Landing of the Troops.—Imposing Military Display.—Exasperation of the People.—Non-importation Associations.
of the guns of the ships, the troops, about seven hundred in number, landed with charged muskets, fixed bayonets, colors flying, drums beating, and every other military parade usual on entering a conquered city of an enemy. A part of the troops encamped on the Common, and part occupied Faneuil Hall and the town-house. Cannons were placed in front of the latter; passengers in the streets were challenged, and other aggravating circumstances attended the entrance of the troops. Every strong feeling of the New Englander was outraged, his Sabbath was desecrated, his worship was disturbed, his liberty was infringed upon. The people became greatly exasperated; mutual hatred, deep and abiding, was engendered between the citizens and the soldiers, and the terms rebel and tyrant were daily bandied between them.
All Americans capable of intelligent thought sympathized with Massachusetts, and the engine of non-importation agreements, which worked so powerfully against the Stamp Act, was put in motion with increased energy. * These associations became general in all the colonies, under the sanction of the Assemblies. An agreement, presented by Washington in the House of Burgesses of Virginia, was signed by every member, and the patriotism of the people was every where displayed by acts of self-denial. **
* The non-importation agreement of the people of Boston was, substantially, that they would not import any goods for the fall of 1768, except those already ordered; that they would not import any goods from Great Britain from the 1st of January, 1769, to the 1st of January, 1770, except salt, coals, fish-hooks and lines, hemp and duck, bar lead and shot, wool cards and card wires; that they would not import on their own account, or on commission, or purchase from any who should import, from any other colony in America, from January, 1769, to January, 1770, any tea, paper, glass, or painters' colors, until the aet imposing duties on those articles should be repealed.
** A letter from Newport, published in a New York paper in January, 1768, remarks that, at an afternoon visit of ladies, "It was resolved that those who could spin ought to be employed in that way, and those who could not should reel. When the time arrived for drinking tea, bohea and hyperion were provided, and every one of the ladies judiciously rejected the poisonous bohea, and unanimously, to their very great honor, preferred the balsamic hyperion." The hyperion here spoken of was of domestic manufacture—the dried leaves of the raspberry plant. In Boston a party of some forty or fifty young ladies, calling themselves Daughters of Liberty, met at the house of the Rev. Mr. Morehead, where they amused themselves during the day with spinning "two hundred and thirty-two skeins of yarn, some very fine, which were given to the worthy pastor, several of the party being members of his congregation." Numerous spectators came in to admire them. Refreshments were indulged in, and "the whole was concluded with many agreeable tunes, anthems, and liberty songs, with great judgment; fine voices performing, which were animated, in all their several parts, by a number of the Sons of Liberty." It is added that there were upward of one hundred spinners in Mr. Morehead's society.
The Duke of Grafton.—The King's Speech, and the Response.—Proposed Re-enactment of a Statute of Henry VIII.
Let us consider for a moment the acts of the British Parliament at this juncture. It assembled on the 8th of November. Pitt was ill at his country seat, Townshend was dead, and the Duke of Grafton, who had been one of the Secretaries of State in the Rockingham administration, was really at the head of this unpopular ministry. He was an able, straight-forward politician, a warm admirer and friend of Pitt, and a firm supporter of his principles. *
