Conceived in Liberty (195 page)

The Continental Association was to remain in effect until all the listed grievances had been redressed. It was to be enforced by rigorous but nonviolent methods of persuasion and expression. Any trader violating the boycott would be ostracized and boycotted by every colony; as to enforcement, every town, city, and county would select a committee to oversee the boycott, publicize the names of violators, and then denounce them as “enemies of American liberty.” Furthermore, any colony violating or failing to agree to the Association would be denounced and itself be boycotted.

The Continental Congress had on the whole done its work well. Despite a lack of enthusiasm (again excepting Christopher Gadsden) for taking the offensive against British troops, for American independence, and even for
denying the authority of Parliament to regulate trade, and despite the strong conservative bloc and its machinations, the Congress stood squarely behind Massachusetts and took steps to come to its aid. Civil disobedience and defensive resistance by the people of Massachusetts were endorsed, and the Continental Association was pledged to boycott British trade until the grievances of Massachusetts and other Americans should be allayed. Charles Thomson, the Philadelphia radical leader who had been chosen secretary of the Congress, expressed a common sentiment upon adjournment: “I hope [the] administration will... be convinced that it is not a little faction but the whole body of American freeholders... that now complain and apply for redress: and who, I am sure, will resist rather than submit... even yet the wound may be healed and peace and law restored. But we are at the brink of a precipice.”

Finally, before adjourning on October 26, the Continental Congress resolved to meet again the following May 10 if its grievances had not yet been relieved. Thus a permanent revolutionary assembly was here created. It should be noted, however, that since the measures of enforcement of the boycott were to be purely local and voluntary among the people, the First Continental Congress could in no proper sense be regarded as a dual
governmental
institution.

As the Congress ended, the colonists hastened to ratify the results at provincial congresses, which were extralegal revolutionary bodies, whose composition was very much like the official assemblies. Localities throughout the colonies created committees of inspection, observation, or “public safety” to oversee and enforce the Association agreement. In Massachusetts, General Gage’s refusal to permit the Assembly to meet brought about the institution of a provincial congress, which endorsed the Congress’s measures in early December. Weeks earlier, Marblehead and Newburyport had taken the lead in forming local committees of inspection. The Boston Town Meeting selected a committee of sixty-three, including Cushing, Hancock, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, and Henry Bass, to enforce the Association. In Massachusetts, few towns needed to establish new commissions of inspection, as they would simply continue committees already chosen to enforce the now superseded Solemn League and Covenant. Only the town of Marshfield refused to agree to the Association. New Hampshire’s provincial congress unanimously endorsed the Association in late January, and many towns appointed local committees.

In Rhode Island and Connecticut, there was no need for special congresses, since the official assemblies were uniquely free from British control; hence the assemblies themselves ratified the boycott. In Connecticut, resistance to the Association centered in the small Anglican elements of many small towns in Fairfield County—Ridgefield, Newtown, and Redding among them. New Jersey, on the other hand, had little trouble in ratifying and setting up local committees; the provincial Assembly itself approved the Congress’s proceedings at the end of January.

The situation in Pennsylvania, in contrast, was highly delicate but soon proved successful. The radicals realized that to enforce the Association the conservative Committee of Forty-three and the Philadelphia politics that it dominated had to be bypassed. On November 14, the radicals held their own mass meeting and decided to hold elections by ballot, with the city and county of Philadelphia each electing its own committee. In the election, the radical committee slate won an overwhelming victory in the city; as a result, the new Committee of Sixty-six was far more radical than the old Philadelphia Committee of Forty-three. The counties also chose committees of inspection to enforce the Association. Finally, the Pennsylvania Assembly itself ratified the Continental Association and then set up a provincial congress that endorsed the Continental Congress in late January. As for Delaware, its Assembly unanimously endorsed the Congress, but Anglican Sussex County refused to select a committee of inspection.

Maryland was the first of the southern colonies to act. Many of its counties chose committees of inspection and a provincial convention unanimously endorsed the Congress in early December. Virginia too acted quickly in forming committees; its provincial convention endorsed the Congress’s proceedings at the end of March. North Carolina also began early, its enforcement committees, particularly at Wilmington and the Tidewater counties, being established in early December. However, North Carolina’s provincial convention did not endorse the Congress until the following April.

In South Carolina, the battle for ratification and enforcement of the Association was led by the liberal General Committee of Charleston. Radical-liberals, led by Gadsden and the
South Carolina Gazette,
urged ratification without the galling and discriminatory exemption for rice exports, while from the right the indigo planters wanted to include South Carolina’s other staple in the exemption. At the South Carolina provincial congress in mid-January, the magnificent Gadsden argued against special privilege for rice, while John Rutledge pleaded hardship and dependence of the colony on the export of rice to Britain. Furthermore, to purchase the support of the indigo interests, the General Committee had suggested that privileged rice growers compensate the indigo planters by buying a certain proportion of the latter crop. The indigo subsidy was defended by the Rutledges, William Henry Drayton, and even Thomas Lynch, while Gadsden cuttingly asked why only the
indigo
growers, and not other people, in the province should benefit from the rice exemption. Finally, the compensation was extended to other agricultural commodities.

South Carolina’s provincial congress set up an unusually systematic set of local enforcement committees. In every parish and district, members of the congress composed a majority of the committee, and future vacancies were to be filled in elections by the inhabitants.

Two colonies failed to ratify the Association: New York and Georgia.
Many of New York’s conservative intellectuals, such as the Anglican ministers Samuel Seabury and Thomas Chandler, removed themselves in disgust from the Association movement, openly denouncing it, and being branded as Tories in return. But the bulk of conservatives determined to stay within the popular movement in New York and thereby to guide and emasculate it. The conservative Committee of Fifty-one, however, was forced to dissolve and yield to the clamor of the radical Committee of Mechanics for a public election of a new committee. At a public meeting on November 22, the newly elected Committee of Sixty was dominated by the radicals, including Isaac Sears and Alexander MacDougall. However, the landlord-run rural counties remained apathetic to the revolutionary movement, and only Suffolk, Ulster, and Albany counties endorsed the Association. In Suffolk, particularly, the several towns hastened to appoint enforcement committees. Radicals attempted to form committees of inspection in Queens and Tryon counties but with little success; thus, when committees in Jamaica and Newtown, Queens, were appointed, the committees were speedily repudiated by many of their citizens. In upcountry Dutchess County, a Tory association openly combatted the boycott, and the majority of freeholders swore to obey the constituted laws of the land and to enforce obedience to the rightful authority of king and Parliament. A majority of Jamaica freeholders signed a loyalist oath, and Oyster Bay was largely Tory. A public meeting of freeholders of Albany County pledged loyalty to established government and a Loyalty Pole was constructed in Ulster County.

The radicals made a determined effort to get the New York Assembly to ratify the Association, but failed—by one vote. Notwithstanding, the radical Committee of Sixty proved sufficient in controlling the course of the trade in New York City.

In Georgia, conditions in late 1774 were more favorable for ratification; the looming Indian war had faded and rice had received its exemption from the Continental Congress. But now many of the radical leaders in Georgia began to lose their nerve. The Savannah and the Assembly radicals proposed to endorse the Association only if more time were granted for launching nonimportation and nonexportation. Only the pure radicals of St. John’s Parish, led by Dr. Lyman Hall, adopted the Association without deviation, on December 1.

A provincial congress met in Georgia on January 18. Only five of the twelve parishes sent delegates, and these represented only small minorities of their parishes. The congress, then, lacking self-confidence, decided to submit its extralegal decisions to the official Georgia Assembly. The congress proceeded to ratify the Association but with modifications: postponing nonimportation to March 15 and nonexportation to December 1, 1775. Governor Wright dissolved the Assembly before it could ratify, but the congress tried to redeem itself by publishing its decisions. It did not, however, go so far as to ratify undiluted the actual measures of the Continental Congress.

Local committees in every province began immediately to enforce nonimportation after December 1, and nonconsumption the following March. In addition to boycotting and ostracizing violators, the same methods were used against persons of known Tory leanings. While historians have remarked on the paradox of a libertarian movement using coercive measures against dissidents, the remarkable thing is the degree of libertarian means that this movement used in pursuit of its ends. Never before in history had so much reliance been placed on such nonviolent methods of mass struggle as the boycott, and on such libertarian and nonviolent means of enforcing the boycott as secondary boycotts, social ostracism, blacklists, and public obloquy. This unprecedented constancy of libertarian ends and means, especially for a revolutionary mass movement of such size and scope, was marred only around the edges by such minor excesses as the use of the tarpot, the rail, and the feathers. The whole Association movement of 1774–75 is a remarkable testament to the strength of libertarian ideals permeating the revolutionary era.

One of the earliest examples of organized voluntary boycott took place in Worcester, Massachusetts, in early November, when over forty blacksmiths of the county pledged to refuse to sell their services to all who violated the Association in any way. They also resolved to do no further work for specified persons and families with Tory leanings, particularly Timothy Ruggles and others who had been trying to form a Tory association supported by Governor Gage, and pledged each other mutual aid against a popular threat to their lives or liberties or properties. Further pressure on the Ruggles group came from the Massachusetts provincial congress on December 9, which recommended to the local committees of correspondence a widespread public notice to such associations and any people signing them that “their names be published to the world, their persons treated with that neglect, and their memories transmitted to posterity with that ignominy which such unnatural conduct must deserve.” Under this pressure the Ruggles group found that it was virtually devoid of signers. Only in the incorrigible Tory town of Marshfield did a sizable number gather to sign a Loyalist association, and even they had to send a hurried call to British troops for protection.

There was little trouble about endorsing nonimportation in Massachusetts. Nonconsumption presented a more difficult enforcement problem. The Newburyport inspection committee solved the matter by requiring shopkeepers to produce a certificate from a committee of inspection, attesting that the goods were not sold in violation of the Association. Tea, a product hitherto in great demand in the colonies, was the biggest nonconsumption problem. Typical of committee vigilance was the crackdown on Thomas Lilly of Marblehead for buying tea for his own consumption. Lilly was pressured into publicly burning the English tea and publicly recanting his errors. A particular problem was the itinerant peddlers who sold East Indian tea in the country towns. A certificate here would not be practicable; hence the provincial congress in mid-February urged abstinence from all trading with peddlers.

Even before the meeting of the Continental Congress, radical editors had begun publicly blacklisting Massachusetts supporters of the Intolerable Acts and “traitors” accepting jobs in the Gage regime. The
Norwich Packet,
of Connecticut, on October 13, blasted the Reverend Samuel Peters, a Tory Anglican minister, as the “most unnatural monster” and “detestable parricide to this country.” In response, the Petersham Town Meeting branded fourteen Tories “incorrigible enemies of America” for being opposed to the Continental Congress and the Association. The Marblehead Town Meeting decided to boycott a half-dozen of its citizens as “abettors of tyranny, and parricides of their country.” Sometimes, of course, there were excesses, as when mob coercion forced Dr. Abraham Alden of Biddeford and John Taylor of Shrewsbury to confess their errors.

In New Hampshire, nonimportation was energetically enforced in the port of Portsmouth by the Committee of Forty-five. The main trouble was in the country towns, where peddlers violated nonimportation and nonconsumption regulations. As a solution, the towns of Exeter, Kingston, New Market, and Brentwood imposed a prohibition upon peddling. The provincial convention in late January endorsed the prohibition and extended it to the province, urging all citizens to maintain the boycott by abandoning the use of tea. Rhode Island enforced the Association very well. One excess in that province went beyond voluntary, market means: the requirement by the town of Providence that all traders show certificates of compliance with the Association.