Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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further proofs, do not all the debates in the House of Commons serve
to confirm this....
“I could wish, I own, that the dispute had been left to posterity to de-
termine, but the crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights or sub-
mit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use
shall make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with
such arbitrary sway.”²
The underlying ground for the colonists’ fear had long since been
pointed out by Stephen Hopkins, one of the Rhode Island delegates to
the Congress. “If the people in America are to be taxed by the repre-
sentatives of the people in Britain,” said Hopkins, “their malady...
must always grow greater by time. Whatever burdens are laid upon the
Americans will be so much taken off the Britons; the doing this will soon
be extremely popular, and those who put up to be members of the
House of Commons must obtain the votes of the people by promising
to take more and more taxes off of them by putting it on the Americans.
This must assuredly be the case....”³
The prospect was all the more alarming, as several colonial writers
pointed out, because of the known profligacy of the British government
in granting exorbitant salaries and undeserved sinecures and pensions.⁴
“If places, pensions and dependencies shall be ever increased in pro-
portion to new resources,” wrote James Otis, “the game may truly be
infinite.” “If a set of men [i.e., members of Parliament] have been
so profane and lavish of their constituents,” said Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, “will they be more sparing of ours?”⁵
Nor was the fear of colonial Whigs that the relatively mild duties
levied by the Townshend Act would be mightily increased once Parlia-
ment had firmly established its asserted right to tax the colonies based
solely on general reasoning.
In telling Parliament of his project for colonial taxation “to give Re-
lief to Great Britain from bearing the whole of the Expence of securing,
defending and protecting America and the West India Islands,” Charles
Townshend said he would “in time” do everything to form a revenue “to
bear the whole” but “by degrees” and “with great delicacy.”⁶
Besides, what was the sense of Parliament’s antagonizing the colo-
nists by keeping alive its claim of right to tax them unless it intended
later to extract a greater revenue from colonial taxation? There was, to
be sure, talk of maintaining this right for use solely in time of emergency.
But no emergency existed at the time the Townshend Act was passed.
Indeed, during the very session in which this act passed, Parliament re-
duced British taxes by lowering the British land tax from four to three
shillings in the pound.⁷
Furthermore, the record of Parliament in restricting colonial trade
was a dire warning of what to expect if Parliament established its claim
of right to tax the colonies.
In and Parliament passed acts prohibiting the export of
colonial sugar, tobacco, and several other colonial products, known as
“enumerated” products, to any place outside the colonies except En-
gland or Ireland and the importation into the colonies of any product
of continental Europe, other than salt, except from England.⁸
Having secured colonial acquiescence in these acts, Parliament pro-
ceeded to add restriction after restriction.
In , it prohibited the export of the enumerated colonial prod-
ucts to Ireland.⁹
In , it prohibited any kind of trade (import or export) between
the colonies and the East Indies, which were defined to include all of the
vast region extending from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of
the Americas.
In , it prohibited the export of colonial wool and woolen goods
to any place outside the colony in which produced.
In , it prohibited overseas export of colonial molasses, tar, tur-
pentine, masts, and naval stores to any place but England. (The Union
with Scotland in put Scotland on the same favorable footing as En-
gland after that date.)
In , Parliament prohibited importation into the colonies of any
East Indian products, including tea, pepper, spices, drugs, silk and cot-
ton cloth, (which the colonists had hitherto been permitted to import
from Holland and other countries of continental Europe) from any
place but Great Britain, i.e., England and Scotland.
In , it prohibited the overseas export of colonial fur and copper
to any place but Great Britain.
In , it prohibited the export of colonial-made felt or hats to any
place outside the colony in which manufactured and the export of co-
lonial hops to Ireland.
In (under pressure from owners of the great British West Indian
sugar plantations many of whom lived in Great Britain), Parliament se-
verely restricted importation into the British North American colonies
of products from the foreign West Indies.
In , it struck at colonial manufacturing and trade by prohibiting
the erection of any new colonial mill for slitting, rolling, or planting iron
or of any new furnace for making steel.
In , it prohibited the overseas export of colonial hides, skins,
potash, and several other colonial products to any place but Great
Britain and the export of colonial iron and lumber¹⁰ to any part of con-
tinental Europe.
In , it prohibited the exportation of any British colonial product
whatsoever to any place in continental Europe north of the Spanish
ports on the bay of Biscay.¹¹
In the light of this record in the field of restricting colonial trade,
could there be any reasonable doubt as to what Parliament would do in
the field of taxation if it established its claim of right to tax the colonists
as it pleased?
The hope, earlier entertained by colonial Whigs, that a change in
Ministry might result in the tacit recognition of their claim to freedom
from British taxation had by this time faded. This hope had been
aroused by the repeated election in and of the popular agita-
tor, John Wilkes, as a member of Parliament for Middlesex County and
by a movement in England for political reform,¹²* widely known in the
colonies through English correspondents and newspapers.¹³ But when
the Duke of Grafton, First Lord of the Treasury and head of the Min-
istry, resigned in January, , he was succeeded as First Minister by
Lord North, who, as Leader of the House of Commons, had strongly
supported the exclusion of Wilkes from the House¹⁴ and now explicitly
supported retention of the Townshend Act duty on tea to maintain Par-
liament’s claim of right to tax the colonies.¹⁵
* Colin Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Car-
olina Press, ), ch. . [B.W.S.]
For some months after establishment of the new Ministry, it ap-
peared that the Ministry was about to fall. But by the end of , it was
firmly in the saddle, and in succeeding years, with the steady support of
the King, it consistently carried its measures by overwhelming majori-
ties in both Houses of Parliament. Consequently, by the time the Con-
tinental Congress met in September, , there was little hope of relief
through a change in Ministry.
As brought out in the admirable studies of Clinton Rossiter, Caroline
Robbins, H. Trevor Colbourn, Bernard Bailyn,¹⁶ and others,¹⁷ one of
the powerful forces in unifying colonial sentiment was invocation of the
writings of classical authors and earlier English writers in praise or de-
fense of liberty. These were known to the reading public throughout the
colonies at first hand or through the heavy borrowing from them in cur-
rent pamphlets,¹⁸ newspapers, sermons, and almanacs.¹⁹* (The meager
colonial stage apparently did not contribute significantly toward arous-
ing and unifying the colonists in opposing the British threat to colonial
liberty. But Addison’s popular play, Cato, evidently did.²⁰ Patriotic songs
also were a contributing influence.²¹)
One of the points particularly stressed in the writings in defense of
liberty was that liberty, once enjoyed but lost, had commonly been lost
because leaders of the people, who ought to have taken timely action to
preserve it, had failed in their duty. Would not the history of lost liber-
ties repeat itself if the Congress, to whom the people of America now
looked for the preservation of their liberty, failed to unite in taking effec-
tive action to this end?
But what should this action be? Here was the rub.
Probably a majority in all the delegations, if not every delegate,
would agree that something more than further petitioning was required;
that some form of commercial pressure should be applied; and that this
pressure should include an agreement not to import from Great Britain
* J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tra-
dition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ); Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the Amer-
ican Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Dec-
laration of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ); David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of
Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, – (Chapel Hill: University of North Car-
olina Press, ), ch. . [B.W.S.]
anything subject to colonial duty levied by Parliament or in the nature
of luxuries.
But should the agreement include such almost indispensable items
as equipment for the New England fishing industry, blankets for the In-
dian trade, and Osnaburgs (pieces of coarse linen cloth) to clothe the
southern plantation slaves, all goods which were not manufactured in
the colonies, could legally be imported only from Great Britain, and
could not easily be smuggled into the colonies from other countries?
Should non-importation be confined to goods from Great Britain or
should it be extended to products of Ireland and the West Indies? If not
so extended, merchants engaged chiefly in importing from Great Britain
would be compelled to make a much greater sacrifice than those en-
gaged chiefly in trade with Ireland or the West Indies.
Furthermore, the instructions to the delegates from some of the
provincial Assemblies or conventions called for a ban on exportation,
as well as on importation. Assuming (as was far from certain)²² that all
the delegations would support a non-exportation agreement of some
kind, questions of whether the ban should apply to Great Britain only,
and the exemptions, if any, would be at least as divisive with respect to
exportation as with respect to importation.
But even before the Congress got down to decisions on these fore-
seeable issues, the question must arise as to the method of voting on the
decisions to be made. Would the delegations from such rich and popu-
lous colonies as Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania agree to be
put on the same footing as colonies so disproportionately small in pop-
ulation and wealth as New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Delaware?
And if this question could somehow be resolved, would the delegations
agree to be bound by the vote of a bare majority, or would some greater
percentage or even unanimity be demanded?
Another divisive question was almost certain to arise: the question
of the stand to be taken by the Congress concerning the British acts re-
stricting colonial trade.
Probably there would be little, if any, dissent to a demand that trial
by jury in cases involving alleged violations of British acts restricting co-
lonial trade be restored. From onward, colonial Whigs had been
united on this point. But how about the authority of Parliament to im-
pose these restrictions, the enforcement of which had been the source
of so much and such continuous friction over the past decade?
When the controversy over colonial taxation first arose in , the
petitioning of the colonial Assemblies protesting against colonial taxa-
tion had, implicitly at least, recognized the authority of Parliament to
impose restrictions on colonial trade,²³ and many of the delegates to the
Congress had been members of the Assemblies which had adopted
these petitions. (In the case of Virginia, all of its delegates to the Con-
gress except Henry had been members of the House of Burgesses at the
time the Virginia petition
—“remonstrance”—of December, , was
adopted, and Randolph, Lee, Pendleton, and Harrison were of the
committee that drafted it.)²⁴ Furthermore, at least two of the delegates
—
Cushing of Massachusetts and Hopkins of Rhode Island—had at that
time expressly recognized the authority of Parliament to regulate, i.e.,
restrict, colonial trade.²⁵
But by , this view had been seriously challenged.
In , Samuel Adams, now one of the Massachusetts delegates to
the Congress, had denied the authority of Parliament to legislate in any
way for the colonies.²⁶ Two years later, as noted in Chapter , the
Massachusetts House of Representatives questioned the authority of
Parliament to legislate in any way for Massachusetts. In July, , one
of the resolves adopted by the Fairfax County convention, chaired by
Washington, declared it to be a “fundamental principle” of the British
constitution, to whose protection the people of Virginia no less than
those of Great Britain were entitled, that people were to be governed
“by no laws to which they have not given their consent by Representa-
tives freely chosen by themselves....”²⁷ And shortly before the Con-
gress assembled, Roger Sherman, one of the Connecticut delegates,
told John Adams that, in his opinion, Parliament had no authority
whatever over the colonies.²⁸
A clash over the question of challenging the authority of Parliament
to restrict colonial trade was therefore inevitable, some of the delegates
supporting a resolution denying the authority of Parliament to restrict
colonial trade, others opposing such a resolution on principle or as
needlessly provocative.
THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
:
FIRST STEPS
T
M —Cushing, Paine, Samuel
Adams, and John Adams
—set out together for Philadelphia by
“coach and four” on August , .¹ Diaries of John Adams and Paine
enable us to follow their route and reception and to share Adams’ im-
pressions of several delegates from other colonies whom they encoun-
tered along the way.
Starting from Cushing’s home in Boston, they traveled through
Framingham, Worcester, and Springfield, Massachusetts, and Hart-
ford, Wethersfield, and Middletown, Connecticut,² to New Haven,
where they spent two nights at the well-known tavern of Isaac Beers. At
Wethersfield they were entertained with punch, wine, and coffee at the
home of one of the Connecticut delegates, Silas Deane, a prosperous
merchant and lawyer, and at New Haven had a good talk with his fel-
low delegate, Roger Sherman, “a solid, sensible Man.”³
Leaving New Haven early in the morning of the th, they pro-
ceeded by way of Stratford, Norwalk, and Stamford, Connecticut, to
New York City, where they arrived on the th and put up for nearly a
week at an unidentified tavern near the City Hall. At New York they
met most of the leading local Whigs, including all but John Jay of the
New York City delegates to the Congress
—Alsop, “a soft, sweet man,”
but said to be “unequal to the Trust in point of abilities”; Duane, “a
little squint Eyed,” who struck Adams as being “very sensible” but also
“very artfull”; Philip Livingston, “a down right, strait forward...
rough, rappid Mortal”; and Low, of whom Adams gave no description
but recorded the report that he “will profess Attachment to the Cause
of Liberty but his Sincerity is doubted.”
On August , the Massachusetts delegates resumed their journey
to Philadelphia, taking the ferry to Paulus Hook, New Jersey, and trav-
eling by way of Newark, Brunswick, Princeton, and Trenton. So far as
is known, they encountered none of the New Jersey delegates but had a
glass of wine with the president of Princeton, the Reverend John With-
erspoon, whom they found to be “as high a Son of Liberty as any Man
in America.” Arriving August at Frankfort, then about five miles
from, now a part of, Philadelphia, they were met by a line of carriages
and “dirty, dusty and fatigued,” were escorted to the sumptuous City
Tavern, where they were welcomed by a multitude of Philadelphians
and treated to a “Supper...as elegant as ever was laid upon a table.”
It was eleven o’clock before they finally got away to Mrs. Sarah Yard’s
boardinghouse, where (except for a few days’ unexplained move to
other lodgings) they stayed throughout their nearly two months’ resi-
dence in Philadelphia.
All the other New England delegates and all from South Carolina
had reached Philadelphia by August ,⁴ and those from New Jersey
and two from New York arrived on September first.⁵ But, perhaps be-
cause of a diversity in the resolutions of the provincial conventions as to
the date for assembling,⁶ so many of the delegates were then still miss-
ing that the opening of the Congress was necessarily deferred.
On September , four of the delegates from Virginia
—Randolph,
Lee, Bland, and Harrison
—arrived,⁷ and on the following day, the
Massachusetts delegates had a chance to meet and talk with Lee, who
was to play an outstanding role in the Congress. After he “had dined
with Mr. [ John] Dickinson and drank Burgundy the whole afternoon,”
wrote Adams in his diary, Lee had supper with the Massachusetts del-
egates at the home of Thomas Mifflin, where, “very high,” he joined
them and other guests in drinking “Sentiments till O Clock,” includ-
ing “Wisdom to Britain and Firmness to the Colonies...Union of the
Colonies...Union of Britain and the Colonies, on a Constitutional
Foundation
—and many other such Toasts.”⁸
On the third of September, most of the Maryland delegates and
Washington, Henry, and Pendleton (who, leaving Mount Vernon on Au-
gust , had made a rapid trip by way of Annapolis and Chestertown,
Maryland, Newcastle, Delaware, and Chester, Pennsylvania) reached
Philadelphia,⁹ and by the th nearly all the delegates from the partici-
pating colonies, except North Carolina (whose delegates did not reach
Philadelphia until the middle of the month), were on hand.¹⁰
The following day, September (quoting the opening entry of the
official records of the Congress), “A number of the Delegates chosen
and appointed by the Several Colonies and Provinces in North Amer-
ica to meet and hold a Congress at Philadelphia assembled at the Car-
penters’ Hall.”¹¹
Thanks again to Adams’ diary and to letters from him and Silas
Deane of Connecticut to family and friends at home, we get glimpses of
several more of the delegates.
Those from Virginia particularly impressed Deane. Randolph, he
wrote, was of “noble appearance,” “affable, open and...large in size
though not out of proportion,” Pendleton, “of easy and cheerful coun-
tenance, polite in address, and elegant...in Style and diction,” Bland,
“a plain sensible man,” and Henry, the “completest [i.e., most perfect]
speaker” Deane had ever heard; “the music of his voice” and the “nat-
ural elegance of his style and manner” were almost beyond description.
Washington was “nearly as tall a man as Col. Fitch and almost as hard
a countenance; yet with a very young look, and an easy, soldier like air
and gesture.”¹² Deane gives no picture of Lee; but Adams describes him
as “a tall, spare...masterly Man.”¹³
Rodney of Delaware found the Massachusetts delegates “moderate
men when compared to Virginia, South Carolina and Rhode Island,”¹⁴
and Deane wrote that Gadsden of South Carolina “leaves all New En-
gland Sons of Liberty far behind” in fire.¹⁵
Though Washington was not on a single Congressional committee
and apparently took little part in the debates on the floor of Congress,¹⁶
myths had already begun to gather about him. Adams wrote that he
was reported to have said at the recent Virginia convention, “I will raise
one thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march myself
at their head to the relief of Boston,”¹⁷ and Deane that he “was the
means of saving the remains of that [Braddock’s] unfortunate army” in
:
the French and Indian War,¹⁸ neither of which seems to have been
true.¹⁹
Deane and Adams both were also very favorably impressed by Lynch
of South Carolina. Despite his “immense fortune,” said Deane, Lynch
was “plain, sensible, above ceremony” and “carries with him more force
in his very appearance than most powdered folks in their conversation,”
and Adams wrote, “We are all vastly pleased with Mr. Lynch. He is a
solid, firm judicious Man.” Adams was also favorably impressed by
Caesar Rodney of Delaware, who, though “the oddest looking Man in
the world...his Face...not bigger than a large Apple” had “Sense and
Fire, Spirit, Wit and Humour in his Countenance.” But, as we learn
from his diary, Adams had little use for two of Lynch’s fellow delegates
from South Carolina. Edward Rutledge was “a perfect Bob o’Lin-
coln,...a Peacock
—excessively vain...jejune, inane and puerile,”
and his elder brother, John, had “No Depth in his Countenance. Noth-
ing of the profound, sagacious, brilliant or sparkling....”²⁰ (Unfortu-
nately, no one, so far as is known, described Adams himself.)²¹
I shall have frequent occasion to refer not only to Adams’ diary, but
also to his notes of debates since they, along with some notes of debates
by Duane of New York and Deane of Connecticut and the laconic di-
ary of Ward of Rhode Island, are the chief means of fleshing out the
official journals of the Congress. These tell us what proposed resolves
were adopted, but nothing of those that were rejected or of the debates
and maneuvers that lay behind the decisions. The correspondence of
the members is of little help, for all of them apparently observed with
remarkable fidelity the resolution adopted almost immediately after the
opening of the Congress that “the members consider themselves under
the strongest obligations of honour, to keep the proceedings secret un-
till the majority shall direct them to be made public.”²²
The Congress got off to a rather awkward start not only because of
the delay in opening its sessions, but because of pre-convention discord
over choice of the place where the Congress should sit. Galloway, as
Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, offered the Assembly’s com-
modious chamber in the Pennsylvania State House, and several of the
delegates wished to accept this offer.²³ But the majority supported the
proposal of Lynch to accept an offer of the Carpenters’ Hall,²⁴ which,