Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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Bernard, of course, dissolved the House, as required by Hillsbor-
ough’s letter.²⁹ At the next election, a large majority of those who had
voted against rescission were returned to the House, but only five of
the seventeen so-called Rescinders were reelected.³⁰ Bernard reported
to Hillsborough that the threat of Massachusetts Whigs to “clear the
[provincial] Council of Tories” had also been carried out.³¹
The favorable response to the Massachusetts letter by the Assemblies
of Virginia, New Jersey, and Connecticut, mentioned above, had been
voted before Hillsborough’s letter arrived. Following the arrival of this
letter the Assemblies of Maryland, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Dela-
ware, New Hampshire, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia
spurned the letter and followed their sister colonies in adopting peti-
tions to the King denying or questioning the right of Parliament to levy
taxes for revenue of any kind on the colonies.³²
For some weeks it appeared that the New York Assembly, which met
on October , ,³³ would not fall into line.³⁴ But finally, in Decem-
ber, the Assembly adopted, without any record of dissent, a Petition to
the King, a Memorial to the House of Lords, and a Representation to
the House of Commons denouncing the Townshend Act as unconstitu-
tional and urging its repeal,³⁵ and voted that a favorable response be
made to the Massachusetts circular letter.³⁶
The action of the Virginia House of Burgesses was particularly im-
pressive. As we have seen, it had already adopted a Petition to the King
protesting against the Townshend Act duties as an infringement of the
constitutional rights of the colonists. But on learning of Hillsborough’s
circular letter, the House adopted, without a dissenting voice, resolu-
tions reaffirming the stand taken in the Petition and asserting the right
of every colony “to procure the Concurrence of his Majesty’s other
Colonies, in dutiful Addresses, praying the royal Interposition in Favour
of the Violated Rights of America.”³⁷
The protests of the colonial Assemblies were fortified by a move-
ment for non-importation agreements to put pressure on British mer-
chants and manufacturers to work for repeal of the Townshend Act.³⁸
On August , , sixty “Merchants and Traders of the Town of
Boston”³⁹ signed an agreement “that we will not from and after Janu-
ary , , import into the province any tea, paper, glass, or painters’
-
colours until the acts imposing duties on these articles are repealed.”
The agreement further provided that the signers would not import “any
kind of goods or merchandize from Great Britain...from January ,
, to January , , except salt, coals, fish-hooks and lines, hemp,
duck, bar-lead and shot, wool-cards and card-wire.”⁴⁰
Additional signatures were obtained the next day, and by August ,
all but sixteen of the Boston merchants, shopkeepers, and other im-
porters of British goods were reported to have signed the agreement.⁴¹
The merchants of Salem, Massachusetts, next to Boston the most
important commercial town of Massachusetts, followed suit on Sep-
tember .⁴²
On August , the merchants in New York City entered into a
pact somewhat similar to Boston’s, but differing in several important
respects.
The New York agreement applied to goods shipped from Great
Britain after November , , no matter when they arrived; called for
the exemption of a somewhat different list of articles from those speci-
fied in the Boston agreement; and decreed that any subscribers violat-
ing the agreement “be deemed enemies to this country.” Even more im-
portant, it provided that the ban on importation of all the goods specified
in the agreement, not merely the goods (tea, etc.) taxed by the Town-
shend Act, should continue until that act was repealed.⁴³
Furthermore, the New York agreement was fortified by an agree-
ment of New York City “tradesmen” (in the sense of those following a
trade such as carpenter, shoemaker, weaver, baker, and tailor) to boycott
any “merchant, store-keeper or retailer” who refused to sign the mer-
chants’ agreement and publicize them as “an enemy to the true inter-
est of Great Britain and her colonies.”⁴⁴
What induced the majority of the merchants of Boston, New York,
and Salem to take a step that would entail so severe a sacrifice of im-
mediate self-interest? Along with the colonists in general, they doubt-
less were influenced by Hillsborough’s provocative circular letter and
the logic of Dickinson’s persuasive Farmer’s Letters. But they in particu-
lar were the ones who suffered the direct impact of the harassing trade
restrictions imposed by Parliament in the Acts of and and the
measures to enforce them (described in Chapters and and the ap-
pendices to these chapters). The vicissitudes of Daniel Malcom, John
Hancock,* and Henry Laurens, described in other chapters of this book,
are illustrative of what merchants all along the American seaboard had
been experiencing during the past few years.
Philadelphia merchants (though urged to fall in line by a broadside
written by John Dickinson, pointing out that Hillsborough’s circular
letter evidenced British determination to try “to enslave us”),⁴⁵ long
hesitated to join the movement.⁴⁶ But at last, on February , , they
agreed to suspend further orders until March ,⁴⁷ and when that date
arrived without any favorable word from England, they signed an
agreement, similar to New York’s, not to import goods shipped from
Great Britain after April , , until the Townshend Act duties were
repealed.⁴⁸
After Philadelphia joined the movement, the merchants of New
Haven and New London, Connecticut, and New Castle County, Dela-
ware, came in.⁴⁹ Last of the important northern ports to join was New-
port, Rhode Island, whose merchants did not agree until October ,
, and even then only after heavy pressure from the merchants in
other colonies and under an agreement which was not to take effect un-
til January , , and contained a larger number of exemptions than
that of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.⁵⁰ So far as is known, the
merchants of New Hampshire and New Jersey did not adopt any agree-
ment at all.⁵¹
For a few weeks there was danger of the movement’s foundering,
when in October, , the Boston merchants, without consultation
with those elsewhere, decided to maintain the boycott until all British
duties for revenue on the colonies, including those imposed by acts
prior to ,⁵² were repealed. But the merchants of New York and
Philadelphia refused to enlarge the scope of the boycott, and in De-
cember the Boston merchants receded.⁵³
The movement in Virginia, first of the southern colonies to act, ap-
parently was initiated by George Washington, who in April, , wrote
his friend and neighbor George Mason, enclosing a copy of the recent
-
* Harlow Giles Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot (New York: John Wiley,
). [B.W.S.]
Philadelphia agreement and stating, “At a time when our lordly Masters
in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation
of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that [petitioning hav-
ing failed] some thing shou’d be done to avert the stroke and maintain
the liberty which we have derived from our Ancestors....How far then
their attention to our rights and priviledges is to be awakened or alarmed
by Starving their Trade and manufactures remains to be tryed....That
there will be difficulties attending the execution of it every where,
from clashing interests and selfish designing men, cannot be denied; but
in the Tobacco Colonies where the Trade is so diffused, and in a man-
ner wholly conducted by Factors for their principals at home, these dif-
ficulties are certainly enhanced, but I think not insurmountably in-
creased, if the Gentlemen in their several Counties wou’d be at some
pains to explain matters to the people, and stimulate them to a cordial
agreement to purchase none but certain innumerated Articles out of
any of the Stores...nor import nor purchase any themselves.”⁵⁴
Mason replied that he, too, favored a non-importation agreement,⁵⁵
and sent Washington a draft of a proposed form of agreement⁵⁶ in time
for him to take it with him to Williamsburg, where he was to attend the
spring session of the House of Burgesses as a representative of Fair-
fax County.⁵⁷ After sitting only ten days, the House was dissolved on
May by Governor Lord Botetourt for adopting resolutions asserting
that no one but Virginia’s own Legislature had the right to impose taxes
on the inhabitants of the colony and denouncing as unconstitutional
Parliament’s recent Address to the King (discussed in Chapter ), for
sending persons in the colonies accused of treason or misprision of
treason to England for trial.⁵⁸ But the members, including Washington,
immediately reassembled at the Raleigh Tavern,⁵⁹ and there, on
May , , adopted a non-importation agreement, known as “the
Association,” effective immediately except as to goods already ordered.⁶⁰
The agreement, initially signed by eighty-eight members of the House
and later by many other subscribers,⁶¹ was more drastic than the north-
ern agreements in several respects. Though some goods proscribed un-
der the northern agreements were not included in the boycott, the boy-
cott of the proscribed goods applied whether the proscribed goods were
imported from Great Britain or the European continent and it included
wine, slaves, and “any manner of Goods taxed by Act of Parliament, for
the Purpose of Raising a Revenue in America” no matter where they
came from.⁶²
Furthermore, the agreement banned not only future importation of
the proscribed goods, but, after September , , the purchase of such
goods even if imported at an earlier date;⁶³ and pledged the subscribers
(presumably to increase the supply of wool available for local manufac-
ture) “not to kill or suffer to be killed any Lambs that shall be weaned
before the First Day of May in any year...;and, unless and until oth-
erwise decided at a meeting of subscribers held after due notice, the
agreement was to remain in force not merely until the Townshend Act
was repealed but until all British acts levying duties for revenue in the
colonies were repealed.⁶⁴
A month later, a non-importation agreement along the general lines
of the Virginia agreement was adopted by a large group of “Merchants,
Traders, Freeholders, Mechanics and other Inhabitants” of Maryland
meeting at Annapolis.⁶⁵
Agitation for a non-importation agreement by the merchants of
Charleston, South Carolina, began as early as February, , but no
action was taken until July , when a group of Charleston merchants
adopted an agreement which, two days later, was approved at a mass
meeting and signed by over two hundred subscribers, including planters
and mechanics as well as merchants.⁶⁶ Similar in many respects to the
Virginia and Maryland agreements, it went further in providing for
continuance until repeal not only of the Townshend Act but of the “acts
lately passed...[by which] we are...deprived of those invaluable
Rights, Trial by our Peers and the Common Laws”⁶⁷
—evidently refer-
ring to the provisions in the Acts of and (discussed in Chap-
ter and the appendix to Chapter ), providing for trial in colonial ad-
miralty courts, sitting without jury.
In September and November, agreements along the general lines of
the South Carolina agreement were adopted in Georgia and North
Carolina, respectively,⁶⁸ thus establishing a boycott, nominally at least,
of most imports from Great Britain in nearly all of the thirteen colonies
that later rebelled.
Two other important developments in must be briefly noted.
-
The publication in New York in of a pamphlet urging the settle-
ment of one or more Church of England bishops in the colonies brought
to a head the fear of northern Congregationalists and Presbyterians
that an Anglican episcopate was about to be established in the colonies.
This fear was quieted by assurances from trusted correspondents in En-
gland that the British Ministry was giving no support to the project and
there was no immediate danger of its success. But for a time it appeared
that another serious colonial grievance was to be added to those already
accumulated.⁶⁹*
The other was the flat refusal of the Massachusetts House of Repre-
sentatives to vote funds for the supply of British troops quartered in the
colony required by the colonial Quartering Act (discussed in Chap-
ters and ).⁷⁰ Parliament did not retaliate as it had in the case of the
similar action by the New York House; but the refusal of the Massachu-
setts House to comply with the colonial Quartering Act was another
black mark against the colony contributing to the passage of the fateful
Massachusetts Regulating Act of (described in Chapter ).
* See Fredwick V. Mills, Sr., “Bishops and Other Ecclesiastical Issues,” in Jack P. Greene and J. R.
Pole, eds., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Pub-
lishers, ), –. [B.W.S.]
THE AMERICAN CUSTOMS BOARD
AND THE LIBERTY RIOT
O
of the restrictions and
duties on colonial trade, described in earlier chapters, began in
, when the Collector of Customs at Pokomoke, Maryland, was
fiercely assaulted while in the execution of his office.¹ Not long after-
ward, a mob of some forty men at Dighton, Massachusetts, boarded the
sloop Polly, which had been seized along with its cargo by customs
officers, and carried away the cargo and all the sloop’s fittings.² In
came the brush between customs officers and Daniel Malcom at Boston
(described in the second appendix to Chapter ), and in the same month,
a band of men rescued goods seized by customs officers at Newbury,
Massachusetts.³
A few months later, the Collector and Comptroller at Falmouth,
Massachusetts, were held prisoners while a mob carried away contra-
band which had been seized by the officers in the storehouse of Enoch
Ilfley.⁴
In Charleston, South Carolina, a whole series of bitter controver-
sies between customs officials, including the commander of H.M.S. Sar-
doine stationed there, developed in and , involving among oth-
ers Henry Laurens, prominent South Carolina merchant and planter
and later President of the Continental Congress.⁵*
* David R. Chestnutt, et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Laurens, vols. (Columbia: University of
South Carolina Press, –). [B.W.S.]
However, the most sensational and consequential of these was the
Liberty incident at Boston in June, , involving the local customs
officers, the commander of the warship Romney, and the American Cus-
toms Board, whose headquarters was in Boston.
This Board consisted of five Commissioners
—Henry Hulton, former
official in the English Customs Board in London, John Temple, former
Surveyor General of Customs for the Northern District of North Amer-
ica, William Burch, whose background is obscure, Charles Paxton, for-
mer Surveyor of Customs for the Port of Boston, and John Robinson,
former Collector of Customs at Newport, Rhode Island.⁶ Commis-
sioned in September, ⁷ pursuant to the act of Geo. III ch. (de-
scribed in Chapter ), the Board began to officiate two months later.⁸
The decision to seat the Board at Boston (rather than at the more
centrally located New York City or Philadelphia) was said to be attrib-
utable to Paxton’s influence with Charles Townshend,⁹ and this report
perhaps contributed to the particular animus against Paxton that ap-
peared even before the Board began to sit.
Referring to the report that Boston was to be the Board’s head-
quarters and Paxton a member of it, Governor Francis Bernard of
Massachusetts wrote in September to Secretary of State Lord Shel-
burne that “the Faction [radical faction at Boston] or their underlings
give out that they intend to do something when the Commissioners of
Customs come; and particularly threaten Mr. Paxton who is under-
stood to be one of them.”¹⁰
Though Bernard’s fear that Paxton and perhaps the other Commis-
sioners might be molested did not immediately materialize, members of
the Board were given notice from the very beginning that the Board was
unwelcome in Boston. On the arrival of Hulton, Burch, and Paxton
from England on November , Guy Fawkes or Pope’s Day, a procession
celebrating the day carried “Devils, Popes & Pretenders thro’ the
Streets, with Labels on their breasts, Liberty & Property and no Com-
missioners.” Paxton was singled out for special notice by one of the dev-
ils carrying the label “Charles” affixed to his breast.¹¹ “Furthermore, a
few months later, he “Suffered the Indignitie of being burnt in Effi-
gie,”¹² and on the anniversary of the repeal of the Stamp Act, March
, effigies both of him and of the Inspector-General of Customs, John
Williams, were carried to the celebrated Boston Liberty Tree, where
they were “exhibited on the Tree” and left “hanging a few Hours.”¹³
Some weeks later, hostility to the Board as a whole was evidenced at
a Boston meeting by the adoption of a resolution not to permit the use
of Faneuil Hall, owned by the town, for the Governor’s annual election
day dinner if the Commissioners were invited¹⁴ and by the develop-
ments described in an indignant statement of the Commissioners in
May, , denouncing John Hancock, a “Merchant of the largest prop-
erty in this Town” and “the Idol of the Mob.”¹⁵
“Early this winter,” wrote the Commissioners, Hancock, one of Bos-
ton’s representatives in the Massachusetts House,¹⁶ had declared in the
House that “he would not suffer our Officers to go even on board of any
of his London Ships, and now he carries his Opposition to Government
to a still higher pitch.
“Being Major of the Company of Cadets...and it being usual for
the Governor to invite all the servants of the Crown to dine with him on
the day of their [the Province’s] Election...a Majority of his Corps
met together a few days ago, and came to a Resolution to acquaint the
Governor that they would not attend him on that occasion as usual if
he invited the Commissioners of the Customs to dine with him, and this
being signified to his Excellency, he...positively required their atten-
dance. Mr. Hancock thereupon tore the Seal off his Commission, and
all the rest of the Company except nine declared they would not con-
tinue longer in the Service. This infatuated man now gives out in public
that if we the Commissioners are not recalled, he will get rid of us be-
fore Christmas.”¹⁷
The Commissioners’ imprudence in putting on a good deal of show
in private life¹⁸ and the arrogance or seeming arrogance of some of
them doubtless contributed to their extreme unpopularity. “You can’t
think how we are treated by these Bashaws,” exclaimed the Boston law-
yer, John Palfrey, and Governor John Wentworth of neighboring New
Hampshire wrote an English friend, “You can scarcely credit the absurd,
inflammatory and contumelious conduct of that new...Board sent
hither last year....All the paper imported since their arrival would not
suffice to record their arrogance....”¹⁹ Similar comments were made
by others,²⁰ including some of the officers in the customs service.²¹
But the decisive reason for the Board’s extreme unpopularity almost
certainly was its zeal in carrying out its duty to supervise the enforce-
ment of British acts imposing duties on colonial imports and restrictions
on colonial trade,²² with special attention to Boston, which was under
the Board’s immediate surveillance. Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson
wrote from Boston in August, , that the root of the Board’s extreme
unpopularity there was its “vigilance in carrying the acts of trade into
execution²³ . . . particularly in this port where the Board is constantly
held,”²⁴ and the denunciation of the Board in a protest prepared by a
group of Boston merchants²⁵ and published, with a few omissions, in
Observations on Several Acts of Parliament . . . [and] on the Conduct of . . . the
Board of Commissioners . . . (Boston, ) boils down to a denunciation of
the Board’s efforts strictly to enforce these acts.²⁶
In any case, the Commissioners were soon convinced that to carry
out their duties effectively and to secure protection for themselves, they
must have the assistance of the British naval and military forces in
America.
As early as February , , they wrote the Treasury Board in Lon-
don, stating that they could not carry out their duties “untill the hand
of Government is properly strengthened” and that “At present, there is
not a Ship of War in the province,²⁷ nor a company of Soldiers nearer
than New York which is two hundred and fifty miles distant from this
place.” On March , they wrote Commodore Samuel Hood at Halifax,
Nova Scotia, requesting that, in view of the “conduct and temper” of
the people of Boston, he send “two or more ships of war there.”²⁸ Soon
afterward, Governor Bernard wrote Secretary of State Lord Shelburne
of the need for troops.²⁹
Hood, stationed at Halifax, responded promptly by sending two
armed schooners and the fifty-gun warship, the Romney,³⁰ which reached
Boston about the middle of May.³¹
Soon after the Romney’s arrival, her commander, Captain John Cor-
ner, began to impress merchant seamen,³² a practice which was partic-
ularly inhumane and embittering in the colonies. As long since pointed
out by Governor Trelawney of Jamaica, most colonial sailors were only
part-time seamen, with “small familys and propertys at home,” who
were so homesick “to return to their familys and the life they were used