Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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On the advice of Peter Oliver, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts
Superior Court, that “the Times are not favorable for Prosecutions,”⁹
Gage deferred action on his instruction to initiate prosecutions for trea-
son, a deferment which proved to be permanent.
For a time, it appeared that a number of Bostonians who favored in-
demnifying the East India Company and others for losses sustained from
the Boston Tea Party, in the hope of securing early repeal or suspension
of the ruinous Port Act, might be successful. On May , John Andrews,
a Boston merchant, wrote his brother-in-law in Philadelphia, “we have
many among us who are for compromising matters, and put forward a
subscription to pay for the Tea. George Erving has declar’d this day...
he is prepared to put down two thousand sterling towards it....”¹⁰
Ten days later, over a hundred persons, mainly Bostonians, signed
a farewell address to Hutchinson,¹¹ in which they deplored the damage
to the property of the East India Company and others, and declared
themselves “fully disposed to bear our share of those damages when-
ever the sum and manner of laying it can be ascertained.”¹² But at a
Boston town meeting on June , those favoring payment for the tea re-
mained silent.¹³
On June (quoting Gage), “the better Sort of People” gathered in
force at another town meeting “with Design to make a Push to pay for
the Tea.”¹⁴ But they again apparently remained silent on this point, af-
ter which little more is heard of the project.
Boston conservatives moved at this meeting to censure and “anni-
hilate” the Boston Committee of Correspondence¹⁵ for having exceeded
its authority in promoting a so-called Solemn League and Covenant (de-
scribed in an appendix to this chapter) binding signers of the covenant
not to purchase any British goods after August , ; however, this
group was overwhelmingly defeated. Yet the meeting did not sanction
the covenant and thus, in effect, squelched a movement which, for a
time, threatened serious dissension among Massachusetts Whigs.¹⁶
As we have seen in earlier chapters, several months elapsed between
the effective date of the Boston Port Act and the adoption by the Conti-
nental Congress of measures designed to put pressure on Parliament for
repeal of the act. In the meanwhile, the morale of the Bostonians was
sustained by gifts pouring into Boston from all the colonies represented
at the Congress for those suffering from the closing of the Port of Bos-
ton, accompanied by letters of warm sympathy and support.¹⁷
By June , a flock of over sheep was on its way to Boston from
Windham, Connecticut, accompanied by a letter from a committee of
the town to the selectmen of Boston assuring them, “This Town is very
sensible of the obligations we, and with us, all British America, are un-
der to the Town of Boston who...are the generous defenders of our
common rights and liberties. . . .” “We have,” the committee continued,
“procured a small flock of sheep...[to which] the people of this Town
were almost unanimous in contributing...[for] the relief of those hon-
est, industrious poor who are most distressed by the late arbitrary and
oppressive Acts. And rest assured that if Parliament does not soon afford
you relief, and there should in future be any need of our assistance, we
shall, with the utmost cheerfulness, exert our influence to that purpose.”
On the same day, a similar message was sent by a committee of the
town of Groton, Connecticut, accompanied by forty bushels of rye and
corn, to which, some weeks later, Groton added two further gifts each
of over sheep and some cattle.¹⁸
By the end of September, town after town in Connecticut had sent
generous gifts: Farmington, Wethersfield, Brookfield, Norwich, Brook-
lyn, Preston, Killingly, East Haddam, Woodstock, Hartford, and Leb-
anon (the last topping the list with nearly sheep and a later gift of
some cattle), often accompanied by letters assuring the Bostonians they
were regarded as suffering in a common cause and promising addi-
tional help if needed.¹⁹
Other colonies gave similar encouragement. On August , Balti-
more sent , bushels of corn and other produce, with assurances,
faithfully carried out, of further support.²⁰ During the next few months,
relief committees in several more colonies followed suit,²¹ and by the
day of Lexington and Concord all thirteen of the old British colonies in
North America, including Georgia, were helping to feed and clothe the
people of Boston by gifts either of provisions or money or both.²²
The Port Act not only laid no restraint on shipments into Boston by
land, but permitted importation into the town by water of “fuel and
victuals brought coastwise from any part of the continent of America
for the necessary use and sustenance of the inhabitants,” provided the
carrying vessel first cleared customs at Marblehead. Consequently, there
was no insuperable difficulty in delivering supplies to the town.
To deal with the unemployment incident to closing the port, a Bos-
ton town meeting of May chose an emergency committee headed by
Samuel Adams, called variously the Committee of Ways and Means
and the Committee on Donations.²³ This committee, later enlarged,²⁴
used or planned to use the donations or proceeds from them to mend
the town’s pavements, operate a brickyard, build ships, set up looms for
weavers, and buy and distribute wool, flax, cotton, leather, nail-rods,
and hemp to spinners, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and rope-makers.²⁵
The construction of a town wharf and the digging of a town well also
were authorized²⁶ and presumably undertaken.
Another important office of the committee was establishing contact
with supporters throughout the colonies by thanking the donors for
their gifts and encouraging messages, and assuring them that the people
of Boston could be counted on to continue to struggle and suffer for
“the common liberties of America” so long as they were “aided and
supported by their friends....”²⁷
This assurance was fulfilled. When war broke out ten months after
the Port Act took effect, the people of Boston still had made no move to
secure reopening of their port by offering to pay for the destroyed tea.
But, though the Bostonians made no offer to pay for the tea, they
made no move to oppose enforcement of the act, thereby giving Gage
a sense of optimism reflected in his earlier letters to Secretary of State
Lord Dartmouth.
On May , soon after his arrival at Boston, Gage wrote Dartmouth,
“I hear from Many that the [Boston Port] Act has staggered the most
Presumptious...and I may find the Assembly in a better temper than
usual . . .”; May , “The violent Party seems to break and People fall off
from them;...many are Impatient for the Arrival of the Troops, And I
am told that People [favoring obedience] will then speak and act openly
. . .”; June , the Boston “Demagogues,” though said to be “spiriting
up the People throughout the Province to resistance,” would, Gage
trusted, “want Power to effect it”; July , “there is now an open Oppo-
sition to the Faction, carried on with a Warmth and Spirit unknown be-
fore;...the Terror of Mobs is over, and the Press is becoming free.”²⁸
But developments following the receipt of news of the passage of the
Massachusetts Regulating Act quickly chilled Gage’s optimism.
On July , he wrote Dartmouth, “I have not yet [officially] received
the new Act for the Government of this Province [the Massachusetts
Regulating Act], but “it is printed here, and many tell me I must expect
all the Opposition to the Execution of it that can be made....The fast
day appointed by the Faction was kept in this Town...as generally and
as punctually as if it had been appointed by Authority [and] I might say
the same of most other Places.”²⁹ A week later Gage repeated his ap-
prehension of widespread opposition to the act, adding, “Your Lord-
ship will be inclined to think that if the Opposers of Government may
be called only a Faction in this Province [as he himself and Dartmouth
had heretofore called them] they are at least a very numerous and pow-
erfull Faction.”³⁰
The Regulating Act, it will be recalled from Chapter , provided
for radical changes in the framework of government of the province.
Town meetings, which heretofore could be called at any time by the
selectmen of the town, could now be called not more than once a year
(and then only in March or May) without written permission of the
Crown-appointed Governor. The provincial Council, heretofore elec-
tive, was now to be appointed by the King. Judges of the county courts
and county sheriffs, whose appointment and dismissal by the Governor
was heretofore subject to approval of the elected Council, could now be
appointed and dismissed by him without such approval. Petty jurors,
heretofore drawn by lot from lists prepared by popularly elected select-
men, were now to be chosen by the Crown-controlled sheriffs. As his
letters of July and to Dartmouth foreshadowed, Gage found him-
self powerless to enforce this act outside the immediate radius of the
fleet and army occupying Boston.
On August , an unauthorized meeting at Salem, called by the lo-
cal Committee of Correspondence, was held under Gage’s very nose,³¹
and ten days later he wrote Dartmouth that town meetings were being
held throughout the province and “no Persons I have advised with can
tell what to do....”³²
The provision for a Crown-appointed Council also was virtually nul-
lified. Though twenty-five of the thirty-six Crown appointees (known as
mandamus councilors because appointed by mandamus of the King)
initially accepted,³³ nine of them soon resigned.³⁴ Six of the remaining
lived in Boston. Of the ten who lived elsewhere, every one was driven
to Boston or if there already, did not dare return to his home.³⁵
Their situation is illustrated by the case of Councilor John Murray
of Rutland. In a letter of August to Murray shortly after he left for
Boston, never to return, his son Daniel wrote him of recent happenings
at his home.³⁶ Just after his departure, a “rabble,” as the son called them,
descended on his home, and, on being told Murray was not there, in-
sisted on searching the house and outbuildings to verify this report.
After parleying, it was agreed to have a committee of seven make the
search. On the committee’s finding that the elder Murray had in fact
left, “every one dispersed without doing the least damage,” but threat-
ened to return and destroy every building on the estate if he did not
“make a Public Recantation” of his councilorship.
“Upon the whole, Sir,” the son continued, “the temper of the People
is worked up to such a pitch, that every person . . . that will not join
them are considered as enemies to their country....Tell them the
consequences of their proceedings will be Rebellion, Confiscation and
Death, and it only serves as oil to the flame; they can draw no conse-
quence to be equally dreadful to a Free People (as they say) like that of
being made Slaves, and this is not the language of the common People
only you may be assured, as those who have heretofore in life sustained
the fairest characters in every respect, are the warmest in this matter...
so that among the many friends you have heretofore had, I can scarcely
mention any to you now; and the very few that remain so, dare not say
it, looking upon themselves in the greatest danger.”³⁷
Daniel Murray’s letter is of particular interest for its documentation
of the attitude of the farmers of the neighborhood toward the Massa-
chusetts Regulating Act. Thousands of contemporary letters and diary
entries of colonial merchants, lawyers, clergymen, and the great planters
expressing their reaction to the British measures affecting the colonies
considered in this book have come down to us. We also have some,
though much more limited, documentation of the reaction to these
measures of the tradesmen (mechanics) in the principal colonial cities.
But very few letters and diaries of ordinary small-scale farmers, who
constituted a great majority of the white population of the thirteen col-
onies, have come to light,³⁸ and these few speak almost exclusively of
the weather, state of the crops, prices, births, deaths, marriages, ail-
ments, and other non-political topics.³⁹*
Daniel Murray was, to be sure, not himself a “dirt” farmer, but most
of the men referred to in his letter were. These men had annually, for
many years, elected his father, John Murray, representative of the town
of Rutland and contiguous districts in the Massachusetts House of Rep-
resentatives. But when Murray now lent his support to the Massachu-
setts Regulating Act by accepting office under the act, we have his son’s
word for it that only a very few of his neighbors supported or condoned
his conduct.
The reaction of the farmers of Rutland, described in Daniel Mur-
ray’s letter, was apparently typical of farmers throughout New England.
On August , Gage had assured Dartmouth that the courts sitting
under the new act “can and will be protected in many places.”⁴⁰ But on
coming to Boston from Salem a few days later, Gage changed his mind
upon hearing from the provincial Council that “the Flames of Sedition
had spread [so] universally throughout the Country” as to make it “very
improper to weaken the troops here by Detachments, whatever, as they
could not be of any use to the Courts, as no Jurors would appear.” (Even
the Superior Court, meeting under the protection of British forces at
Boston, proved to be powerless, since “no Jurors would swear in.”)⁴¹ The
following day (September ) he wrote Dartmouth that Lieutenant Gov-
ernor Thomas Oliver had been forced by “great numbers of People,”
assembled from the surrounding countryside at Cambridge, to resign
his commission as one of the mandamus councilors.⁴²
Most ominously, the “People,” as Gage pointed out, were “not a
Boston Rabble but the Freeholders and Farmers of the Country.”⁴³
Gage’s next letter to Dartmouth was even more alarming. On Sep-
tember , he wrote, “It is needless to trouble your Lordship with daily
Publications of determined Resolutions not to obey the late Acts of Par-
liament....The Country People are exercizing in Arms in this Prov-
ince, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and getting Magazines of Arms
* Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill and Wang, ). [B.W.S.]
and Ammunition...and such Artillery as they can procure, good or
bad....People are resorting to this Town for Protection...even
[from] Places always esteemed well affected...and Sedition flows co-
piously from the Pulpits. The Commissioners of Customs have thought
it no longer safe or prudent to remain at Salem...and are amongst
others come into the Town [Boston], where I am obliged likewise now
to reside on many accounts.”⁴⁴
Thus, by mid-September, Gage recognized and informed Dart-
mouth that his (Gage’s) initial optimism was ill-founded and that he
was faced not with small, scattered mobs, but with preparations for a
general uprising throughout most of New England.
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT
AND THE COLONIES
:
JUNE, 1774–APRIL, 1775
F
following the adjournment of
Parliament in June, , the King and his ministers judged from
General Gage’s letters of May to early July, quoted in Chapter , that
all was going smoothly in Massachusetts.¹
The receipt early in September of Gage’s letters of July and ,
reporting the reaction in Massachusetts to news of the Regulating Act,
gave the administration some warning of what was to follow. But it was
not until the receipt on October of Gage’s alarming letters of August
and September and , that the administration became aware of the
seriousness of the situation in Massachusetts.²
On reading these letters, the three members of the Cabinet then in
London, Lord Dartmouth, Lord North, and the Lord Chancellor
Apsley, promptly agreed, that “it will be advisable that the Admiralty
should be consulted whether two or three more ships of war with as
large a detachment from the marines as can be conveniently accom-
modated may be sent to Boston immediately without any material haz-
ard or difficulty.”³
On hearing favorably from Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admi-
ralty, Dartmouth wrote Gage (October ) that the government was
sending three additional warships from England to Boston with about
marines who were available for land service, if required.⁴ Further-
more, the King issued a proclamation forbidding the export of arms or
ammunition from Great Britain and sent orders to colonial Governors
and British naval officers in colonial waters to prevent the importation
of these articles from any place.⁵
On November , the even more alarming letters from Gage to
Dartmouth of September and , also quoted in Chapter , were
received.⁶ Letters from Gage to ex-Governor Thomas Hutchinson of
Massachusetts and Lord Barrington, Secretary at War, and from Ad-
miral Samuel Graves to the Admiralty Board, corroborating those to
Dartmouth,⁷ left no room for doubt that most of New England was in
rebellion.
The King immediately sent a note to North: “I am not sorry that the
line of conduct seems now chalked out...;the New England Govern-
ments are in a State of Rebellion; blows must decide whether they are
to be subject to this Country or independant....”⁸ The following day,
North spoke in similar vein to Hutchinson. Massachusetts, he said,
“was in Rebellion and must be subdued.”⁹
However, nothing was done pending the assembling of a new Par-
liament and the receipt of word of the decisions of the Continental
Congress.¹⁰
Under the Septennial Act of ,¹¹ the term of the Thirteenth Par-
liament, elected in the spring of , would not expire until the spring
of . But on August , the King wrote North that he wished to dis-
solve the existing Parliament and hold elections for a new as soon as
practicable. The King thought that calling for elections before the ex-
pected time would “fill the House [of Commons] with some Gentlemen
of landed Property, as the Nabobs [West Indian] Planters and other
Volunteers are not ready for the Battle . . .”; furthermore, “the general
Congress now assembling in America, the Peace of Russia with the
Turks and unsettled state of the French Ministry,”¹² made it “admis-
sable” to do this.¹³
The Cabinet approved, and on September , the King issued a
proclamation dissolving the existing Parliament and calling for elec-
tions to the new.¹⁴
The elections, tainted with the widespread corruption usual in Brit-
ish elections of the period,¹⁵ were highly favorable to the administra-
tion.¹⁶ The problem of colonial policy played little part in the elections
(it was an issue in only ten of the constituencies);¹⁷ but its importance
was recognized by the administration, which, immediately after the
opening of the new Parliament, on November , took steps to secure
practically carte blanche in dealing with colonial unrest.
The King, speaking for the administration the day after Parliament
opened, and referring to the “violences of a very criminal nature in
Massachusetts,” said that “you may depend on my firm and steadfast
resolution to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair the supreme
authority of this Legislature over all the Dominions of my Crown.” To
which assertion the House of Lords replied that “we will cheerfully co-
operate in all such measures as shall be necessary to maintain the dig-
nity, safety and welfare of the British Empire,” and the House of Com-
mons in similar vein.¹⁸ The reply in the Lords was carried to , in
the Commons, to .¹⁹
However, though now assured of the new Parliament’s backing for
vigorous measures against the rebellious colonists, the administration
had not yet received word of the action of the Continental Congress,
without which, it had been decided, “no particular measure would be
determined.”²⁰
Through “a private correspondence,” supposedly communicating
“every step” taken by the Congress, the administration had learned var-
ious details concerning its proceedings, including the dispute over the ar-
ticles to be excepted from the proposed non-importation agreement and
the decision to present a Petition to the King.²¹ But authentic word of the
proceedings other than the contents of the Petition to the King was not
received until December , and the latter not until eight days later.²²
By that time, most members of Parliament had left or were about to
leave London for the Christmas holidays,²³ and there is no evidence of
any Cabinet meeting to consider the problems presented by the actions
of the Congress before January , .²⁴ In the meanwhile, additional
letters from Gage concerning developments in New England up to De-
cember , , had been received.²⁵
At the meeting on January , the Cabinet²⁶ voted favorably on the
following measures:
To reinforce Gage as soon as practicable with two regiments of in-
fantry, one of light cavalry, and marines.
To approve the proposal of Timothy Ruggles, colonel of a Massa-