in general, and its accumulative evils by increasing the rival fisheries of France. This was forcibly urged as it respected the means of remittances to England for goods imported into the province, which had been made in specie to the amount of £150,000 sterling, beside £90,000 in the treasurer's bills for the reimbursement money, within the last eighteen months. The sources for obtaining this money were through foreign countries by the means of the fishery, and would be cut off with the trade to their plantations." This was what the enforcement of the molasses act meant. Neither the duties laid in 1764 nor the collection of the taxes anticipated from the Stamp Act of 1765 would have produced a tithe of the evil that would have followed. John Adams,[49] confirming the statement of Minot, says: "The strongest apprehensions arose from the publication of the orders for the strict execution of the molasses act, which is said to have caused a greater alarm in the country than the taking of Fort William Henry did in the year 1757."[50] Rumors of the intention of the ministry had been rife for some time, and in January, 1764, the Massachusetts Assembly wrote to their agent in London that the officers of the customs, in pursuance of orders from the Lords of the Treasury, had lately given public notice that the act, in all its parts, would be carried into execution, and that the consequences would be ruinous to the trade of the province, hurtful to all the colonies, and greatly prejudicial to the mother country.[51]
Besides the rumors of the modification of the Sugar Act came others respecting new duties, and a Stamp Act. In its alarm, the General Court determined to send Hutchinson to London as special agent, to prevent, if possible, the intended legislation. He was in favor of allowing the colonies the freest trade, but acknowledged the supremacy of Parliament.[52] No man knew the colonies better, or was better able to present their just claims, than Hutchinson. He had much at stake in the colony in which he was born, and to which he had rendered many and honorable services. No man loved her better, or was more worthy of honor from her. He was chosen by both Houses; but Governor Bernard suggested doubts as to the expediency of his going to England without the special leave of the king; and subsequently the project was laid aside in consequence of some rising suspicions as to his political sentiments.[53]
Ruin threatened New England. A Stamp Act was not needed to set her aflame; and the other colonies soon had reasons of their own for joining her in the general opposition. All parties were agreed as to the danger, but they differed as to the remedy.
The reports which reached America in the winter of 1764, respecting the intentions of the ministry to raise a revenue from the colonies, were verified in the following spring. The substance of Grenville's resolutions (with the exception of that respecting stamps, which was laid aside for the present) became a law April 6, 1764. Bancroft has summarized this act as "a bill modifying and perpetuating the act of 1733, with some changes to the disadvantage of the colonies; an extension of the navigation acts, making England the storehouse of Asiatic as well as of European supplies; a diminution of drawbacks on foreign articles exported to America; imposts in America, especially on wines; a revenue duty instead of a prohibitory duty on foreign molasses; an increased duty on sugar; various regulations to restrain English manufactures, as well as to enforce more diligently acts of trade; a prohibition of all trade between America and St. Pierre and Miquelon."[54]
Organized opposition to the ministerial measures began in Boston, and perhaps, at that time, could have begun nowhere else. For not only were the interests of that town, in the fisheries, trade, and navigation, the most considerable in the colonies, but there, as nowhere else in the same degree, for more than a century, had been operative causes of dissatisfaction connected with the navigation acts, the exercise of the royal prerogatives, and ecclesiastical affairs; and in no other section had Otis's declaration of the general principles of liberty found such ready acceptance.
The Grenville Act of April, 1764, was to take effect September 30. News of its passage had scarcely arrived in Boston before the citizens in town meeting, May 24, voted instructions[55] to their representatives in the General Court, which had been presented by Samuel Adams. They were directed to endeavor to prevent proceedings designed to curtail their trade, and to impose new taxes,—"for if their trade might be taxed, why not their lands?"—and to obtain from the General Assembly all needed advice and instruction, so that their agent in London might effectually "demonstrate for them all those rights and privileges which justly belonged to them either by charter or birth." Since the other colonies were equally interested, their representatives were also to endeavor to obtain coöperation in that direction.
Thus at the very outset the patriots sought counsel and union with the sister colonies. These instructions were scattered far and wide. The General Court came in on the 30th. June 1, letters from the London agent were referred to a committee of which Otis was one. On the 8th, The Rights of the British Colonies was read,[56] and again on the 12th, when it was referred to the committee of which Otis was a member.[57] On the 13th a letter to Mauduit, their agent, was reported, which must have made his ears tingle,[58] for it was a scathing rebuke for neglect and inefficiency in not preventing the injurious legislation, and for making unwarranted concessions in behalf of the colony.[59] Otis went over the whole question of colonial rights and grievances, but by implication he admitted that representation in Parliament would prove satisfactory.[60] The same committee was directed to correspond with the other governments, requesting coöperation in their endeavors to effect the repeal of the Sugar Act and to prevent the Stamp Act. The letter of the committee, drawn by Otis, together with his Rights of the Colonies, was sent to the agent in London, to make the best use of them in his power. As this action taken by the House of Representatives, which did not seek the concurrence of the Council as usual, was not regarded as judicious by the moderate party, the governor was induced to call the General Court together on the 12th of October. In the mean time the temper of the merchants had become soured by revenue seizures to the amount of £3,000.[61]
The General Court (November 3), in answer to the governor's speech, elaborately discussed the act of Parliament, and the same day agreed upon a petition to the House of Commons, setting forth the injurious nature of the new measures and of the navigation laws, as well as deprecating their enforcement. This was accompanied by a letter to their agent, showing historically the services and expenses of the colony in various wars, and their willingness to share in the defence of the empire.[62] These papers—the petition and the letter—were drawn up by Hutchinson; but though able, candid, and convincing, their tone did not satisfy the more ardent patriots, especially when they were contrasted with Otis's fiery letter to the agent in June, or when compared with similar documents emanating from some other colonies,—that of New York in particular: for the discontent of the colonies, to which the Boston instructions doubtless contributed, was general, and manifested itself in petitions, remonstrances, and correspondence.[63]
The events of 1764 left no doubt as to the manner in which the people would receive the Stamp Act of 1765; nor, although with grievances of their own, were they unobservant of what was going on in England. "Wilkes and Liberty" was a familiar cry in Boston as well as in London, and the names Whig and Tory became terms of reproach.[64]
Notwithstanding the memorials and petitions of the colonial assemblies, and the remonstrances of their agents in London, George Grenville persevered in his determination to bring in a stamp bill. Since its first suggestion, he had listened patiently to the colony agents and other friends of America; but they proposed nothing better, or so good, if the colonies were to be taxed at all. They admitted that the stamp tax would be inexpensive in its collection, and general in its effect upon different classes of people. Indeed, so little did the agents understand the real feeling in America that they—and Franklin was among them—were quite ready, when the time came, to solicit positions as stamp-distributors for their friends, and Richard Henry Lee even asked a place for himself.[65] February 6, 1765, Grenville introduced his resolutions for a Stamp Act, and put forward his plan in a carefully prepared speech. Colonel Barré's opposition called forth the well-known question of Charles Townshend, and the still more famous rejoinder of the former. Pitt was away and ill. The debate occupied but one session of the Commons, and the ministers were directed to bring in a bill, which was done on the 13th. Numerous petitions against it, presented by colonial agents, were rejected under the rule which allowed no petition against a money bill. The bill passed both Houses, and on March 22 received the royal assent. But in America there was no apathy. If there had been a calm, it presaged the coming storm. The passage of the bill was known in America before the end of May, and from Virginia came the first legislative response. She spoke through the voice of her great orator. Of Patrick Henry's six resolutions, though supported by a powerful speech, only four, however, were carried, May 30, by a small majority, in a House in which the Established Church and the old aristocracy were very powerful.[66]
The General Court of Massachusetts did not meet until May 27, but set to work so promptly that the House, June 6, under the lead of James Otis, who had recovered from a fit of vacillation, voted that it was highly expedient that there should be a meeting, as soon as might be, of committees from the several colonial assemblies, "to consult together on the present circumstances of the colonies, and the difficulties to which they are and must be reduced by operation of the late acts of Parliament for levying duties and taxes on the colonies." It was agreed to send them a circular letter to that effect, recommending a congress, in the city of New York, the first Tuesday of October. This measure, which led to the Stamp Act Congress, was pushed through with an unanimous vote of the House (June 6), though probably not with the equally concordant opinion of the members; and the circular, which was dated June 8, was immediately dispatched.[67] James Otis, Oliver Partridge, and Timothy Ruggles—the last two having little heart in the matter—were chosen delegates. The response to the Massachusetts circular was neither unanimous, nor, from some of the assemblies, enthusiastic.[68] At this stage of the Revolution, in high offices and in provincial assemblies were friends of the royal government able to make their influence felt in opposition to popular measures. Nine of the colonies, however, were represented in the congress, and from others came expressions of good-will. In the mean time public sentiment was rapidly shaping itself into violent opposition to the act. In Boston the Sons of Liberty were on the alert. When the name of Andrew Oliver appeared among the stamp-distributors he was hanged in effigy from the Liberty Tree on the night of the 13th of August; and the next night the frame of a building going up on his land, and supposed to be intended as a stamp-office, was broken in pieces and used to consume the effigy before his own door.[69] On the 26th of the same month the records of the hated Vice-Admiralty Court were burned by the mob, the house of the comptroller of the customs sacked, and that of Chief Justice Hutchinson forcibly entered and left in ruins. His plate and money were carried off, and his books and valuable manuscripts were thrown into the streets. Nor did he or his family escape without difficulty. The militia were not called out to maintain order, for many of the privates were in the mob. Men of standing secretly connived at proceedings which they afterwards insincerely condemned. Though these violent outbreaks came earlier and were carried to greater excess in Massachusetts than in any other province, similar demonstrations followed in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania.[70]
When the Stamp Act Congress met in New York, October 7, 1765, that city was the headquarters of the British forces in America, under the command of General Gage. Lieutenant-Governor Colden, then filling the executive chair, was in favor of the act, and resolved to execute it; but the Sons of Liberty expressed different sentiments. The Congress contained men some of whom became celebrated. Timothy Ruggles was chosen speaker, but Otis was the leading spirit. In full accord with him were the Livingstons of New York, Dickinson of Pennsylvania, McKean and Rodney of Delaware, Tilghman of Maryland, and Rutledge and the elder Lynch of South Carolina. New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia failed to send delegates, but not for lack of interest in the cause. The Congress prepared a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, An Address to the King, a Memorial to the House of Lords, and a Petition to the House of Commons, and adjourned on October 25th. For a clear, accurate, and calm statement of the position of the colonies these papers were never surpassed; nor, until the appearance of the Declaration of Independence, was any advance made from the ground taken in them.[71]
It is not to be inferred from the results of their proceedings that there were no differences of opinion among the delegates. Several of them afterwards took sides with the king; and there was doubtless diversity of sentiment on the Stamp Act, as well as in Parliament, which reassembled January 14, 1766, under a different ministry from that which had carried the measure less than a year before. For in a few months after the passage of the act, George III., chiefly on personal grounds, had changed his legal advisers. After negotiations with Pitt had failed, a new ministry, with the Marquis of Rockingham as chief, and the Duke of Grafton and General Conway as Secretaries of State, was installed, July 13, 1765. It was a Whig ministry. With it, though not of it, was associated Edmund Burke, private secretary of Rockingham, and not long after, through his influence, a member of the House of Commons. This change of the ministry was regarded with favor by the colonists, and doubtless encouraged their resistance to the Stamp Act. The action of the colonists produced a great effect on the new ministry, and alarmed the British merchants trading with America. Their trade had been threatened by non-importation agreements made to take effect January 1, 1766, and their debts were imperilled by the determination of the colonists to withhold the amount of them as pledges for good conduct. The general confusion likely to arise in the administration of justice, and the transactions of the custom-house, from want of stamps, brought the ministry to their wits' end. Parliament assembled December 17th. But notwithstanding an effort by Grenville to bring on a general consideration of American affairs, the subject was postponed until after the holidays.
ROCKINGHAM.
From Doyle's Official Baronage, iii. 170.—Ed.
In the mean time some embarrassment was anticipated from the want of stamps, November 1,[72] when the act was to go into operation. Governor Bernard (September 25) had called the attention of the House of Representatives to the courts, which guarded the property and persons of the inhabitants, and to the custom-houses, upon which depended legal trade and navigation. The House, in its answer, October 23, had not shared his excellency's apprehensions, but was not then quite ready to say, as it said three months later (January 17, 1766), "The courts of justice must be open,—open immediately,—and the law, the great rule of right in every county of the province, executed."[73] But this attitude had not been taken without intermediate steps. In December the town of Boston presented a petition to the governor and council for the reopening of the courts, which was supported by John Adams, who then first publicly identified himself with the patriot cause, of which he became one of the most efficient advocates. After some delay and inconvenience, the courts and custom-houses throughout the colonies, early in the spring, took the risk of proceeding without stamped papers, trusting to find their justification in necessity.
Parliament reassembled January 14, 1766. The king's speech opened with a reference to "affairs in America, and Mr. Secretary Conway laid before the House of Commons important letters and papers on the same subject." On the 17th a petition of the merchants of London trading with North America against the Stamp Act was presented. Then (January 28) followed the examination of Franklin, in relation to the Stamp Act, before the House, in committee.[74] With this mass of information before them, American affairs received an exhaustive discussion. The Stamp Act was repealed, and the royal assent was given March 18th. The debates on the Declaratory Act were no less full. It was a memorable session,—memorable for the first speech of Burke; for those great speeches of Pitt which placed him at the head of modern orators, for Grenville's masterly defence of his colonial policy, and for Franklin's examination. It was also memorable for the constitutional discussions of Mansfield and Camden in the House of Lords. If the reader finds it difficult to resist Mansfield's judicial interpretation of the British Constitution adverse to the American claim, he recognizes in the great principles then enunciated the force which popularized that Constitution and marked a forward movement of the British race.
The Declaratory Act—that the king, with the advice of Parliament, had full power to make laws binding America in all cases whatsoever—was passed. This gave Pitt some trouble, considering his emphatic declaration in that regard; but the liberal party in the colonies soon met it with the counter-affirmation that Parliament possessed no authority whatever in America except by consent of the provincial assemblies. If the colonists had not forced the British government from its position, they had advanced from their own. The repeal, however, caused great rejoicing on both sides of the Atlantic. British merchants expected no further trouble from non-importation agreements, and hoped that the colonists would now pay their debts,—amounting to £4,000,000. But there were misgivings on both sides. The ardent patriots were outspoken in condemning the Declaratory Act, which Franklin had thought would give no trouble. But the act of 1764, laying duties, remained; and the enforcement of the navigation laws—their real grievance—lost none of its vigor. Governor Bernard was under instructions to enforce the laws against illicit trade; and in addition to these official obligations, his share in the forfeitures of condemned goods laid his motives open to suspicion. Nothing could have been more unfortunate for his administration. It was also alleged that merchants were encouraged in schemes to defraud the revenue; and that when their ships and cargoes were compromised, they were seized and condemned. At a time when conciliatory measures were needed to reassure the colonists, the harshest were followed. Nevertheless, the repeal weakened the prerogative party on both sides of the water, and encouraged the liberal party by a knowledge of its power.
Fac-simile of an original in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society.—Ed.
Governor Bernard opened the General Court, May 29, 1766, with congratulations on the repeal of the Stamp Act. If he had stopped there he would have acted wisely; but he alluded to the "fury of the people" in their treatment of Hutchinson, and to some personal matters, which called forth a reply from the House couched in terms showing no abatement of animosity. This was increased on the receipt of another message from the governor (June 3), enclosing the Act of Repeal and the Declaratory Act, and at the same time informing them that he had been directed by Secretary Conway to recommend "that full and ample compensation be made to the late sufferers by the madness of the people", agreeably to the votes of the House of Commons. He also complained of their exclusion of the principal crown officers from the Council by non-election.[75] The General Court promptly availed themselves of this last topic for reply, instead of committing themselves on the matter of compensation. They did not fail, however, to vote a politic address of thanks to the king for assenting to the repeal of the Stamp Act, and to offer their grateful acknowledgments to Pitt and those members of the two Houses who had advocated it.[76] But the subject of compensation could not be passed by. The governor urged prompt compliance with the recommendation of Conway. The House, however, professing the greatest abhorrence of the madness and barbarity of the rioters, and promising their endeavors "to bring the perpetrators of so horrid a fact to exemplary justice, and, if it be in their power, to a pecuniary restitution of all damages", regarded compensation by the province as not an act of justice, but rather of generosity, and wished to consult their constituents. Therefore they referred the matter to the next session.[77]
In December the two Houses passed a bill granting compensation to those who had suffered losses in the Stamp Act riots, but, on the suggestion of Joseph Hawley, accompanied it with a general pardon, indemnity and oblivion to the offenders. Why they should have been so solicitous for the safety of those who had committed crimes, condemned in June in the severest terms, does not appear; and this invasion of the royal prerogative of pardon did not fail to attract the attention of the Parliament.[78]
In the late contest with Parliament the colonists had gained a victory, but it was neither final nor precisely on the right ground. As a matter of practical politics, they were ready to accept Pitt's distinction between commercial regulations and internal taxes. They took the repeal of the Stamp Act with thanks, but not as a finality. They participated in the lively demonstrations of joy which followed that event on both sides of the Atlantic; but thoughtful observers on both sides perceived that one of the most powerful agencies in effecting the repeal was the mercantile class, which had no intention of relinquishing its grasp upon colonial commerce. Nor was the popular feeling without guidance. It was the good fortune of the colonists, all through the long contest, to have statesmen like John Adams, Jay, and Dickinson, who could supplement the passionate appeals of Otis and some of his associates with the calm reasons of political philosophy. None rendered more valuable services in this respect than John Adams. In a series of papers which appeared in the Boston Gazette in the summer and fall of 1765,—when the minds of the people were inflamed by the Stamp Act,—and were afterwards republished in London as A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, he combated the ecclesiastical and feudal principles which lay at the bottom of the monarchical and Anglican system.
The substantial grievance of the commercial colonies was not the Stamp Act, which had not taken a farthing from their pockets. It was the enforcement of trade regulations, which impaired the value of the fisheries and dried up a principal source of revenue. A renewal of the contest, and for the first time on its true grounds, was not long postponed. The Rockingham ministry gave way, and Pitt, gazetted Earl of Chatham July 30, 1766, took the helm of state August 2d, and was the nominal head of the government until October, 1768. Among those associated with him were the Duke of Grafton, Charles Townshend, Conway, and the Earl of Shelburne. It was Pitt's misfortune—and his country's—during these stormy times, that when he was most needed he was disabled by sickness. Historians have speculated as to the probable pacification of America had Pitt—not Chatham—guided affairs.[79] Pitt's was a great name in America as well as in Europe. By his genius the French power in America had been destroyed. This the colonists knew. He had been generous in reimbursing their expenses in the late war. This, and his efforts in effecting the repeal of the Stamp Act, they remembered with gratitude. Whatever man could do in restoring things to their old order Pitt could have done. He might even have relinquished something of his claims for parliamentary supremacy in respect to trade and general legislation; but it is doubtful whether, even at that early period, he could have eradicated the ideas of independence which had taken possession of the colonists, or have arrested the movement which resulted in the independence of America and the overthrow of the royal prerogative in England.
JOHN ADAMS. (Amsterdam print.)
The Amsterdam edition, 1782, of Geschiedenis van het Geschil tusschen Groot-Britannie en Amerika ... door zijne Excellentie, den Heere John Adams.
There is a likeness of John Adams as a young man engraved in his Life and Works, vol. ii. He says of himself at the time of the famous scene when Otis was making his plea against the Writs of Assistance, and he was taking notes of it, that the artist depicting it would have to represent the young reporter as "looking like a short, thick Archbishop of Canterbury" (Works, x. 245). There was a print published in London in 1783 showing a head in a circle, which is reproduced in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., xi. 93. Copley painted him once, in 1783, in court dress, and the painting now hangs in Memorial Hall, Cambridge. The head of this full-length picture was engraved for Stockdale's edition of Adams's Defence of the Constitutions, published in 1794; and the painting was never engraved to show the entire figure till it appeared in vol. v. of the Works (A. T. Perkins's Copley, p. 27). Cf. the head in Bartlett Woodward's United States.
Stuart first painted him in 1812, and this picture belongs to his descendants, and is engraved in the Works, vol. i. There are copies of this picture by Gilbert Stuart Newton and B. Otis, both of which have been engraved. The Newton copy is in the Mass. Hist. Society (Catal. of Cabinet, no. 47; Proc., 1862, p. 3). The Otis copy has been engraved by J. B. Longacre (Sanderson's Signers, vol. viii.). Stuart again painted Adams in 1825, the year before he died, representing him as sitting at one end of a sofa. It is engraved on steel in the Works, vol. x., and on wood in the Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 192. (Cf. Mason's Stuart, p. 125.) Another Stuart is owned by Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge, of Boston.
A portrait by Col. John Trumbull also hangs in Memorial Hall, Cambridge; and Adams's likeness is also in Independence Hall. (Cf. Irving's Washington, quarto ed., vol. v.) A cabinet full-length by Winstanley, painted while Adams was at the Hague (1782), is in the Boston Museum (Johnston's Orig. Portraits of Washington, p. 93).
Among the contemporary popular engravings, mention may be made of that by Norman in the Boston Magazine, Feb., 1784; one in the European Magazine (vol. iv. 83).
Stuart also painted a portrait of the wife of John Adams, which is engraved in the Works, vol. ix. A picture of her by Blythe, at the age of twenty-one, accompanies the Familiar Letters.
Views of the Adams homestead in Quincy, Mass., are given in the Works (vol. i. p. 598); in Appleton's Journal (xii. 385); in Mrs. Lamb's Homes of America. An india-ink sketch, showing a distant view of Boston beyond the house, is in the halls of the Bostonian Society.—Ed.
The Massachusetts Assembly was in no amiable frame of mind. When there was no cause for quarrel, they made one. Bernard had probably been advised to preserve a prudent silence respecting political affairs. At the opening of the session, January 28, 1767, in a message of less than ten printed lines, he recommended "the support of the authority of the government, the maintenance of the honor of the province, and the promotion of the welfare of the people", as the chief objects for their consultation. This called forth a captious reply, and a complaint because Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson, who had not been reëlected to the Council, appeared in the council-chamber at the opening of the session, at the request of the governor and as matter of courtesy. The House found in his presence, if voluntary, "a new and additional instance of ambition and lust of power."
AUTOGRAPH OF JOHN ADAMS, 1815.
Part of a letter in Smith and Watson's Hist. and Lit. Curios., 1st ser., pl. vii.—Ed.
In the spring of 1767, Parliament had occasion to inquire into some colonial legislation. In April, 1765, the Mutiny Act had been extended to the colonies. This was intended in part to provide for military offences not within the jurisdiction of civil courts, and in part to require the colonies in America, as in England in like cases, to provide for quartering the king's troops. The New York Assembly made only partial provision. When Sir Henry Moore, the governor, communicated to them the letter of Earl Shelburne, to the effect that the king expected obedience to the act, the Assembly resolved not to comply, and called in question the authority of Parliament. Parliament then took the matter in hand, and suspended their legislative authority until compliance.[80] This action brought them to terms. It made considerable stir throughout the colonies, and was regarded as a serious invasion of their rights.
The arrival of several companies of royal artillery at Boston, in the fall of 1766, and the quartering of them at the expense of the province, by order of the governor and council, gave the General Court occasion, at their session in January, 1767, to express their opinion about unauthorized expenditures of the public money, and to enquire if more troops were expected.[81] The governor explained the quartering of the troops, and said he had no expectation, except from common rumor, of the arrival of additional forces. But his statement failed to allay apprehensions of a design on the part of the ministry to support their measures by military power. Added to other causes of alarm in 1767 was a report that Anglican bishops were about to be supported in the colonies, at the expense and under the patronage of the British government.
In 1767 strife was renewed on what are known as the Townshend Acts. Charles Townshend was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Chatham-Grafton ministry. He had reluctantly voted for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and still held to his opinions that the colonists should pay some share of the civil and military expenses arising from their defence and government; and if, to secure promptness and uniformity of action, some modification of their charters should be found necessary, then that ought to follow. In conformity with these views, he had given some pledges in respect to deriving a revenue from America, and, during Chatham's retirement, had brought forward his scheme of taxation in certain resolutions of the Committee of Ways and Means, April 16, 1767,[82] the substance of which was enacted June 29th, to go into effect November 20th. There were two acts known as the Townshend Acts: the first[83] providing for the more effectual execution of the laws of trade, and for the appointment of commissioners for that purpose; and the second[84] granting duties on glass, paper, colors, and tea, and legalizing writs of assistance. The revenue thus raised was to be applied to "defraying the charge of the administration of justice, and the support of the civil government in such provinces where it should be found necessary; and towards further defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions." Before the act went into operation Charles Townshend died (September 4, 1767), and Chatham's powers continued to be enfeebled by disease. It was the misfortune of Great Britain that both these able men should have been withdrawn from the public service during this critical period, and that the policy of each had to be represented by inferior men. Chatham's conciliatory methods had no fair trial; and Townshend's coercive measures were pressed neither with unity of purpose nor vigor of execution.
Between the passage of Townshend's Acts in the summer of 1767 and their taking effect in November, the colonists had ample time to study and organize opposition, stimulated by the arrival (November 5, 1767) of Burch and Hulton, two of the five commissioners of customs who had been sent over to enforce them. At first the people expressed their resentment, in which, as usual, those of Boston took the lead, by renewing their non-importation agreements. In the mean time efforts had been made to introduce domestic manufactures.[85] These practical measures in Massachusetts were supplemented by one of the ablest discussions of colonial rights which had yet appeared. In the early winter of 1767-8 John Dickinson published in a Philadelphia newspaper a series of essays entitled The Farmer's Letters, which soon attracted notice both in America and England.
From An impartial History of the War in America (Boston, 1781), vol. i. p. 325, engraved by J. Norman, a Boston engraver.
In 1772, when Adams was forty-nine, John Hancock commissioned Copley to paint pictures of Adams and himself, to commemorate their political union, and the two portraits hung for many years in the Hancock mansion on Beacon Street in Boston, before they were given to the town. That of Adams is a three-quarters length, and shows him standing at a table, holding a paper, in the attitude of speaking (Perkins's Copley, p. 28). As engraved by H. B. Hall, it is given in Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. i.; and it is also engraved in Delaplaine's Repository (1815); in Bancroft, vol. vii. (orig. ed.), and in other places, as well as, on wood, in the Mem. Hist. of Boston (iii. 35). After having hung for some years in Faneuil Hall, it has now been transferred to the Art Museum. It was engraved—the bust only—by Paul Revere, for the Royal American Mag., April, 1774, and a reproduction of this is given by Wells (vol. ii.). A copy of the original was made by J. Mitchell, and from this a mezzotint by Samuel Okey was issued at Newport in 1775.
Another and smaller picture, also by Copley (Perkins, p. 29), and said to have been painted in 1770, hangs in Memorial Hall, Cambridge, and has been engraved in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, ii. 438. Cf. Sanderson's Signers, vol. ix.
The Copley type of head characterizes the engraving by J. Norman, given above from the Boston edition of a current history. The London edition (1780) of the same book has a picture which has little resemblance to the Copley type, as will be seen by the fac-simile likewise herewith given, and marked "London, 1780."
There was a picture made late in life by John Johnson, which has been destroyed; but from a mezzotint of it, made in 1797 by Graham, H. B. Hall reëngraved it for Wells's third volume, and on wood in Higginson's Larger History, p. 255.
The statue by Miss Whitney follows the Copley head. One copy of this is in the Capitol at Washington, and another in Dock Square, in Boston.—Ed.
Their influence among all classes was widespread and profound.
SAMUEL ADAMS, LONDON, 1780.
The year 1768 was one of the most momentous of the Revolutionary period. Hitherto the colonists, in defence of their property, had denied the supremacy of Parliament as based on usurpation; but now, in defence of their privileges, they denied the prerogative of the king, the source of their political existence. This grew out of the Massachusetts Circular Letter. The General Court came together December 30, 1767. John Hancock, James Otis, and Joseph Hawley were prominent members, but though James Otis was still active, Samuel Adams was the master spirit. Never was his practical sagacity more serviceable to the cause; never did his genius for politics shine brighter. His fruitful pen is apparent in the remarkable series of state papers called forth by the Townshend Acts, comprising the letter of the House to their London agent (January 12, 1768), the Petition to the king (January 20), and the Circular Letter to the assemblies of the several colonies (February 11).[86] If the Townshend Acts were to be successfully resisted, union of sentiment and action among all the colonies was essential. This was the object of the circular letter. It was an arraignment of Parliament and the ministry in respect to the revenue acts, and the system by which the British government proposed to make civil officers, including the judges, the instruments for its enforcement; and it solicited an interchange of opinions on these subjects.[87] Governor Bernard watched the proceedings of the House with the deepest interest, nor was he long in doubt as to the nature of the circular letter, for two days after its adoption a copy of it was proffered, in case he desired it.[88] This letter was preceded (besides the documents already mentioned) by letters to the Marquis of Rockingham, General Conway, Lord Camden, and to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. The details of these papers cannot be given here. They present the whole case of the colonies, their rights, their grievances, their remonstrances, and their petitions. They proceeded mainly from the pen of Samuel Adams, who, when he had shaken himself clear from profuse professions of loyalty and disclaimers of "the most distant thoughts of independence", rose to the annunciation of the loftiest principles of statesmanship, in the declaration that "the supreme legislative, in any free country, derives its power from the constitution, by the fundamental rules of which it is bounded and circumscribed;"—"that it is the glory of the British Constitution that it hath its foundation in the law of God and nature;"—"that the necessity of rights and property is the great end of government;"—"that the colonists are natural-born subjects by the spirit of the law of nature and nations;" and "that the laws of God and nature were not made for politicians to alter." Nor does he confine himself to the enunciation of abstract principles, but states the rights of the colonists of Massachusetts on historical grounds, and shows the oppressive and impolitic nature of the acts complained of.[89] Changes were taking place in the Grafton ministry which boded evil to the colonies. Shelburne, the most liberal friend of the Americans, was succeeded by Hillsborough in December, 1767, and Conway by Weymouth, January 20, 1768. While the circular letter was on its way to the colonies and to Westminster (for it was intended also for England), events were occurring at Boston which showed the temper of the people, and had no inconsiderable influence upon the action of the British government. The anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, March 18, 1768, did not pass without popular demonstrations of ill-will to the customs officials, nor did the governor escape abusive language from the mob.[90] For some years these officers had been resisted in making seizures of uncustomed goods, which were frequently rescued from their possession by interested parties, and the determination of the commissioners of customs to break up this practice frequently led to collisions; but no flagrant outbreak occurred until the seizure of John Hancock's sloop "Liberty" (June 10, 1768), laden with a cargo of Madeira wine. The officer in charge, refusing a bribe, was forcibly locked up in the cabin, the greater part of the cargo was removed, and the remainder entered at the custom-house as the whole cargo. This led to seizure of the vessel, said to have been the first made by the commissioners, and for security she was placed under the guns of the "Romney", a man-of-war in the harbor. For this the revenue officers were roughly handled by the mob. Their boat was burned, their houses threatened, and they, with their alarmed families, took refuge on board the "Romney", and finally in the Castle. These proceedings undoubtedly led to the sending additional military forces to Boston in September.[91]
The General Court was in session at the time, but no effectual proceedings were taken against the rioters. Public sympathy was with them in their purposes, if not in their measures. But the inhabitants of Boston, in town meeting on the 14th, in an address to Governor Bernard, probably drawn by Otis,[92] among other matters complained of being invaded by an armed force. With grim humor, the address represents the commissioners, who had fled for safety to the Castle, as having "of their own notion" relinquished the exercise of their commission, and expressed the hope that they would never resume it, and demanded of the governor to give immediate order for the removal of the "Romney" from the harbor. Some weeks later (June 30) the Council passed the customary resolution, setting forth "their utter abhorrence and detestation" of the riotous proceedings, and desiring that the governor, through the attorney-general, would prosecute all guilty persons, that they and "their abettors might be brought to condign punishment."[93]
When the circular letter was laid before the ministry, April 15, 1768, it caused great excitement in parliamentary circles, and led to the gravest mistake which was made by the government during the entire Revolutionary period. Other measures, perhaps without exception, had a show of necessity; nor, as the British Constitution was then interpreted by the highest authority, were they clearly unconstitutional. But when the Earl of Hillsborough, speaking for the king, June 21, 1768, required the Massachusetts House of Representatives to rescind their circular letter on pain of immediate dissolution, there was a violation of the constitutional right of the House to express their opposition to measures deemed injurious to their constituents, and to communicate their sentiments to other colonies whose interests were similarly affected. Equally unwise was Hillsborough's letter to the colonial assemblies, requiring them to disregard the Massachusetts circular. Responses to the circular letter, when they expressed the sentiments of the assemblies rather than those of the royal governors, were in full sympathy with Massachusetts.[94] The representatives, says Bernard, "have been much elated, within these three or four days, by some letters they have received in answer to the circular letter",[95] and Hutchinson thought that "the strength which would be derived from this union confirmed many who would otherwise have been wavering."[96] But when Governor Bernard (June 21, 1768) communicated to the House instructions from the king to rescind the circular letter, and recommended immediate action as of important consequence to the province, no doubt it caused anxiety. Under a similar pressure New York had receded. The House apprehended the gravity of the situation, and took seven or eight days for consideration, and even then desired to consult their constituents. But when Bernard informed them that further delay would be considered as a refusal, they voted, 92 to 17, not to rescind, and "the number 92", Hutchinson says, "was auspicious, and 17 of ill omen, for many months after, not only in Massachusetts Bay, but in most of the colonies on the continent."[97] They doubtless were influenced by Otis, who spoke with great power, and, according to Bernard, unsparingly denounced the ministry and "passed an encomium on Oliver Cromwell."[98] Massachusetts deliberately disobeyed the king's command, and defied his power. Before dissolution, the House agreed (June 30, 1768) upon a message to the governor, arguing the question very fully, and declaring their refusal to rescind; a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough; and a Report and Resolves, in which they repeat the story of their grievances, doings, and rights with great fullness and ability.[99]
The effect of this action, so honorable to the House, was unfavorable upon the ministry. De Berdt, the London agent, in a letter to the House, August 12, 1768, giving the substance of a conversation with the Earl of Hillsborough, says that his lordship informed him that he would have used his influence for the repeal of the Townshend Acts, and believed he could have obtained it; but since the news respecting the non-rescinding of the circular letter, the matter was in doubt. "The crown must be supported, or we sink into a state of anarchy."
In July, 1768, General Gage, then at New York, had been directed by the ministry to remove one or two regiments to Boston; and when the news of the riots of March 18 reached England, on August 14, two additional regiments were ordered from Ireland. When rumors of these orders became rife in Boston, there were indications that the country would be raised to prevent the landing of the troops; but different counsels prevailed. A town meeting was held in Faneuil Hall on the 12th and 13th of September, which agreed to call a meeting of the towns.[100] Ninety-six towns and eight districts were finally represented in the convention which assembled at the time appointed (September 22). Their first act was a petition to the governor setting forth their apprehensions in respect to a standing army. This the governor refused to receive, but he expressed his opinion of the unauthorized meeting they were holding, directed them to separate instantly, and threatened to assert the prerogatives of the crown. After a recital of grievances, with declarations of loyalty and promises of assistance to civil magistrates in suppressing disorders, they adjourned on the 29th. Their proceedings were moderate,—a moderation induced, as some supposed, by the arrival at Nantasket, September 28, from Halifax of a fleet of seven armed vessels, with nearly a thousand troops.[101] If contempt of the royal prerogative, after the refusal to rescind the circular letter, could have been more pointedly expressed, it was by holding a provincial convention without sanction of law. Between these measures and April 19, 1775, no step involving a new principle was taken. The burning of the "Gaspee" in 1772 and the destruction of the tea in 1773 were merely the filling in of a picture firmly sketched in outline.
The refusal of the provincial council and of the town to provide for quartering the royal troops on their arrival was a practical nullification of the Mutiny Act, which served still further to strain the relations between Massachusetts and the British ministry. Parliament came together November 8, 1768. Both Houses were swift to condemn the late proceedings of the General Court of Massachusetts and of the town of Boston. On December 15 these acts were made the basis of eight resolutions, introduced by the Earl of Hillsborough, and an address to the king, moved by the Duke of Bedford, to obtain information respecting the actors in the riotous proceedings since December 10, 1767, with a view, if deemed advisable, of ordering their transportation to England for trial. These were passed by the House of Commons (January 26, 1769), after a debate in which the whole subject of American affairs was discussed.[102] The news of these proceedings at first created some uneasiness in Boston among those implicated; but apprehension subsided when it was learned from their friends in England that the voting of Bedford's Address by the two Houses was merely political;[103] that lenient, not rigorous, measures were intended by the ministry; and that the late act laying duties would be repealed. This intelligence reassured the patriotic party, but correspondingly depressed the tories, who saw no hope in the vacillating policy of the ministry.[104] A policy was much needed. Chatham had resigned in October, 1768, and the Duke of Grafton became the nominal, as he had long been the real, head of the ministry. Lord North, Chancellor of the Exchequer, had charge of the revenue. The Duke of Grafton favored the total repeal of the Townshend duties, but Lord North favored the retention of that on tea, as a matter of principle; and so it was decided by a majority of one in the Cabinet Council. Parliament rose May 9, and four days later the Earl of Hillsborough reported to the several colonies the resolutions of the government on the circular letter. Lord Hillsborough's letter gave little comfort to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, whose firmness was commended by Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the threat of transportation of the Bostonians to England for trial under a statute of Henry VIII. called forth from the latter colony vigorous resolutions and an address to the king, May 16, 1769.[105] Jefferson has given the history of these resolutions.[106] This action did not meet the approval of Lord Botetourt, the governor of Virginia, and he dissolved the House of Burgesses. This, however, did not prevent the delegates from meeting at the Apollo, in the Raleigh tavern, and, as citizens, entering into a non-importation agreement which bore the names of Henry, Randolph, Jefferson, and Washington, and became an example to all the colonies.[107] During the remainder of the year 1769 the progress of the Revolution was confined chiefly to Massachusetts, and there it assumed the form of an altercation between the House of Representatives and the governor in respect to the presence of the king's forces.[108] Coming in for their annual session near the end of May, the House, unwilling even to organize in the presence of the military, sent a message to the governor, remonstrating against so gross a breach of its privileges, and requesting him to give orders to remove the standing army, the main guard of which was kept with cannon pointed at the very door of the State House.[109] There was no design in this arrangement, but it was very menacing, nevertheless. For nearly two weeks messages kept passing back and forth, to the purport, on the governor's side, that he had no authority to remove the troops, they being under the commander-in-chief; and on the part of the House, that they would do no business while the troops remained. It occurred to the governor that, if he could not remove the troops, he could remove the General Court; and this he did by directing the secretary to adjourn it to Cambridge. The Court did not appreciate this stroke of humor, and proceeded to business only after a protest of necessity. But Bernard's career was drawing to a close. June 28th he informed the House that the king desired him to repair to Great Britain. July 8th the House passed nineteen resolutions,[110] covering the whole ground of dispute with the home government, and arraigning the governor for various political misdemeanors. They petitioned for his recall; and Governor Bernard left the province, accompanied by the reproaches of the House and manifestations of joy by the people. He did not succeed in a position in which all who had preceded him and all who followed him failed. He could not serve well two masters.
PLAN OF KING STREET AND VICINITY.
Note.—The plan on the following page is a reduction from that used in the trial following the massacre, and was made by Paul Revere. It now belongs to the MS. collections of the writer of this chapter. The key to the letters in the street, a part of the original drawing, is lost. Those attached to the buildings, etc., are substituted for the legends which are in the original, and which would be illegible in the reduced scale of the present reproduction. They signify as follows:—
A, Doctr Jones; B, Doctr Roberts; C, Brigdens, goldsmith; D, John Nazro, store; E, Main Street; F, Town house; G, Brazen Head; H, Benj. Kent, Esq., house; I, Mrs. Clapham; J, Exchange Tavern; K, Exchange Lane; L, Custom House; M, Col. Marshall's house; N, "N.B. The pricked line is the Gutter;" O, Mr. Paine's house; P, Mr. Davis's house; Q, Mr. Amory's house; R, Quaker Lane; S, Warden and Vernon's shop; T, Levi Jening, shop; U, Mr. Peck, wa[t]ch maker, shop; V, Court Square; W, whipping-post; X, J. & D. Waldo, shop; Y, Pudin Lane; Z, G. C. Phillips, house; 1, Ezk. Prince, Esq., office; 2, Guard House; 3, Mr. Bowse, shop.
Revere engraved a large folding picture of the massacre, which appeared in the official Short Narrative, which has been reproduced in the Old State House Memorial (Boston, 1882, p. 82) and in the Mag. of Amer. Hist. (Jan., 1886, p. 9), in an article on Revere by E. H. Goss. A reëngraving of Revere's plate is in the London (Bingley) edition of the same, and on a smaller scale in the other London (Dilby) edition, and this last is reproduced in the Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 40. Thomas's Mass. Kalendar (1772) has a woodcut representation, after Revere's drawing. Cf. nos. 579 to 583 of the Catal. of the Cab. of the Mass. Hist. Soc.—Ed.
When Sir Francis Bernard[111] sailed for England on board the "Rippon", in August, 1769, he left the administration in the hands of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. For several months nothing of importance took place, except misunderstandings growing out of the non-observance of the non-importation agreements (which were renewed March, 1770), and quarrels between the troops and the populace which resulted in the deplorable scenes of March 5, 1770. The circumstances which led to this affair are too well known to need recital in detail. While the town was occupied by British regiments, collisions were constantly occurring. None knew better than the populace the helplessness of the soldiers to resent insult or injury by arms. Even in case of riots, the reading of the Act and the intervention of the civil power were necessary preliminaries to firing upon the crowd. Nothing but confinement of the soldiers to their barracks could have prevented collisions with the populace. The patriot leaders had determined to get rid of the regiments at all cost. The affair at Gray's wharf on Saturday, March 2, led to the more serious affray on Monday, the 5th. On the evening of that day, between seven and eight o'clock, the cry of fire and ringing of bells drew together a large crowd, which was followed by a collision with the troops, and resulted in the death of three persons and wounding of several others, two mortally. The Boston Massacre soon became known throughout the country, and aroused a spirit of resistance hitherto unfelt. Its immediate effect was the withdrawal of the troops from the town to the Castle, on account of the resolute attitude assumed by Samuel Adams. The men who lost their lives in this affray were buried in one grave, to which they were followed by an immense procession, and for some years the anniversary of their death was observed by commemorative ceremonies. All classes in the community joined in execrating the soldiers, and gave no ear to justifying or mitigating circumstances. Inflamed and grossly inaccurate accounts of the transactions were drawn up and scattered through the colonies and sent to Great Britain. But time somewhat allayed the first feeling of animosity; and when the facts became better known, it clearly appeared that the soldiers had fired, without orders, upon the crowd only when it had become necessary in defence of their lives. Captain Preston (October 24) and the soldiers (November 27) engaged in the affray were brought to trial on a charge of murder, and were all acquitted, except two soldiers who were convicted of manslaughter. These were slightly branded, and all of them were liberated. John Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., appeared in their defence, and with equal honor the jurors did their duty in accordance with the law and the evidence. The news of the events of March 5 became known in London April 21, through Mr. Robertson. one of the commissioners of the customs.[112]
THE COURT AT THE TRIAL
A fac-simile of a group of original autographs belonging to the writer of this chapter. Winthrop was the clerk of the court. The Attorney-General Sewall drew the indictment, but did not appear for the king.—Ed.
The Townshend act, though drawn conformably to the colonial distinctions between internal and external taxes, produced the same dissatisfaction as the Stamp Act had done. There was no real difference. If Parliament could lay external taxes, it could lay internal taxes. Non-importation agreements in the several colonies followed in 1769, and so long as they were observed, even without great strictness, were disastrous to British merchants, the value of whose exports to the American colonies between Christmas in 1767 and Christmas in 1769 fell off nearly £700,000 sterling; or, if we take the figures for those colonies where the agreement was most effective, in New England from £419,000 to £207,000, in New York from £482,000 to £74,000.[113] Though the agreement was not observed equally in all the colonies, nor in entire good faith in any,—Massachusetts and Rhode Island, particularly, suffered some discredit in this respect, as compared with New York and Philadelphia,—the general result seriously alarmed British merchants, who petitioned Parliament for the repeal of the Townshend act.[114] These petitions were considered in the House of Commons March 5, 1770, and Lord North, in accordance with Earl Hillsborough's circular letter, proposed to take off all the duties laid by the Townshend act of 1767, except that on tea, which he would preserve as a sort of declaratory act, especially since the conduct of the Americans had been such as to prevent an entire compliance with their wishes.[115] Governor Pownall offered as an amendment the entire repeal of the act, and supported his motion in an extremely able and interesting speech.[116]
THE COUNSEL OF THE GOVERNMENT AND OF THE ACCUSED
A fac-simile of a group of signatures belonging to the writer of this chapter.—Ed.
Pownall's amendment was lost by a vote of 204 to 142. The merchants failed to procure a repeal of the duties, although Alderman Trecothic made one more effort in their behalf, on the 9th of April, "in a very sensible speech."[117]
When the news of the Boston Massacre reached England late in April, 1770, it recalled attention to American affairs, which, after the defeat of Trecothic's motion, seemed to have been laid aside for the remainder of the session. Trecothic called for the papers.[118] While waiting for them, Governor Pownall made a speech on the "powers of government [which] the crown can and ought to grant to the dependencies of the realm; what form and power of government the British subject in those parts ought to be governed by; what powers are granted, both civil and military; and what arrangements, and means taken, for administering and executing these powers."[119] Burke, in the second of eight resolutions, affirmed "that a principal cause of the disorders which have prevailed in North America hath arisen from the ill-judged and inconsistent instructions given, from time to time, by persons in administration, to the governors of some of the provinces of North America."[120] Later, the same resolutions were brought forward in the House of Lords by the Duke of Richmond. But Burke was not acting in good faith. A close observer wrote at the time: "It is plain enough that these motions were not made for the sake of the colonies, but merely to serve the purposes of the opposition, to render the ministry, if possible, more odious, so that they may themselves come into the conduct of affairs, while it remains very doubtful whether they would do much better, if at all, than their predecessors."[121] This resulted well for the colonies, and, in the long run, for the progress of liberal ideas in both countries. But to those who wished for the continuance of the British connection, and believed in its practicability, it must have been a matter for profound regret that the liberal leaders, from Chatham to Fox, simply found fault with the acts of the ministry, and proposed nothing instead. The ministry, conciliatory to-day and severe to-morrow, had no fixed policy. American affairs gave way to the exigencies of a general election, just as we have lately seen in this country, great interests jeopardized by the unwillingness of both political parties to treat them on the eve of a presidential election. If, instead of this vacillating and inconsistent policy, both parties had given their attention to devising some rational system of colonial administration, as proposed by Pownall,[122] leaving local affairs to the colonists, but placing imperial affairs under a permanent board, not changeable with every ministry, the colonies and the mother-country might have remained united, perhaps for a generation, longer.
The Townshend duties, except those on tea, were repealed in April; but this did not satisfy the colonists, and dissensions arose among the merchants of the several colonies in regard to the non-importation agreement. Those of New York became dissatisfied with Boston and Newport merchants, who had agreed to import non-dutiable articles, even before the news of the repealing act; and in October, 1770, all sections fell into the same plan, but no teas were to be imported. The Sons of Liberty in New York in vain resisted this arrangement.
In Massachusetts the patriots were seldom without causes of just complaint. Governor Hutchinson, in obedience to instructions of General Gage, had delivered (September 10) the keys of Castle William, in Boston harbor, which belonged to the province, to Colonel Dalrymple, who was the servant of the king; and following royal instructions, had refused to convene the General Court at Boston, instead of Cambridge, or to assent to any bill by which the assessors (in 1771) could tax the officers of the crown.[123] These exercises of the royal prerogative, and the payment of the governor's salary by the crown, involved constitutional questions of higher import, as the British Constitution then stood, than the question of parliamentary supremacy, and were matters of unceasing contention. In 1770, Franklin was chosen London agent of the colony, although not without some objection, in the place of De Berdt, recently deceased (May), and Hutchinson was appointed governor in March, 1771.
In 1772, although it was a year of general quiet, two events happened, which, in different ways, promoted the purposes of the more ardent patriots,—the burning of the "Gaspee" at Providence in June, and the formation of committees of correspondence in November. On the 9th of June, Lieutenant Dudingston, commander of the "Gaspee", who had shown great activity in the revenue service at Rhode Island, in undertaking to intercept the "Providence Packet", Captain Lindsay, ran aground on Namquit Point. While in this position, the "Gaspee" was boarded on the following night by a party of citizens led by John Brown, a respectable merchant. In the mêlée the lieutenant was wounded and the vessel was burned. The affair created a great sensation in England, and it was ordered that those engaged in it should be sent to England for trial. For this purpose the home government appointed colonial commissioners, who sat at Newport from the 4th to the 22 January, 1773, to inquire into the matter.[124] At the end of their deliberations they required Wanton, the governor of Rhode Island, to arrest the offenders, for trial in England. He appealed for directions to the Assembly, as did Stephen Hopkins, the chief-justice of the highest court. That body referred the matter to the discretion of the chief-justice, and he accordingly refused to arrest, or to allow the arrest of, any person for transportation.[125] Nothing came of the order except ill-humor in England and indignation in the colonies, where it was regarded as an invasion of their constitutional right of trial by their peers.
Samuel Adams was always busy on political subjects; nor were subjects wanting. The Earl of Hillsborough had been succeeded in the American department (August 4, 1772) by Lord Dartmouth; but the change in administration made no change in the policy of paying the salaries of the provincial judges by the king, and thus rendering them less dependent on the popular will. This was thought to be in derogation of colonial rights, especially so long as the judges held their seats only during the king's pleasure.
JOSEPH WARREN.
From a pastel owned by the heirs of the late Hon. C. F. Adams. It is unfinished below the chest.—Ed.
Accordingly, a town meeting assembled in Faneuil Hall, October 28, and adjourned November 2d. Samuel Adams moved "that a committee of correspondence be appointed, to consist of twenty-one persons, to state the rights of the colonies, and of this province in particular, as men, as Christians, and as subjects; 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 requesting of each town a free communication of their sentiments on this subject."[126] This was the beginning of an organization (November 22), entered into with hesitation by some of the leading patriots of Boston, which finally secured the public confidence, and became a great power for the concentration of popular sentiment.
Slightly reduced from an original in the Boston Public Library.—Ed.
It undoubtedly led to the larger measure of intercolonial correspondence instituted by Virginia during the next spring; and not the least of its claims to consideration is the fact that it engaged the attention and secured the services of Joseph Warren as the trusted lieutenant of Samuel Adams.[127]
The American Revolution rests upon grounds so high and clear, and was carried forward by measures so honorably conceived and so persistently adhered to, that all who adopt its principles must regret any circumstance in its history by which the opinion of candid people is divided. Such a division is found in connection with the Hutchinson letters. The story is briefly this:—In the years 1768 and 1769 Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, then officers in Massachusetts, appointed by the crown, and sworn to a faithful discharge of their duties, with several other persons, in a private correspondence with Thomas Whately, an English gentleman, formerly, but not then, connected with the government, communicated facts about colonial affairs the truth of which has never been impugned, and expressed opinions which Tories might honestly entertain. These letters in some unexplained manner found their way—either from the cabinet of the person to whom they were addressed, after his death, or, as is more likely, from the papers of George Grenville, to whom Whately had probably entrusted them for perusal—into the hands of Franklin, the colony agent in London, by whom they were sent in 1773, with an unsigned letter, to the speaker of the Massachusetts House. The injunctions in respect to them were loosely regarded, and they were published by a breach of faith which implicated a large body of men. They were made the basis of a petition by the General Court to the king for the removal of their writers from the offices which they held; but after a hearing before the Privy Council, January 29, 1774, the petition, which the province did not attempt to support by evidence, was dismissed as "groundless, vexatious, and scandalous." Two days later, Dr. Franklin was removed from the office of deputy postmaster-general for the colonies,—a circumstance of great consequence to the American cause, since it irrevocably committed to it one who had been thought its lukewarm promoter.
Massachusetts, which had led in most of the Revolutionary movements, did not take the lead in establishing committees of correspondence between the colonies. That honor belongs to Virginia; and its chief cause was the action of the commissioners in the "Gaspee" case. March 12, 1773, Dabney Carr, who had been put forward at the suggestion of Jefferson, moved certain resolutions in the Virginia House of Burgesses, which, supported by Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry, were unanimously adopted. Rhode Island followed in adopting similar measures. On May 28th the Massachusetts House responded to Virginia.[128] Hutchinson justly considers this as one of the most important and daring movements of the patriotic Party during the Revolution.[129] It paved the way for the union of the colonies and for the General Congress which was convened at Philadelphia the next year.
To the patriots of Philadelphia belongs the credit of making the first public demonstration against the project of the East India Company for transporting their accumulated stock of tea to America, in a series of resolutions passed October 18, at a meeting held in the State House.[130] News of the intention of the company to do this had reached America in August. Samuel Adams was ready. The towns in the province of Massachusetts were aroused by Joseph Warren's circular letter in behalf of the Committee of Correspondence, September 21, 1773, and the Philadelphia resolutions were adopted in Faneuil Hall. Constant communications were kept up between the importing colonies. Ships loaded with tea were dispatched about the month of August to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, but the tone of the public press in those towns indicated a determination not to allow the sale of the cargoes. The Charleston consignees, on the request of the people, resigned; those at Boston refused. November 28, one of the tea ships arrived in Boston, followed not long after by two more. These were placed under guard by the patriots. The consignees would neither resign nor return the tea, and the time was near at hand when they would be seized for non-payment of duties. Thursday, December 16, a large meeting of the citizens was held at the Old South Church, at which Josiah Quincy, Jr., spoke in words that have become historical. After all efforts to induce Hutchinson to grant a pass for the return of the tea (which he thought would be illegal) had proved futile, a war-whoop was sounded at the door of the Old South, and a large company of men disguised as Indians rushed to Griffin's wharf. Teas to the value of £18,000 were thrown from the vessels into the sea, and the same treatment was bestowed upon another cargo which came some weeks later. This act, although applauded throughout the colonies, was not imitated by them; other means were found to prevent the sale of the teas.[131]
While the news of these events was on its way to England, John Adams signalized his zeal in the patriotic cause and evinced his faith in the provincial constitution by leading in the impeachment of Chief-Justice Oliver for having accepted his salary from the crown instead of the people, in derogation of their fundamental rights.[132]
Governor Hutchinson, finding himself powerless to quell the storm, determined to put himself in closer communication with the ministry by going to England, but was delayed by the death of Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, until he was finally superseded by General Gage, who arrived in Boston May 13, 1774. As he was about to leave, he received an address, dated May 30, approving his conduct, and signed by many respectable Tories; but some of them were afterwards obliged by threats of popular violence to make their recantations in the newspapers. June 1, he sailed from Boston, and never saw his native shore again.[133] In the mean time an account of the destruction of the teas had reached England, and produced great indignation, which was shared to some extent by the most ardent friends of the colonists, whose efforts to mitigate and delay the punishment visited upon the offending people of Boston were unavailing. On the 7th of March, the king sent a message communicating the despatches from America; and on the 14th Lord North brought in the Boston Port Bill, which transferred the commerce of Boston, after the 1st of June, to Salem, but gave power to the king, in council, to restore it, upon the return of order and full compensation to the owners for the teas destroyed. Having passed both Houses, this received the king's assent March 31, and took effect June 1. While the measure was pending in the House of Lords, Lord North introduced another bill, which provided for the appointment of councillors by the crown, the appointment and removal by the governor of judges of the superior courts, justices of the peace, and other minor officers, and, with the consent of the council, of sheriffs. The governor's permission was made necessary for the holding of town meetings, except for the choice of officers. It was also provided by another act that offenders and witnesses might be transported for trial to the other colonies, or to England.[134]
These severe measures did not pass without resistance or protest by the liberal party in Parliament. They reached Boston June 2, 1774, were printed in the newspapers on the 3d, and soon found their way into all the colonies, where they excited indignation against the ministry and sympathy for the people of Boston, which was manifested by liberal contributions for relief when afterwards the loss of business had brought distress. If anything more was needed to arouse the anger of New England, it was supplied by the Quebec Bill, less objectionable to that section because it extended the bounds of Canada over regions for which the colonies had contended, than because it perpetuated civil and ecclesiastical institutions hateful to the descendants of Puritans. Hutchinson thought that these severe measures would bring the recalcitrant Bostonians to reason. But he was mistaken. The matter had already passed from the forum of reason, and was reserved for the arbitrament of impending war. Instead of being subdued, the spirit of the people became more resolute.
The Boston Port Bill, designed as a punishment for the destruction of the tea, brought ruin to the commerce of Boston, and distress to all whose subsistence depended upon it; but its political effect was to draw the colonies together, and that was so effectually promoted by the vigorous action of the committee of correspondence that the idea of a continental congress soon became general.
A CONTEMPORARY PRINT.
Sketched from a finely executed mezzotint, published in London in 1774. The man thrown from his horse seems to be Gage. The original belongs to the Boston Public Library.—Ed.
On May 26, 1774, Governor Gage informed the General Court that by the king's command its sessions would be held at Salem from June 1st until further orders. The court was convened at that place, and the patriots, guided by Samuel Adams, were making arrangements for a general congress at Philadelphia, when the governor, getting a hint of their action, sent Flucker, the provincial secretary, with a message to dissolve them. The secretary, however, found the door of the chamber of the Representatives locked; and before it was opened, that body had determined that "a committee should be appointed to meet, as soon as may be, the committees that are or shall be appointed by the several colonies on this continent, to consult together upon the present state of the colonies", and had chosen James Bowdoin, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine delegates thereto. Such was the origin in Massachusetts of the first Continental Congress which met at Philadelphia September 5, 1774.[135]
The 17th of June, the day on which delegates to the Continental Congress were chosen, is also notable for "the Port Act" meeting in Faneuil Hall. From the general distress among the laboring classes in Boston the Tories had expected a reaction in favor of the ministry; consequently a counter demonstration by the patriots was deemed advisable. In the absence of Samuel Adams, then at Salem, John Adams was chosen moderator, and from this time he was one of the most conspicuous actors in the American Revolution. Joseph Warren was also present, and active in the cause which, a year later, he consecrated with his blood. The action of the town became widely known from a broadside, which is here reproduced.
After the repeal of the Stamp Act and the modifying of the Townshend act, there remained nothing to threaten seriously the pockets of the colonists. The tea duty had been retained to save the claim of parliamentary supremacy, which was not likely to be asserted in any offensive way. The navigation acts must soon have given way to a more liberal and equitable policy, and everything out of Massachusetts—certainly out of New England—indicated that the people were becoming tired of strife, and were ready for a return to more cordial relations with the mother country. This was what Samuel Adams feared, and determined to prevent. To this end nothing could have been more efficient than his policy in respect to the teas, and nothing more to his mind than the consequent action of Parliament. After this a contention which had been mainly local became general. The essential modification of the Massachusetts charter was a blow which imperilled every colonial government, and made the cause of Massachusetts that of every other colony,—a cause for which other colonies manifested their sympathy not only in relieving the distress occasioned by the closing of the port of Boston, but by uniting in declarations of their common right to maintain the integrity of a system of government which had been forming through many generations.
The Congress of 1774 was the inevitable result of the conduct of the British ministry subsequent to the peace of 1763. This served only to engender discontent in the colonies, and to strengthen the purpose of the patriotic party to hasten a revolution which many regarded as inevitable in time. The parliamentary government of the colonies fell into confusion for want of a well-defined policy and a consistent administration. But instead of such a policy, colonial affairs were regulated by ministers as wide apart in their views as Grenville, Rockingham, Townshend, Grafton, Shelburne, Hillsborough, Lord North, and Earl Dartmouth. Nothing could have kept the colonies as an integral part of the empire except some plan such as Franklin or Pownall might have devised and Shelburne might have administered. But the colonies were remote and but little known, and in the complication of European affairs, and amid the contentions of parties, they received only slight and intermittent attention from the ministry or the Parliament. No statesman save Choiseul seems to have understood the completeness of the change in interests which had been brought about by the extinction of the French power in America, or the necessary advance of the colonies under a new régime to a place among the great powers of the world. The colonists themselves felt, rather than understood, their relations to nationality and to the commerce of the world. This was the time chosen by the British ministry to impose upon them the restrictive mercantile system of Charles II.
BROADSIDE, JUNE 17, 1774.
The original is in the Boston Public Library. There are other significant broadsides of about this time. On June 8th, the citizens of Boston issued an address to their countrymen relative to the blockade of their port, and on July 26th they adopted a letter on the blockade, which was sent to the several towns,—both in broadside.—Ed.
It is doubtful, however, whether any policy could have rendered permanent the subjection of the colonies, even such a nominal subjection as that in which they had always been held. In looking for the causes of the Revolution, it is well to discriminate between those which were general in their effects and those which were local. The latter had been more actively operative and of longer existence in Massachusetts, where the Revolution began, than in any other colony. These were interwoven with the civil and ecclesiastical history of her people, which made them peculiarly apprehensive in respect to threatened invasion of rights which they had secured only by expatriation. Although the peculiar experience of Massachusetts did not cause the Revolution, it is doubtful whether, except for that experience, the Revolution would have occurred for some years. Nor was resistance to the Anglican ecclesiastical pretensions, connected as they were with the most odious features of the prerogative, confined to New England, but made itself felt in New York and in Virginia.[136] The general causes were the ever present and ever active strife between parties,—the liberals and the conservatives,—arising from a diversity of political ideas, and intensified by ambition, interest, and personal animosities. But the proximate causes of the Revolution will be found in that change of policy which led the ministry, at the close of a war that had strained the colonies to the utmost, to enforce the navigation laws, to lay taxes, to invoke the prerogative, and finally to overthrow the government of Massachusetts, and thus to threaten the autonomy of the people under the provincial constitutions.
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
THE change in British colonial policy contemplated by the ministry during the progress of the French War, and entered upon between 1763 and 1774, developed those causes of dissatisfaction which had been intermittently operative for more than a century, and finally led to war in 1775. In the preceding chapter I have omitted, or passed lightly over, many incidents of the period which had no particular political significance, and dwelt more at length on the principles and causes which led to the Revolution. I shall pursue the same course in this essay.
The growth and development of the colonies brought forward, in succession, two practical questions. The first was, how far the interests of the colonies, as appendages to the crown, but subject, nevertheless, to an undefined parliamentary authority, could be subordinated to the interests of the trading and manufacturing classes in England. This was purely an economic question, and the answer to it in England assumed the subjection of the colonies and the validity of the mercantile system, neither of which was vigorously contested by the colonists so long as neither was rigidly enforced. But the question changed during the progress, and more especially at the close, of the French War, and then became this: How far could the interests of the colonies be subordinated to the necessities of an imperial revenue and the political policy of an empire? Hence arose the second question: What degree of autonomy could be allowed to the colonies, as integral parts of the empire, entitled to its privileges and subject to its burdens, when both were to be determined consistently with the constitutional prerogatives of the king and the supremacy of Parliament on the one side, and on the other with the natural and acquired rights of the colonies?
Regarded purely as an economic question, it was a matter of indifference to the colonists whether their pockets were depleted by the enforcement of an old policy or by the adoption of a new policy. The Sugar Act of 1733, if enforced, would have produced a parliamentary tax. The Grenville Act of 1764 did no more. But the former was intended as a regulation of trade; the latter to produce a revenue. This difference of intent raised a constitutional question, and it was on this constitutional question, behind which lay the real economic question, that the patriotic party chose to fight the battle. Grenville's Act, as an external tax, produced but little; and the Stamp Act, as an internal tax, not a farthing.
It was, therefore, mainly on the constitutional question—of the right to tax, rather than to throw off intolerable burdens—that people divided into parties. As Webster said, "They went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against a declaration."[137] To understand the attitude of the tories on the economic question as well as on the constitutional question, we must consider the state of colonial affairs which led to the Congress of 1754, and the tentative efforts of that body to find consistent and reciprocal relations of the colonies to the imperial government, for union, defence, and revenue. To understand the attitude of the patriots, we must consider the reasons of the ministry for rejecting such a union, and their efforts to force each colony into relations to the crown and Parliament deemed by them consistent and reciprocal, but regarded by the colonists as subversive of their rights as Englishmen, and of their rights acquired by charters, growth, development, and usage, which, as they justly claimed, had become constitutional.
Though the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade, at the close of the French War, is regarded by historians as one of the principal causes of the Revolution, I fail to find a satisfactory or entirely accurate account of them, either as the basis of the mercantile system, or, later, of a revenue system. Such a treatment would hardly be practicable in the limits of a general history. These laws have been elaborately discussed by Thomas Mun, Sir Josiah Child, Sir William Patty, Charles Davenant, Joshua Gee, John Ashley, and, not to mention others, Adam Smith and Henry Brougham. But these authors wrote with reference to their influence, as part of the mercantile system, on British interests. How they affected colonial interests is the question which chiefly concerns us.
To answer this question we must know not merely what those laws enacted, but to what state of colonial trade they originally and successively applied. For instance, what, from time to time, by development of agricultural or other industries, between 1640 and 1774, had the colonists to sell, and what, as they increased in wealth, did they wish to purchase; and where, left to the unrestricted course of trade, would they have carried their products, and where purchased their merchandise? In other words, what would they have done and become under free trade?
Then we must know what changes in this normal condition of trade were intended by the navigation laws, and to what extent and with what effect their partial enforcement operated before 1763. With these facts before us, we could estimate with some exactness the valid objections to the new system on the part of the colonists, when enforced by the British navy, commissioners of customs, admiralty courts, and writs of assistance, and what was their influence in bringing on the Revolution.
Having made up the debit account, we should be able to set against it the compensations in naval protection, bounties,[138] drawbacks, British capital, and long credits, in developing colonial agriculture and commerce.[139]
Unfortunately there does not exist any history of the commerce of the American colonies, from the Commonwealth to 1774, as affected by navigation laws, acts of trade, and revenue measures. No one who has read the twenty-nine acts which comprise this legislation will recommend their perusal to another; for, apart from their volume, the construction of these acts is difficult,—difficult even to trained lawyers like John Adams, whose business it was to advise clients in respect to them.[140] Nor have special students, like Bancroft, stated their effect with exact precision, as in respect to the Act of 1663;[141] and notably in respect to the Townshend Act of 1767,[142] where his error amounts to a perversion of its meaning. Palfrey has been more successful, though not entirely free from error.[143] The author of the Development of Constitutional Liberty,[144] a work of uncommon research and ability, reads the act of 1672 as though it prohibited the carrying of fish from Massachusetts to Rhode Island except by the way of England, failing to notice that it was not one of the "enumerated articles", or that even those could pass directly from colony to colony upon payment, at the place of export, of duties equivalent to those laid upon their importation to England. To give a monographic treatment to the subject would require familiarity with the construction of statutes, and exact information not only of the shifting conditions of colonial trade, but of the evasions which called forth supplemental acts, or constructions of existing acts by the Board of Trade.[145]
In Burke's Account of the European Settlements in America[146] much may be found respecting colonial products and commerce, and especially those of New England (in ch. vii.), which leaves little to be desired concerning the sources of her wealth, and the complaints of British merchants of the methods by which it had been acquired. But I have found nowhere else so full and clear an account of the course of trade of Boston at the time of the Revolution, and the effect upon it of the enforcement of the navigation laws and acts of trade in 1770, as in an anonymous pamphlet entitled Observations of the Merchants at Boston in N. E. upon Several Acts of Parliament, 1770.[147]
An essential part of this history is that which relates to the medium of exchange, and to the attempts of Parliament to regulate the issue of paper money as a legal tender in the interests of British merchants.[148]
The history of the navigation laws suggests the similarity of the causes which led to the successive revolutions of 1689 and 1775 in Massachusetts. The violation of these laws was a principal reason for the abrogation of the first charter, in 1684, graphically described by Palfrey,[149] and their enforcement by courts of admiralty, under Dudley, Andros, and Randolph, was one cause of the overthrow of the Andros government in 1689.[150] The resistance to the same and additional enactments, when enforced as revenue measures, led to the alteration of the second charter in 1774, and this again led to revolution by the united colonies.
One of the most efficient instruments in the execution of the navigation laws was the writs of assistance granted by the court in Massachusetts in 1761.[151]
If the student of American history finds difficulty in accepting the common accounts of the constitutional opinions and motives of two fifths of the colonists, among whom were many who must be regarded as intelligent and respectable, his doubts as to the accuracy of these narratives receive some confirmation when he becomes familiar with the history of the Congress of 1754, the circumstances which led to it, and the opinions of some of its representative men. A comparison of their views will show how far they were willing to go in the "abridgment of English liberties", for the sake of union, defence, and government. Franklin, Hutchinson, and Pownall formed plans for union, and all were at Albany in 1754, and participated in the discussions, though Pownall, not being a member, explained his views outside the congress.[152]
The difference between Pownall, Hutchinson, and Franklin was this: that while all contemplated the union of the empire under one general government as something dictated by the interest of all the parts, Hutchinson limited the power of the President more than Franklin, and Pownall was unwilling to contemplate the transfer of its seat to America; the prospect of which gave Franklin no concern. "The government cannot be long retained without union. Which is best, to have a total separation, or a change of the seat of government?"[153] Speculations as to the results of such a union are now idle, unless for the interest drawn towards them by Professor Seeley's Expansion of England, and Franklin's belief, expressed in 1789, "that if the foregoing plan [that of 1754], or something like it, had been adopted and carried into execution, the subsequent separation of the colonies from the mother country might not so soon have happened, nor the mischiefs suffered on both sides have occurred, perhaps, during another century."[154]
A comparison of the views of such men as Franklin, Hutchinson, and Pownall, expressed before they were forced into partisan relations to the impending conflict, help us in forming opinions respecting their conduct when affairs, no longer within the control of individuals, were swept onward by an uncontrollable impulse. Neither the colonies[155] nor the ministry approved of the proposed union; and when the new policy of raising a revenue was inaugurated the colonies were without defined integral relations to the mother country, and the government without administrative machinery for their regulation. The result was confusion. The press became heated, and an angry war of pamphlets ensued. At first the controversy was confined to the distinction between internal taxes and commercial regulations, but soon it involved the whole question of parliamentary power. This was elaborately and temperately discussed in the Farmer's Letters, by John Dickinson, but nowhere in America with more fulness (within the period covered by this chapter) than by Governor Hutchinson and the two Houses of the Massachusetts General Court, in messages and answers respectively, in January and February, 1773.[156]
So far as the Revolution grew out of the Massachusetts controversy between the king's representatives and the General Court, its progress may be traced in the Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts, 1765 to 1775, and the Answers of the House of Representatives to the same.[157] These authentic documents, with the Journals of the House and the Records of the Town of Boston, may be referred to as showing the temper with which the parties treated each other, and the questions that were of paramount interest. The student will not find it easy to ascertain the facts which should make the history of the period. Contemporaneous accounts were generally drawn up with a partisan disregard of truth, and too much has been written subsequently in the same spirit. For the critical period of 1768, when the troops were sent over on account of the revenue riots, we have Bernard's Letters, which, though representing only one side, were written under a sense of official responsibility to the government. Though much complained of at the time as wanting in candor, their statements were evaded rather than controverted by the Answer of the Major Part of the Council, in a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough (April 15, 1769), as well as in The Vindication of the Town of Boston (Oct. 18, 1769), drafted by Samuel Adams. For the entire period covered by this chapter, I find no narrative apparently more just, or opinions more candidly expressed, than in Ramsay's History of the American Revolution. Remote from the scene of the conflict, Ramsay shared the passions of neither party.
The most important events of this period were the passage of the Boston Port Bill, and other related measures. The reasons which led to these acts are set forth at length in The Report from the Committee on the Disturbances in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, April 20, 1774.[158] In this report may be seen the strength of the British case. Franklin's view of the matters referred to in the Report of the Lords may be found in a paper entitled Proceedings in Massachusetts,[159] and the bill itself was discussed in an interesting pamphlet by Josiah Quincy, Jr., Observations on the Act of Parliament.[160]
Franklin's paper was a clever argument in which he treated facts so as to serve his purpose rather than that of historic truth. His use of Oliver's phrase, "to take off the original incendiaries", which was a pleasant ad hominem hit, has been adopted seriously by Bancroft,[161] in a chapter entitled "A Way to Take off the Incendiaries." The concessions which Franklin was willing to make for a settlement of the difficulties, as late as December 4, 1774, may be seen in "Some Special Transactions of Dr. Franklin in London, in Behalf of America", in Ramsay.[162]
The argument of Otis on the Writs of Assistance is the first well-arranged expression of the gathering opposition,[163] and what John Adams called "the heaves and throes of the burning mountain", forerunning the eruption, were shown in James Otis's A vindication of the conduct of the House of Representatives of the province of the Massachusetts-Bay; more particularly, in the last session of the general assembly (Boston, 1762).[164]
John Dickinson and Joseph Galloway were already pitted against each other on the question of maintaining the proprietary government of Pennsylvania, or of seeking a royal one.[165]
Frothingham[166] says the earliest organized action against taxation was when the town of Boston passed instructions to its representatives, May 24, 1764, the original writing of which is among the Samuel Adams MSS. The paper was printed in the newspapers of the day, and shortly afterwards in the famous tract of Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and proved,[167] in which, however, he failed, with all his fervid and cogent reasoning, to stand in every respect by the advanced position which he had taken in his plea against the Writs of Assistance.[168]
JAMES OTIS.
After a statue of James Otis, by Crawford, in the chapel at Mount Auburn. The usual portrait of Otis is by Blackburn, painted in 1755, and now owned by Mrs. H. B. Rogers. The earliest engraving of it which I have noticed is by A. B. Durand in Tudor, and again in the Worcester Magazine (1826), vol. i. It has been engraved by W. O. Jackman, J. R. Smith, O. Pelton, and best of all by C. Schlecht, in Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 332. Cf. Loring's Hundred Boston Orators, and the woodcut in the Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 6. The earliest engraved likeness is probably a rude cut on the title of Bickerstaff's Almanac (1770), which is reproduced in Lossing's Field-Book of the Rev., i. 486.
There is a photograph of the house where Otis was killed by lightning (May 28, 1783) in Bailey's Andover, p. 86. Cf. Appleton's Journal, xi. 784. The principal detailed authority on the career of Otis (born, 1724; died, 1783) is William Tudor's Life of James Otis, which Lecky, in his England in the Eighteenth Century (iii. 304), calls "a remarkable book from which I have derived much assistance." Francis Bowen wrote the life in Sparks's Amer. Biog., vol. xii. John Adams had an exalted opinion of Otis, and Otis's character receives various touches in Adams's Works (x. 264, 271, 275, 279, 280, 284, 289-295, 299, 300). Bancroft depicts him in 1768 (vol. vi. 120, orig. ed.), but he failed rapidly later by reason of the blows he received in an assault in Sept., 1769, provoked by him. Cf. Greene's Hist. View (p. 322); D. A. Goddard in Mem. Hist. Boston (iii. 140); Barry's Mass. (ii. 259).
One of the ablest as well as one of the most temperate expressions of the stand taken by the colonies was in Stephen Hopkins's Rights of the Colonies examined; published by Authority (Providence, 1765).[169]
Similar arguments were set forth in behalf of Connecticut by its governor.[170]
Already, in 1764, when Oxenbridge Thacher printed his Sentiments of a British American, he had formulated the arguments against the navigation acts and British taxation, which ten years later, in the Congress of 1774, Jay embodied in his Address to the British People.[171]
John Adams, in later years, when distance clarified the atmosphere, looked upon the conflict which Jonathan Mayhew waged with Apthorpe, and with the abettors of all schemes for imposing episcopacy on the people by act of Parliament, as the repelling of an attack upon the people's right to decide such questions for themselves, and as but a forerunner of the great subsequent question.[172]
JONATHAN MAYHEW.
Copied from a mezzotint engraving in the American Antiquarian Society's possession, marked "Richard Jennys, jun., pinxt et fecit."
A portrait by Smibert, and engraved by J. B. Cipriani, is in Hollis's Memoirs (1780), p. 371; and a reëngraving has been made by H. W. Smith. Cf. Bradford's Life of Mayhew; Thornton's Pulpit of the Rev.; Mem. Hist. of Boston, ii. 245, with note on his portraits.
The principal source of detailed information about Mayhew is Alden Bradford's Memoir of the life and writings of Jonathan Mayhew (Boston, 1838). Cf. Tudor's Otis (ch. 10); Thomas Hollis's Memoirs; Tyler's Amer. Lit. (ii. p. 199); touches in John Adams's Works (iv. 29; x. 207, 301); and on his death, Dr. Benjamin Church's Elegy, Dr. Chauncy's discourse, both in 1766, and the Life of Josiah Quincy, Jr., p. 384.
The issue on the question of taxation without representation was forced, after many indications of its coming,[173] when the British Parliament passed the Grenville Act in 1764, and in the next year what is known as the Stamp Act, a tax on business papers, increasing their cost at different rates, but sometimes manyfold.[174] The question of the authorship of the bill is one about which there has been some controversy,[175] and, contrary to the general impression, the truth seems to be that the consideration of the bill caused little attention in and out of Parliament, and the debates on it were languid.[176]
In May a knowledge of the passage of the Stamp Act reached Boston,[177] and it was to go into effect Nov. 1st. In June the Massachusetts legislature determined to invite a congress of all the colonies in October. In August it was known that Jared Ingersoll for Connecticut and Andrew Oliver for Boston had agreed to become distributors of the stamps. The mob hanged an effigy of Oliver on the tree afterwards known as Liberty Tree,[178] and other outrages followed. The governor did not dare to leave the castle. Dr. Mayhew delivered a sermon, vigorous and perhaps incendiary, as Hutchinson averred when he traced to it the passions of the mob which destroyed his own house in North Square on the evening of August 26th.[179] The town contented itself with passing a unanimous vote of condemnation the next day.[180] On Sept. 25th Bernard addressed the legislature in a tone that induced them to reply (Oct. 25th), and to fortify their position by resolves (Oct. 29th).[181] Finally, in December, Andrew Oliver,[182] the stamp distributor, was forced to resign, and on the 17th to sign an oath that he would in no way lend countenance to the tax.[183]
The spirit in Boston was but an index of the feelings throughout all the colonies.[184] The histories of the several States and the lives of their revolutionary actors make this clear.[185]
In October, 1765, what is known as the Stamp Act Congress assembled in New York, in the old City Hall.[186] Its proceedings are in print, and its deliberations are followed in the general histories and in the lives of its members.[187]
Franklin had, with considerable opposition, been appointed the London agent of Pennsylvania in 1764, and, being in that city, was accused by James Biddle of promoting the passage of the Stamp Act, but his letters show how he seems only to have yielded when he could not prevail in opposing.[188]
In July, 1765, the Rockingham administration came in, followed by the parliamentary sparring of Grenville and Pitt. In February, 1766, Dr. Franklin was examined before the House of Commons as to the temper of the colonies respecting the Stamp Act. He gave them some good advice,[189] and a full report of the questions and answers is preserved.[190] Parliament having passed the so-called Declaratory Act (March 7th) in vindication of its prerogatives, Pitt and Conway effected the repeal of the Stamp Act (March 18th), and vessels immediately sailed to carry the news to the colonies.[191] The whole question of taxation, thus brought squarely to an issue by the controversy over the Stamp Act, induced frequent rehearsals of argument in debates and pamphlet, and the later historians have summarized the opposing views.[192]
Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, began in 1766 a series of tracts, which he continued for ten years, in which he advanced sentiments respecting the colonies, not very flattering, while at the same time he held to arguments which few at the time admitted the force of, when he advocated the peaceful separation of America from the crown.[193]
The most important presentation of the Tory insistence in defence of the Stamp Act policy came directly—or, at least, through his secretary, Charles Lloyd—from Grenville himself, in his attack on the Rockingham party, in the Conduct of the late Administration examined, with Documents.[194]
GEORGE THE THIRD.
Reproduction of a print in Entick's General Hist. of the Late War (3d ed., 1770), iv. frontispiece. A profile likeness, showing the king in armor, is in Murray's Impartial History of the present War in America, (London, 1778).
The movements for organization to suppress importation, which had begun in 1765, taking shape particularly in Philadelphia in Oct. and Nov.,[195] were brought into definite prominence by the votes of Boston, Oct. 28, 1767,[196] copies of which were circulated in broadside, as shown in the annexed fac-simile.[197] The influence of these had more marked effect in England than had followed any previous manifestations of that kind.[198]
HANDBILL
Copy of a broadside in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society.
Some other fac-similes are also given indicative of the prevailing coercive measures, which soon became popular. The next year (1768) committees were appointed in New York to consider the expediency of entering into measures to encourage industry and frugality and to employ the poor, and by 1769 the movement looking to independence of the British manufacturers became general through the colonies.[199]
FROM EDES AND GILL'S NORTH AMERICAN ALMANACK, 1770.
In February, 1768, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, by a circular letter addressed to the other colonies, invited them to consultation.[200] It drew from Hillsborough a circular letter of warning to the continent,[201] and in May Virginia issued a letter inviting a conference.[202] On June 10, 1768, the seizure of the sloop "Liberty" brought further riotous proceedings in its train.[203]
PROSCRIBING AN IMPORTER.
After an original handbill in the Mass. Hist. Soc. library.
What is known as the "War of the Regulators", or "Regulation", a series of riotous disturbances in North Carolina, 1768-1771, has usually been held to be one of the preliminary uprisings against British oppression. A. W. Waddell, in a paper in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (1871, p. 81), contends that it was nothing but a lawless outburst, and advances evidence to prove that the participants were but a small majority of the people, with no great principle in view; that they were ignorant, never republicans, became Tories, and were opposed by the prominent Whig leaders. He considers that Caruthers and other local historians[204] are responsible for the common misconception arising from their attempt to reflect credit on North Carolina for what is claimed to be an early patriotic fervor.
LANDING OF THE TROOPS IN BOSTON, 1768.
Fac-simile of an engraving by Paul Revere, which appeared in Edes and Gill's North American Almanack, Boston, 1770. It is reëngraved in S. G. Drake's Boston, p. 747, and in S. A. Drake's Old Landmarks of Boston, p. 119. Key: 1, The "Beaver", 14 guns; 2, "Senegal", 14; 3, "Martin", 10; 4, "Glasgow", 20; 5, "Mermaid", 28; 6, "Romney", 50; 7, "Launaston", 40; 8, "Bonetta", 10.
Revere also engraved a large copperplate of the same event, which is given in heliotype fac-simile, on different scales, in the Boston Evacuation Memorial (p. 18) and Mem. Hist. of Boston (ii. 532). Cf. also Gay's Pop. Hist. U. S., iii. 356; Dearborn's Boston Notions, 126, etc. The same view of the town was again used by Revere, but extended farther south, in a cut in the Royal American Mag. (1774), which is given in fac-simile in the Mem. Hist. of Boston, ii. 441. There is also a water-color mentioned in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 2d ser., ii. 156. On Revere as an engraver, see W. S. Baker's American Engravers, Philad., 1875, and the list in N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., 1886, p. 204.
In Sept. (dated 14th) the selectmen of Boston sent a circular to the other towns, calling a convention (Boston Rec. Com. Rept., xvi. 263) to consider the declaration of Bernard "that one or more regiments may soon be expected in this province" (original broadside in Mass. Hist. Soc., Misc. MSS., 1632-1795). It is printed and explained in that society's Proceedings, iv. 387. The convention sat from Sept. 22d to 29th. On the 30th, in the early morning, the British fleet took soundings along the water-front, and in the afternoon a number of war-ships came up from the lower harbor and anchored with springs on their cables. On Oct. 1st the landing took place. The news spread through the land, and the irritation was increased. (Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xx. 9; Barry, Mass., ii. 370; Loring, Boston Orators, 75; Franklin's Works, vii. 418.)
The question of the expense of quartering troops had been raised by Massachusetts and New York in 1767 (Hutchinson, iii. 168), and a letter of Gage on the subject is in the Shelburne Papers, vol. li. (Hist. MSS. Com. Rept., v. 219). Cf. Hillsborough to Governor Franklin in N. J. Archives, x. p. 12. The message of the Assembly to Bernard, praying for their removal (May 31, 1769), is in Hutchinson (iii. App. 497).
A contemporary vindication of the movement, and of Herman Husband, the leader, bringing the history of the commotions down to 1769 only, evidently based on material furnished by Husband, was printed in Boston in 1771.[205] Husband himself seems, during the preceding year, to have printed anonymously, giving no place of publication, a narrative of his own, fortified by the letters of Tryon and others, with the remonstrances and counter-statements.[206]
This cut from Nathaniel Ames's Astronomical diary or Almanack, 1772, Boston, is inscribed "The Patriotic American Farmer, J-n D-k-ns-n, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, who with Attic Eloquence and Roman spirit hath asserted the liberties of the British Colonies in America." Cf. Scharf and Westcott's Philadelphia, i. 276.
C. W. Peale's portrait of Dickinson (1770) was engraved by I. B. Forrest. Cf. Catal. of Gallery of Penna. Hist. Soc. (1872), no. 161; Lossing's Field-Book, i. 476.
On Dickinson's influence, see "The great American essayist" in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., Feb., 1882, p. 117; Sept., 1883, p. 223; Read's Life of George Read, 49, 79; Wells's Adams, ii. 38; Quincy's Josiah Quincy, Jr., 104; Green's Hist. View, 370; Lossing's Field-Book, i. 476. Cf. letters of Dickinson in Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 22; Lee's Life of A. Lee, ii. 293, 296, etc.
The most conspicuous presentation of the American side in 1768 were the famous Farmer's Letters, as they were usually called, of John Dickinson.[207]
Some of the most important of the documents of the Boston patriots were printed in London under the supervision of Thomas Hollis, long a devoted friend of the colonists.[208]
During 1768 and 1769 we find record of the workings of political sentiments in the colonies in abundant publications.[209]
The most important development in 1769 came from some letters which had been addressed by Governor Bernard and General Gage to the ministry, and to which, in the exercise of his rights as a member of Parliament, Alderman Beckford had obtained access and taken copies, subsequently delivered by him to Bollan, who transmitted them to Boston, where they were at once printed. From these letters the public learned of the urgency which the governor had used with the government to induce it to institute more stringent measures of repression.[210]
The publication of these letters led to the printing of An appeal to the world; or a vindication of the town of Boston, from many false and malicious aspersions contain'd in certain letters and memorials, written by Governor Bernard, General Gage [etc.]. Published by order of the town (Boston, 1769),[211] and induced also a letter to the Earl of Hillsborough.[212]
WILLIAM LIVINGSTON.
Fac-simile of the engraving in Sedgwick's Life of William Livingston. Cf. Lossing's Field-Book, i. 330.
There are in the Sparks MSS. (no. xx.) copies of annotations which Franklin, then in London, made on the margins and fly-leaves of sundry pamphlets, which just at this time were engaging attention in London, and these comments show how the struggle was regarded by a mind of Franklin's astuteness, amid the influences of the British capital. Sparks printed parts of these annotations in his Familiar letters and miscellaneous pieces by Dr. Franklin, and again in his edition of Franklin, vol. iv.[213] Some letters which passed between Franklin and William Strahan in 1769 are also of great interest.[214]
The Boston Massacre of March, 1770, was the violent culmination of prevailing passions, and was in a measure induced by the sacrifice of life which resulted from the boarding by a press-gang from the "Rose" frigate of a ship belonging to Hooper, of Marblehead,[215] and by the riotous proceedings which, in Jan., 1770, brought about the death of the boy Snider.[216] Soon after the affray of March, the town of Boston published a Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston (Boston, Edes and Gill, 1770),[217] which depicted the condition of the people at the time, and gave an appendix of depositions, including one of Jeremy Belknap.[218] Copies were sent to England at once,[219] but the rest of the edition was kept back till after the trial, when "Additional Observations" were appended.[220] The volume, thus completed, was reprinted in New York in 1849, with notes and illustrations by John Daggett, Jr.; and again in Frederick Kidder's History of the Boston Massacre (Albany, 1870), which is the most considerable monograph on the subject.[221]
FROM BICKERSTAFF'S BOSTON ALMANAC, 1769.
This song was written by John Dickinson, with some assistance from Dr. Arthur Lee, and was sent (printed in the Penna. Chronicle, July 4, 1768) by Dickinson from Philadelphia to Otis, accompanied by a letter dated July 4, 1768. It was sung to the tune "Hearts of Oak", and was made conspicuous in Boston by being sung at Liberty Hall and the Greyhound Tavern in Aug., 1768. It had been reprinted in the Boston Gazette, July 18th. An amended copy, "the first being rather too bold", was given in the Penna. Chronicle July 11th. In September it appeared as a broadside, with the music. Edes and Gill's Almanac, in reprinting it in 1770, says it is "now much in vogue in North America." (Cf. Tudor's Life of Otis, pp. 322, 501; Moore's Songs and Ballads of the Rev., p. 37; Drake's Town of Roxbury, p. 166; Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. p. 131.)
A parody appeared in the Boston Gazette, Sept. 26, 1768 (Moore, p. 41). This parody gave rise to the "Massachusetts Song of Liberty", which is given in Edes and Gill's Almanac (1770), as well as in Bickerstaff, under the full title of The Parody parodized, or the Massachusetts Liberty Song. It has been ascribed to Mrs. Mercy Warren. (Cf. Moore, p. 44; Lossing, Field-Book of the Rev., i. 487.) The Almanac (Edes and Gill) of 1770 also contains "A new Song composed by a Son of Liberty and sung by Mr. Flagg at Concert Hall, Boston, Feb. 13, 1770."
A stenographic report was made of the trial of Preston, and sent to England, but it has never been published.[222]
The trial of eight of the soldiers took place Nov. 27, 1770, and John Hodgson,[223] the stenographer of the earlier trial, made a Report, The trial of William Wemms, ... published by permission of the Court (Boston, 1770),[224] which gives the evidence and pleas of counsel, and a report of the trial of Edward Manwaring and others, accused of firing on the crowd from the windows of the custom-house. They were acquitted.[225]
FROM BICKERSTAFF'S BOSTON ALMANAC, 1770.
PART OF INSTRUCTIONS TO BOSTON REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 15, 1770.
The original draft of these instructions, in the handwriting of Josiah Quincy, Jr., is among the Quincy MSS. in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. This is a reproduction of the last page, showing the signatures of Richard Dana and of Cooper, the town clerk.
The principal statement on the government side was A Fair Account of the late unhappy disturbance at Boston, extracted from the depositions that have been made concerning it by persons of all parties, with an appendix containing affidavits and evidences not mentioned in the narrative that has been published at Boston (London, 1770).[226] This Fair Account contained a deposition of Secretary Andrew Oliver, tending to show that the soldiers were justifiably defending themselves; and making public the doings of the governor's council thereupon. This "breach of a most essential privilege" excited animadversion, and the council censured Oliver.[227] The purport of the English presentations is to show that the soldiers did not fire till duly provoked by assaults, and the more candid American writers, like Ramsay, Abiel Holmes, Hildreth, and others, seem to allow this.[228]
Bancroft (orig. ed., vi. 347) has a long note on the evidence about the provocation and first assault. He gives ten reasons for thinking Preston gave orders to fire, and six reasons for thinking the provocation was not sufficient to justify the firing. The evidence in this form is omitted in the final revision of Bancroft.
The anniversary of the Massacre was observed in Boston till the struggle for Independence was passed, and a series of annual orations commemorates the continued and aroused feelings of the people.[229]
The appendix to the third volume of Hutchinson's History records the sparring of Hutchinson and the legislature during the next six months.[230]
The list of Haven in Thomas (ii. 606) gives the American tracts published in 1770; but the more significant ones of the year appeared in London.[231]
The year 1771 was less eventful. In England, it seemed for a while as if the worst had passed. W. S. Johnson had written at the close of the preceding year (Dec. 29, 1770), "The general American controversy is at present looked upon here as very much at an end."[232] Franklin had been made the agent for Massachusetts;[233] he was still putting tersely to his correspondents the American view of the controversy,[234] and he had a conference with Hillsborough.[235]
Hutchinson in March had succeeded to the governor's chair, with reluctance, as he professed.[236] The American tracts may be gleaned in Haven's list.[237]
The events of 1772 are of more interest. The Boston patriots emphasized their arguments in their instructions to their representatives in May.[238] Later (July 14th) they passed a remonstrance against taxation and sent it to the king.[239]
Note.—The annexed cut is part of a handbill in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society.
There are diverse views as to the originator of the committees of correspondence. Gordon's opinion (i. 312) that James Warren was the instigator was adopted by Marshall, but is held by Bancroft (vi. 428) to be erroneous. John Adams gave the first movement to Samuel Adams.[240] One of the first-fruits of the committee, as a provincial measure, was the report drafted by Samuel Adams (Nov. 2, 1772), which was printed as the Rights of the Colonies.[241] The vote passed by Virginia, March 12, 1773, was the immediate cause of intercolonial activity.[242]
The seizure and destruction of the revenue vessel Gaspee in Narragansett Bay, June 10, 1772, is considered by Rhode Island writers as the earliest aggressive conduct of the patriots. John Russell Bartlett,[243] in the R. I. Colonial Records (vol. vii. pp. 57-192), gathers all the documentary evidence, and this was in 1861 published separately as A History of the Destruction of his Britannic Majesty's Schooner Gaspee ... accompanied by the Correspondence connected therewith; the action of the General Assembly of Rhode Island thereon, and the official journal of the ... Commission of Inquiry appointed by King George III.[244]
Early in 1773 the patriots of Boston produced what is called "the most elaborate state paper of the Revolutionary contest in Massachusetts." This is the reply of the House of Representatives to the governor in the contest then waging with him.[245]
The act which included the duty on tea had passed Parliament June 29, 1767, and in March, 1770, it had been repealed, except, in order to maintain the theoretical right of Parliament to tax, the tax on tea had been retained in force. Pownall[246] had exerted his utmost to make the repeal include tea. The test was deferred till it was announced[247] that the East India Company was assisted by government in sending over a surplus of tea which they had. A series of impassioned gatherings in Boston, and demonstrations not so boisterous in the other colonies, led to the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor, and elsewhere resulted in the transshipment of the tea whence it came.[248]
A BOSTON WARNING.
After an original in the Mass. Hist. Society.
A PHILADELPHIA POSTER.
After an original in the library of the Pennsylvania Hist. Society.
Another significant event of 1773 was the episode of the Hutchinson letters. They had been written (1767-1769), from Boston, to Thomas Whately, and came, after the latter's death (June, 1772), by some unknown means, into Franklin's hands. When Cushing[249] and the patriots printed them,—for the rumor of their existence led the "people abroad" to compel their publication,[250]—Franklin made no complaint, and bore with reserve the defamation which was visited upon him in England, and which is still repeated by later English writers,[251] Franklin finally prepared a statement in vindication, but it was not published till Temple Franklin printed his edition of Franklin's Works.[252] The letters were printed without any indication of Franklin's connection with them; but when a duel grew out of the publication, in which a brother of Whately was wounded by Mr. Temple,[253] who had been accused of purloining the letters, Dr. Franklin, to prevent a further meeting, published a note in the Public Advertiser, acknowledging his agency.[254] Sparks appends a note in his edition,[255] in which he refutes the claim of Dr. Hosack (Biographical Memoir of Dr. Hugh Williamson, 1820) that Williamson had been the medium of transmitting the letters.[256]
Mr. R. C. Winthrop, in discussing the question,[257] introduces a paper of George Bancroft, "Whence came the papers sent by Franklin to Cushing in his letter of Dec. 2, 1772?" Bancroft's conclusion is that Whately sent the letters to Grenville (who died Nov. 13, 1770), and they were found among his papers, and through some agency or consent of Temple passed into Franklin's hand.[258]
QUINCY'S DEDICATION.
This is the original draft of the dedication to Quincy's tract on the Port Bill, the MS. of which is among the Quincy MSS. in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. Its full title is Observations on the act of parliament commonly called the Boston port-bill; with thoughts on civil society and standing armies (Boston, 1774; Philad., 1774; London, 1774. It is reprinted in the Life of Josiah Quincy, Jr. Cf. Sabin, xvi. 67,192, etc.)
The letters, when laid before the Massachusetts Legislature, produced some resolutions (June 25, 1773),[259] followed by a petition to the king,[260] asking that Hutchinson and Oliver might be removed from office. This led to the presence of Franklin before the Privy Council, and the attack on Franklin's character by Wedderburn.[261]
THE QUINCY MANSION.
After a water-color painted by Miss Eliza Susan Quincy in 1822. The house was built in 1770, by the father of the patriot, Josiah Quincy, Jr. The original sketch is among the Quincy MSS. in the Mass. Hist. Soc. cabinet. Cf. cut in Appleton's Journal, xiv. 161. Of Josiah Quincy, Jr., there was an engraving made in his lifetime, which was held to be a good likeness, and from this, and with the family's assistance, Stuart, fifty years after Quincy's death, painted the picture which is engraved in the Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 37.
HEADING OF A HANDBILL
Fac-simile of the top portion of an original broadside in Mass. Hist. Society's library. The bills were that for the impartial administration of justice, and that for better regulating the government of the province of Massachusetts Bay.
The earliest significant movement in 1774 was the impeachment of Peter Oliver, chief justice, and younger brother of the late lieutenant-governor, for receiving his salary from the crown,—the controversy respecting the governor and other officers being thus made independent of the people, having been one which had been active for two years past.[262]
Gen. Gage had landed in Boston May 17th, to put in force, June 1st, what is known as the Boston Port Bill (approved March 31, 1774), or An Act to discontinue, in such manner, and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town, and within the harbour of Boston, in the province of Massachuset's Bay, in North America.[263]
While Salem and Marblehead were thus made chief ports of entry, the commerce of Boston was suddenly checked, and the town was forced to a dependence for succor upon other towns and other colonies.[264]
The effect of the measures on the other colonies was instant and widespread.[265]
One of the immediate results in Massachusetts because of these oppressive acts was a retaliatory "Solemn League and Covenant" agreed upon in the provincial assembly,—a combination made more or less effectual by the active agency of Boston and Worcester in issuing broadsides against the use of imported British goods.[266]
In July, 1774, close upon his arrival in London, Hutchinson held an interview with the king, and set forth his opinions of the condition of affairs in the colonies.[267]
In August, 1774, Gage received the two acts mentioned in the annexed fac-simile of a handbill.[268]
It is claimed by Dawson[269] that the movements of 1774 in New York Were precipitated by the merchants and their adherents, "aristocratic smugglers", who formally organized themselves in May, 1774; and it was on the 6th of July that Alexander Hamilton made his stirring appeal at "the great meeting in the fields."[270] Further south a similar spirit prevailed.[271]
HANDBILL.
Fac-simile of an original in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society, where is another, dated Sept. 2, 1774, quoting this, and including an address by Gen. Brattle to the public, deprecating the current belief that his action in writing that letter was inimical to the cause. Cf. H. Stevens's Catal. (1870), no. 261. See on this mater John Andrews's diary in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., viii. 351, 354.
The question of originating the Congress of 1774 is one upon which there has been some controversy. It seems evident that the first proposal for a congress for general purposes was in a vote of Providence, R. I., May 17, 1774.[272] Cushing of Massachusetts and Dr. Franklin appear to have exchanged views on the subject in 1773.[273] Hancock seems to have suggested a congress in March, 1774.[274] In May the Sons of Liberty in New York formally proposed a Congress.[275] A resolution of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, June 17th, looked towards one, and similar action took place in the House of Burgesses in Virginia.[276]
The Congress opened with a concession of the New England members, when Samuel Adams proposed the Episcopalian Duché for chaplain.[277] John Adams tells how the scheme of the Congress struck him,[278] and we learn from him something of the appearance and bearing of an assembly, where the "Tories were neither few nor feeble", and the political feelings were far from being in unison. "One third Whigs, another Tories, the rest mongrel", he says.[279] Franklin thought that only unanimity and firmness could conduce to any good effect from it.[280]
For the local feeling in Philadelphia and among the members assembled there at the time, see John Adams's diary, Ward's diary,[281] and Christopher Marshall's diary.
The original edition of the Journal of the Proceedings of the Congress held in Philadelphia, Sept. 5, 1774 (Philad., 1774), bore the earliest device of the colonies, twelve hands grasping a column based on Magna Charta, surmounted by a liberty cap with the motto Hanc tuemur.[282]
What we know of the debates, apart from the proceedings, is chiefly derived from some brief notes by John Adams.[283]
The Congress put forth a Declaration of Rights, and a draft of it is preserved in a hand thought to be that of Major Sullivan, of New Hampshire. Wells (Sam. Adams, ii. 234) thinks that Samuel Adams had a hand in it, as it resembles the pamphlet issued by the Boston Committee of Correspondence in 1772. The original draft of it, with the final form, is given in the Works of John Adams,[284] who claimed the authorship of article iv.
The petition of Congress to the king was drafted by John Dickinson.[285] It was signed in duplicate, and both copies were successively sent to Franklin, one of which is in the Public Record Office, and the other, retained by Franklin, is among the Franklin MSS. in the library of the Department of State at Washington.[286]
The petition to the king was first printed in London by Becket in Authentic Papers from America, submitted to the dispassionate consideration of the public (London, 1775). This produced a card (Jan. 17, 1775) from Bollan, Franklin, and Arthur Lee, calling the copy of the petition "surreptitious as well as materially and grossly erroneous" (Sparks Catal., p. 84).
It is sometimes said that R. H. Lee, and sometimes that John Jay, wrote the "Address to the People of Great Britain" which the Congress adopted.[287] They also passed a "Memorial to the inhabitants of the colonies."[288]
On the 9th of September the people of Boston and the neighborhood met outside the limits of the town, and passed a paper, drawn up by Joseph Warren, more extreme and less dignified than was demanded, known as the "Suffolk Resolves",[289] and this was transmitted to the Congress, where, when the Resolves were read, as John Adams says, there were tears in the Quaker eyes. Jones[290] says that the loyalists had joined the Congress to help in claiming redress for grievances, but that the approval of these Resolves rendered their continuance with the Congress in its measures impossible. Hutchinson[291] says that when the Resolves were known in England, they were more alarming than anything which had yet been done.[292]
On Sept. 28th Joseph Galloway introduced his plan of adjustment, calling for a grand council to act in conjunction with Parliament in regulating the affairs of the colonies. The scheme was finally rejected by a vote of six colonies to five, after having allured many of the leading men to its support.[293]
The Congress, Oct. 20th, adopted the Articles of Association, pledging in due time the country to non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption, so as to sever completely all commercial relations with England.[294]
In the summer of 1774 the British Parliament had, after some opposition, passed what is known as the "Quebec Bill", restoring the old French law in the civil courts of Quebec, securing rights to the Catholic inhabitants, and extending the limits of that province south of Lake Erie as far as the Ohio.[295]
CONGRESS OF 1774.
The debates[296] in Parliament caused much diversity of opinion, and gave rise to a number of pamphlets.[297] The Congress of 1774 sought to counteract this action by an address to the inhabitants of Quebec, which was distributed both in English and French.[298]
Pownall in London told Hutchinson that every step of the Congress was known to the ministry.[299] We know that Dartmouth, probably through Galloway, received accounts of the temper of the delegates,[300] and that Joseph Reed was in communication with Dartmouth at the time.[301]
The revolutionary measures advocated by the Congress were far from receiving general acceptance,[302] and in New York they elicited some sharp and vigorous controversial pamphlets.[303] It was the general opinion at the time that Samuel Seabury was the author of two of the ablest of these tracts, though the claims for their authorship are now divided between Seabury and Isaac Wilkins, while each may have assisted the other in a joint production[304] which rendered at this time the name of a "Westchester Farmer" famous.[305]
JOSIAH QUINCY'S DIARY.
This is reproduced from a page of the diary of Josiah Quincy, Jr., which was kept while he was in London in 1774. It is the beginning of his description of an interview with Lord North. The original diary is among the Quincy MSS. in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. Quincy had sailed from Salem Sept. 28, 1774, and was not averse to having the Tories think that he was going for his health; but Gage seemed to have had a suspicion that about this time somebody was going over with bad designs (P. O. Hutchinson, 296). We learn from the same source (p. 301) that North thought his interviewer was "a bad, insidious man, designing to be artful without abilities to conceal his design",—a view that Hutchinson no doubt had helped the minister to form. With Quincy's spirit, we can imagine how North's warning that there must be submission before reconciliation would be taken. There was some suspicion also that Quincy was making observations upon Franklin to discern how far that busy genius could be trusted. Franklin seems to have satisfied him, and on his homeward voyage Quincy dictated to a sailor the report to the patriots that he had every reason to fear he would not live to deliver in person, as indeed he did not. It is preserved, and printed in his Life, where will be found his journal kept in London. Joseph Reed's letters to him, while in London, are in The Life of Joseph Reed, i. 85, etc. Quincy made out lists in London of the friends and foes of America among the merchants. Cf. letter of William Lee, April 6, 1775, in Sparks MSS., xlix. vol. ii.
Another leading Tory writer at this time was Dr. Myles Cooper, the president of King's College, who was as sharply assailed for his Friendly Address[306] as the "Westchester Farmer" was.
Something of an official character belongs to A true state of the proceedings in the Parliament of Great Britain, and in ... Massachusetts Bay, relative to the giving and granting the money of the people of that province, and of all America, in the House of Commons, in which they are not represented (London, 1774), for Franklin is said to have furnished the material for it, and Arthur Lee to have drafted it.[307]
One of the most significant of the American tracts of 1774 was John Dickinson's Essay on the constitutional power of Great Britain over the colonies in America.[308]
The journals of the provincial congress of Massachusetts (1774-1775) are in the Mass. Archives (vol. cxl.), and have been printed as Journal of each Provincial Congress of Mass. 1774-75, and of the Com. of Safety, with an Appendix (Boston, 1838). The proceedings of the session of Nov. 10, 1774, were circulated in a broadside.
In England we have the debates of Parliament, such correspondence as is preserved, and the records of passing feeling, to help us understand the condition of public opinion.[309]
The Assembly of New York met in January, 1775. Dawson contends that the usual view of the loyal element controlling its action is not sustained by the facts, and that in reality neither patriot nor Tory was satisfied with its action.[310]
The feeling in Virginia is depicted in Giradin's continuation of Burk's Virginia (which was written under the cognizance of Jefferson), in Rives's Madison, and in Wirt's Patrick Henry.[311]
LORD NORTH.
From Murray's Impartial History of the Present War, i. 96. Cf. London Mag. (1779, p. 435) for another contemporary engraving.
The Congress of 1775 met in Philadelphia, May 10th. Quebec had been invited to send delegates.[312] Lieut.-Gov. Colden kept the majority of the New York Assembly from sending delegates.[313] John Hancock was chosen president, May 24th.[314]
The proceedings are given in the Journals of Congress.[315]
Perhaps the best expression of argumentative force on both sides was reached in the controversy waged by John Adams against Jonathan Sewall, as he always supposed, but in reality against Daniel Leonard, of Taunton, as it has since been made evident.[316]
CHATHAM.
From the title of Bickerstaff's Boston Almanac for 1772,—the common popular picture of him. Cf. the head in Gentleman's Mag., March, 1770.
In 1768, Edmund Jennings of Virginia, being in London, and seeking, probably unsuccessfully, to get a portrait of Camden for some "gentlemen of Westmoreland County" who had subscribed for that purpose, contented himself with commissioning young "Peele, of Maryland", then in London, to make a picture of Chatham, following "an admirable bust by Wilton, much like him, though different from the common prints." Jennings presented it to R. H. Lee in a letter dated Nov. 15, 1768, and the Virginia Gazette of April 20, 1769, says it had just arrived. The picture was placed in Stratford Hall, Lee's house, but was transferred to the Court-House of Westmoreland in 1825, or thereabouts. In 1847 it was transferred to the State of Virginia, and placed in the chamber of the House of Delegates in Richmond, where it now is. It represents Chatham "in consular habit, speaking in defence of American liberty." Cf. Va. Hist. Reg., i. p. 68; Richmond Despatch, Sept. 26, 1886. There is an engraving of Hoare's portrait of Chatham, representing him sitting and holding a paper, given in fac-simile in Mag. of Amer. Hist., Feb., 1887. On the statue of Pitt at Charleston, S. C., see Mag. of Amer. History, viii. 214. For medals, see account by W. S. Appleton in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xi. 299. D'Auberteuil, in his Essais, ii. 93, gives a curious picture of Pitt in Parliament on crutches, with more gout in his features than in his legs. Cf. Doyle's Official Baronage, i. 359.
One of the most powerful pleas for conciliation was made in Richard Price's Observations on the nature of civil liberty ... and the justice and policy of the war with America (London, 1776, in six editions, at least; Boston, 1776, etc.).[317]
DR. PRICE.
From the London Magazine, May, 1776 (p. 227). "Published by R. Baldwin, June 1, 1776."
For the mutations and progress of opinion in England at this time we may follow Bancroft (orig. ed., vol. viii.) and Smyth (Lectures, nos. 31-33), and the latter compares the expressions of this progress as recorded in Ramsay and the Annual Register.[318]
For the aspects of political leadership in Parliament during 1775-76, and the struggles in debates, see the Parliamentary History and the Amer. Archives,[319] and we may offset among the general histories the Tory sympathies of Adolphus (England, ii. ch. 24) with the liberal tendencies of Massey (Hist. of England), but the lives of the principal leaders bring us a little nearer to the spirits of the hour.[320]
During 1775 Franklin in London was maintaining his correspondence with his American friends,[321] and conferring with Chatham upon plans of conciliation,[322] and discussing the ways of compromise with Lord and Lady Howe.[323]