Conceived in Liberty (176 page)

Perhaps these events helped build the optimism of Sam Adams and Dr. Benjamin Church, of the Boston radicals, who called for resistance to any invasion by British troops on the ground that Britain was a “tottering empire.” The erratic James Otis also took heart. In late June, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Assembly, Otis extolled the memory of Oliver Cromwell and the execution of King Charles. Aroused from shock, Governor Bernard denounced Otis’s speech as “the most violent, insolent, abusive, treasonable declaration that perhaps was ever delivered.” A few weeks later Otis urged one and all to “defend our liberties and privileges... even unto blood” and to don the sword and musket in that cause.

Thus, by the latter half of 1768, Americans were pursuing two courses of resistance against the exactions of the Townshend-Hillsborough program. The first was general (though it concentrated necessarily on the port towns): expansion of nonconsumption and, especially, nonimportation agreements in boycott of British goods. The second was largely limited to Boston: resistance against a crackdown on illegal trade by the new Board of Commissioners of the Customs stationed there. This reign of rigid enforcement was primarily aimed at Boston; against
such
measures mere boycotting was not enough, and had to be supplemented by direct mass action. The decision to send troops to Boston made that port the acute center of conflict in the colonies.

Word of the decision to send an army of occupation to Boston galvanized the people of Massachusetts into action. Sparking the opposition to heights of revolutionary fervor was Samuel Adams. Rather than submit to military rule, Adams proclaimed, “We will take up arms and spend our last drop of blood.” He promised that thousands of Massachusetts farmers would sweep down to
aid the embattled people of Boston. Rumors spread of two secret meetings of the Sons of Liberty, which plotted to incite the people of Massachusetts against the troops, and to seize the Boston harbor fortress of Castle William in behalf of the Sons of Liberty.

With the May Assembly dissolved by Governor Bernard for disobedience, the Boston Town Meeting took the lead in organizing the resistance. (Other assemblies that would eventually be dissolved by the royal governors for favoring pressure against the Townshend laws were those of New York, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia.) The town meeting was now the only legal body that could serve as a focus of resistance against Great Britain.

Accordingly, the Boston Town Meeting met on September 12 in a session planned and organized by radical leaders Otis, Sam Adams, Joseph Warren, and other Sons of Liberty. The meeting again stressed that taxation without their representation violated the British constitution and natural law; and sending an occupying army to enforce such unconstitutional acts was all the more unconstitutional. The Boston Town Meeting also used the clever excuse of an “approaching war with France” (a cherished policy of Chatham and Shelburne) to order all citizens to bear arms so as to resist any “French invasion.” The Bostonians knew very well
whose
invasion they had in mind.

With a meeting of the Assembly denied to it, Boston summoned a newly created convention of delegates from all the towns to take proper action. In this way an extralegal, revolutionary institution was created by the people of Massachusetts to aid them in their struggle. Meanwhile, preparations continued for armed uprising against the British invasion. Before it was removed by the Council and sheriff, a beacon was set on top of Beacon Hill in Boston, which was to be burned as a signal to armed farmers to rally to Boston’s aid.

The Massachusetts Convention met on September 22, with most of the towns—ninety-six in all—sending delegates and instructions of support. Its composition was very similar to that of the regular lower house. It is not clear what the radicals desired the convention to accomplish. Having imitated the proscribed Assembly by selecting the conservatively inclined Thomas Cushing as chairman, the convention confined itself to issuing a protest against the British troops. The arrival of these troops on September 29 caused the convention to disband in haste, after doing little more than setting a useful revolutionary precedent by its very existence. Also, the Sons of Liberty talked of mounting an armed resistance, but it never materialized. It is doubtful that all-out armed resistance by Boston at that time would have drawn in other towns and colonies, and an isolated Boston uprising would have had very little chance of succeeding.

The Massachusetts Council, the town of Boston, and later the new Massachusetts Assembly refused to permit the British troops to quarter in the town, but General Gage quartered them there nevertheless. The Council was controlled
by the House and by the popular forces, and the governor could not dismiss any magistrates without its approval. With the military refusing to enter civilian disputes, the popular liberal party still controlled the town of Boston. Furthermore, despite herculean efforts, smuggling was still far from being stamped out.

The settling of an armed occupation did not cow the town or the province. The liberals swept the Massachusetts spring elections of 1769, and Boston condemned the British and praised the American merchants for their boycott of British goods. A distinguished liberal Congregational minister, the Reverend Samuel Cooper of Boston, wrote that the entire province was united in its stand against the British troops and the Townshend Acts. The radical-dominated Assembly proceeded to purge four Tories from the Council. The conservatives were now routed from the Assembly and in the court of public opinion.

The popular liberals won another signal victory in the winter of 1768–69 in connection with the prosecution of their leading merchant, John Hancock. In his trial for smuggling, Hancock was defended by the brilliant young Boston lawyer John Adams, who moved from technical issues to the unconstitutionality of the statute, since the colonies had not been represented in Parliament, and the unconstitutionality of trial without jury. As months went by in the lengthy trial, Thomas Kirk became an increasingly flimsy and untenable witness, and John Hancock became a hero among the press and throughout the colonies. Finally, at the end of March 1769, the prosecution dropped the case. Hancock was free, and the popular forces had triumphed again.

Undoubtedly, the coercion against Boston helped to expand the nonimportation movement; and it had, by spring 1769, induced the merchants of the three great American ports to adopt such boycotts. From New England, New York, and Philadelphia the boycott movement now spread to other colonies. However, the situation in the South, especially the tobacco colonies of the upper South, was more difficult than in the North. In those southern colonies, commerce was conducted mainly by English and Scottish factors or independent merchants. These were not likely to turn against Great Britain and their own possibilities for trade. In the South, therefore, there was a tendency to stress nonconsumption agreements—as in the early New England boycotts—and thus to go over the heads of the merchants to the people. The boycott movement was led by the leading consumers in each province, the large tobacco planters.

In Virginia, organizers of the boycott were the large planters George Washington and George Mason, joined by Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee. When the House of Burgesses met in May 1769, it proclaimed that it alone had the right to levy taxes in Virginia, and attacked Britain’s reaction to the Massachusetts circular letter. It also denounced a British threat to haul Massachusetts’ patriot leaders to England to stand trial for treason. When the Virginia governor dissolved the House in reaction to these resolutions, the members met privately on May 18 and formed the Virginia Association, pledging nonimportation and nonconsumption of all British goods subject to a duty, with the exception of paper, as well as of a long list of imported fineries. The agreement was devised by Mason and Washington, and Randolph was selected chairman of the association. Back in their home counties, the planters persuaded many of the public to sign the agreement.

In neighboring Maryland, the merchants of Baltimore joined their confreres in Philadelphia to adopt a nonimportation agreement at the end of March. Outside Baltimore, however, the traders and factors refused to join, and so planters led the way in bypassing them, signing a nonimportation agreement in Annapolis and Anne Arundel County on May 23. Most Maryland counties soon followed suit, and this led to the Annapolis leaders calling a meeting of “Merchants, Traders, Freeholders, Mechanics and other Inhabitants” for June 22. The Maryland Association added more luxuries to its taboo list. It also went beyond previous agreements by pledging a business boycott of all persons not adhering to the agreement; such were to be treated with contempt as “enemies to the liberties of America.”

The largest mercantile town in the South was Charleston, South Carolina. But Charleston lagged badly in joining the boycott movement. The “mechanics” (artisans) of Charleston and the planters of the province favored resistance, but the merchants proved apathetic. Receipt of the circular letter of the Boston merchants in the fall of 1768 galvanized the South Carolinians, and the Charleston artisans won seats in the Assembly on the cry of supporting the “glorious 92” antirescinders of Massachusetts. The leader of the South Carolina boycott movement was the noted merchant-planter Christopher Gadsden, who welded the planter-artisan alliance. Spokesman for the alliance was the (Charleston)
South Carolina Gazette,
printed by Peter Timothy. In early February, Timothy urged nonconsumption of imports on the people of the province, and printed letters by planters urging such a boycott as a means of bypassing the reluctant merchants. Charleston artisans met around the Liberty Tree in March, calling for nonimportation. By mid-June 1769, “Societies of Gentlemen” had sprung up in Charleston, pledging themselves to buy no British goods that could be manufactured in America.

Thus, rich and poor united in favor of resistance. Still, despite the army in Boston and the widespread nonimportation movement throughout the colonies, the Charleston merchants hung back and did nothing. The time had come for sterner measures by the popular liberal forces. Accordingly, Christopher Gadsden kicked off a new phase on July 22 with a denunciation in the
Gazette
of importers of British goods, most of them newcomers in the colony. Gadsden and Timothy pushed for a formal nonconsumption agreement, one pledging an all-out boycott of
all
imports from Great Britain until the Townshend Acts were repealed. A boycott was also threatened of all citizens who did not sign the agreement within a month.

Heading the struggle for a boycott was Christopher Gadsden. Accused of advocating independence for the American colonies, Gadsden replied that independence would be bad, but added that losing their rights and liberties would be far worse. Aiding Gadsden in the fight were his old colleague at the Stamp Act Congress, Thomas Lynch, and the radical planter John MacKenzie. The original nonconsumption agreement was also signed by twenty-five members of the South Carolina Assembly. On July 3 and 4, 230 mechanics of
Charleston met under the Liberty Tree and signed the agreement, and even strengthened it by adding a pledge to buy no British goods from transient traders, and to import no slaves from British traders. Some of the mechanics also proceeded to pledge to deal only with merchants who signed the nonimportation agreement.

The merchants railed at these agreements as worse than those of a despot, ignoring the vital distinction that such boycotts were purely voluntary decisions rather than coercive acts backed by the state or by any other force. Reluctantly, the merchants were dragged to the radical position. At first, on July 7, they signed their own, weaker nonimportation agreement limiting the boycott to the year 1770 and permitting certain articles to be imported. Further friction and severe pressure finally brought the merchants around. A joint committee of merchants, planters, and artisans drafted a uniform agreement, and on July 22 Christopher Gadsden triumphantly read this final agreement to a great audience under the Liberty Tree. Over four hundred signers in this General Meeting of Inhabitants formed an association headed by a thirty-nine-man General Committee of thirteen representatives each of merchants, planters, and artisans to supervise the workings of the agreement.

The joint agreement was largely a victory for the radicals. Signers agreed to import no goods from Britain; to maintain previous prices; to buy no imports from transient merchants, or Negro slaves for a year’s time. Any nonsigning South Carolinian would be boycotted, and any violator was understandably to be “contemptuously advertised as being inimical to American rights.” Of particular importance was the pledge to continue the boycott not only until the duties were repealed, as was usual, but also until repeal of the entire Townshend Act structure, including the customs board and the new powers of the vice admiralty courts. Most enthusiastic of the advocates were the artisans, who, it must be noted, had a distinct economic interest in nonimportation. As local “manufacturers” of domestic products, they were the ones who stood to gain most from the patriotic boycott banning the products of their British competitors.

Georgia suffered from the same occupational split on the Townshend measures as did her sister plantation colony. But a letter from the South Carolinians galvanized fraternal feelings in Georgia, and the radical “Amicable Society” met at Liberty Hall, Savannah, and called a meeting of inhabitants. The timorous merchants of Savannah tried to head off the association movement by proposing a weak substitute of their own—an agreement to boycott imports of only the
dutied articles.
But the mass meeting of September 19 followed the South Carolina principles closely, and overruled the merchants without even a pretense of gaining the merchants’ approval.

North Carolina was still a holdout, with the merchants the main obstructive force. But the dam broke when Cornelius Harnett led the Sons of Liberty of Wilmington and Brunswick into nonimportation resolutions at the end of
September 1769. A provincewide association emerged after the manner of the Virginia Association a half-year earlier. The North Carolina Assembly adopted the Virginia resolutions on importation, and was promptly dissolved by Governor Tryon. The assemblymen quickly met as private citizens, and on November 7, 1769, drew up an association for nonimportation. The agreement was much like Virginia’s; violators, furthermore, were “to be treated with the utmost contempt.”