Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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May. General Gage arrives in Boston.
May. The Virginia House of Burgesses passes a resolution denouncing
the Boston Port Act and calling for the observance of a Fast Day to im-
plore divine guidance to prevent civil war.
May. Lord Dunmore, Crown-appointed Governor of Virginia, dissolves
the House for passing this resolution and does not reconvene the House
until June, .
May. Members of the dissolved House pass a resolution calling for an
intercolonial congress.
June . The Boston Port Act, shutting the port of Boston to nearly all
commercial traffic, goes into effect.
June. Passage of the Quebec Act vastly extending the boundaries of the
province and providing for its government by a Governor and Council
appointed by the Crown, without any elected Assembly.
June. The Massachusetts House sends a circular letter to the Assem-
blies of the other colonies inviting them to send delegates to an inter-
colonial congress to meet at Philadelphia in September, and elects its
own delegates to the proposed congress.
June–July. Several regiments of British troops and British warships are
assembled at Boston to assist Gage in enforcing the Boston Port Act and
Massachusetts Regulating Act.
June–August. All the colonies except Georgia elect delegates to the
proposed intercolonial congress.
June–December. Contributions of food and money from all the colonies
pour into Boston, by land, for the relief of the Bostonians.
July. George Washington, shortly before his election as one of the
Virginia delegates to the projected congress, writes forcefully of
the necessity to do more than merely petition for redress of colonial
grievances.
September . The First Continental Congress, hereafter referred to
simply as the Congress, assembles at Philadelphia, with the cream of
the colonial patriot leadership in attendance.
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September . A committee of delegates from the towns of Suffolk
County, Massachusetts, of which Boston is county seat, adopts a set of
fiery resolutions, known as the Suffolk Resolves, advising immediate
military preparations and remaining on the defensive only so long as
consistent with self-preservation.
September–October. Gage, in Boston, writes Dartmouth that Mas-
sachusetts is in a state of rebellion and that Connecticut and Rhode Is-
land, too, are preparing for war.
September . The Massachusetts delegates lay the Suffolk Resolves
before the Continental Congress. The Congress implies approval of the
Resolves by ordering their publication in the newspapers.
September . The Congress resolves that the colonists stop import-
ing anything from Great Britain or Ireland beginning December , .
September . Joseph Galloway, a Pennsylvania delegate, proposes to
the Congress a so-called plan of union with Great Britain.
September . The Congress resolves that the colonists stop exporting
anything to Great Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies beginning Sep-
tember , , unless the grievances of America are redressed before
that time.
October–November. Election of a new House of Commons. Little
change in the political complexion of the House, and no change in the
Cabinet.
October . A Massachusetts congress attended by delegates from
most of the towns of the province meets in Concord, Massachusetts.
October . The Continental Congress adopts a Statement of Rights and
Grievances. The stated grievances include taxation of the colonies for rev-
enue; denial of trial by jury in the colonies in cases involving alleged viola-
tion of British acts of trade and customs; restriction of colonial trade; and
the Boston Port, Massachusetts Regulating, and Quebec Acts of .
October . The Congress adopts an Association calling for non-
importation and non-exportation along the lines of its resolutions of
September and and for non-consumption of goods imported in
violation of the ban on importation.
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October . The Congress rejects Galloway’s plan.
October . The Congress calls for a second congress to meet in Phil-
adelphia, May , , if colonial grievances are not redressed before
then.
October . The Congress adopts a petition to the King for help in se-
curing redress of colonial grievances, but expressly disclaiming any de-
sire for a diminution of the Crown’s prerogative, including the very im-
portant right of the Crown to disallow acts passed by the Legislatures of
Pennsylvania and of Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, the Carolinas,
and all the other royal colonies.
October . The Massachusetts Congress votes over £, for the
purchase of military supplies.
October . The Continental Congress dissolves itself.
October –. The Massachusetts Congress recommends that men
of the provincial militia elect officers to replace those appointed by the
Crown-appointed Governor and that at least a quarter of the men of
every militia company (“minute men”) be ready to march instantly. It
also chooses a Committee of Safety (virtually a Board of War), headed
by John Hancock, and a Receiver General of taxes to receive the taxes
payable to the Tory provincial Treasurer.
November . The King writes North on receipt of Gage’s alarming
letters, “I am not sorry that the line of conduct seems now chalked out;
. . . blows must decide whether they [the New Englanders] are to be
subject to this Country or independent....”
November–December. Committees are formed throughout the colo-
nies to obtain signatures to the non-importation, non-exportation, and
non-consumption agreements recommended by the Continental Con-
gress and to enforce observance of the agreements.
November–December. The Assembly or a convention in four of the
colonies represented at the First Continental Congress approves its pro-
ceedings and elects delegates to the proposed Second Congress.
November–December. Several military companies in Virginia pre-
pare for war and invite Washington to command and drill them.
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November . The King, in his speech opening the new Parliament,
refers to the “violence of a very criminal nature in Massachusetts” and
declares his resolution “to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair
the supreme authority of this Legislature over all the Dominions of my
Crown.”
December . Franklin begins talks with influential English acquain-
tances in the hope of finding an acceptable compromise of the conflict-
ing claims of Parliament and the colonies.
December . The Massachusetts Congress proposes that all towns in
the province fully equip their minute men and provide them with thirty
rounds of ammunition each.
January–April . The Assembly or a convention in all the other colo-
nies represented at the First Continental Congress, except New York,
approves its proceedings and elects delegates to the Second Congress.
January–February. The New York Assembly refuses to approve the
proceedings of the First Continental Congress or to elect delegates to
the proposed Second Congress.
January and . The Cabinet decides to reinforce Gage. The Cab-
inet decides also to propose the adoption of a declaration by both Houses
of Parliament stating that they would desist from taxing the colonies if
the colonists themselves “made sufficient and permanent provision for
their civil governments and defense,” but without indicating what would
be accepted as “sufficient.”
January . Chatham moves in the House of Lords for withdrawal of
the British troops from Boston; the motion is defeated to .
January . London merchants and others petition the Commons to
adopt “healing measures”; the petition is rejected to .
January . Dartmouth writes Gage informing him of reinforcements
being sent him; he also recommends vigorous action by Gage, includ-
ing seizure of the leading men in the Massachusetts Congress, even at
the risk of this being “a Signal for Hostilities.”
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February–April. The Massachusetts Congress further prepares for war.
February . Chatham presents in the House of Lords a plan of concil-
iation; the plan is rejected to .
March . Franklin’s negotiations for a possible peaceful settlement ter-
minate fruitlessly.
March . Edmund Burke, a leading member of the Rockingham party
and London Agent for New York, presents to the Commons and speaks
eloquently in support of a plan for conciliating the colonies. His plan is
rejected to .
April . Gage receives Dartmouth’s long-delayed, fateful letter of
January .
April . The Massachusetts Congress, sitting at Watertown, adjourns
until May , and its members disperse.
April (night). Gage sends an expeditionary force to seize military
stores of the Massachusetts rebel government collected at Concord.
April . British troops, en route to Concord, fire on and kill Massa-
chusetts troops at Lexington; war begins.
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INTRODUCTION
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In my Origin of the American Revolution: – I described measures of
the British Parliament and British officials in charge of colonial admin-
istration that drove most of the British North American colonies to the
brink of rebellion in –.¹
Repeal of the most disturbing of these measures, the Stamp Act of
,² averted a collision.³ But passage and subsequent implementation
of the Declaratory Act of , declaring that Parliament had “full power
and authority” to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever”⁴
laid the basis for a second crisis. This time, the crisis culminated in the
rebellion of the colonies hereafter referred to as the thirteen colonies.
The resolution for the fateful Declaratory Act passed with remark-
able ease. In the House of Lords the vote was to . In the Commons
there was so little opposition to the proposed act that its opponents did
not even call for a division when, on a voice vote, there were not more
than ten nays. A few members of Parliament continued to challenge the
doctrine set forth in the act, but there is no evidence that the number
ever was large.⁵
Fortified by the Declaratory Act and the overwhelming majorities in
both Houses of Parliament in favor of it, successive British Ministries
proposed and easily secured the passage of the acts levying taxes on the
colonies, acts imposing additional restrictions on colonial trade, and
acts providing for rigorous enforcement of these new restrictions and of
the many other restrictions on colonial trade previously imposed. No
party in Parliament, after passage of the Declaratory Act, challenged
the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. Many of the Rockingham
party challenged the policy of taxing colonials, but even this party
strongly supported the policy of tightly restricting colonial trade for the
benefit or supposed benefit of British merchants and manufacturers.
British voters (probably fewer than , out of a population of
around ,,)⁶ seem to have heartily supported Parliament on both
these major points; I have found no evidence that any candidate for
election to the House of Commons from to lost his seat for
voting with the majority on them.
The correspondence of the King, George III, evidences that he, too,
was in sympathy with Parliament on the questions of taxing the colonies;⁷
and there is no evidence that he disagreed with Parliament on restrict-
ing colonial trade.
As to the attitude of the non-voting rank and file in Great Britain
concerning the British measures objected to in the colonies, I have
found little basis for judgment; apparently, however, most of them ei-
ther had no opinion or favored the action of Parliament.
At one time, I thought the many letters in London newspapers de-
nouncing Parliament’s taxing the colonists indicated much popular
British sympathy for them on this issue. But Verner Crane’s masterly
Benjamin Franklin’s Letters to the Press reveals that many, if not most, of
these sympathetic letters were contributed, under various pseudonyms,
by Benjamin Franklin, in London as Agent for the Pennsylvania As-
sembly. Franklin wrote from London in that “we have for sincere
friends and well-wishers the body of Dissenters throughout England,”⁸
but, even if he were right, the Dissenters were, after all, only a small mi-
nority of the people of England.
As will be seen in the course of this book, my sympathies are with the
colonial Whigs in their opposition to British taxation of the colonies.⁹
But it must be recognized that at the time of the adoption of the fateful
Townshend Act of , which levied colonial import duties, a distinction
drawn by colonial spokesmen between “internal” and “external” taxes
gave reason for members of Parliament to suppose that the levy of colo-
nial import duties was not opposed in principle by most of the colonists.
From the very beginning of the controversy over British taxation of
xxxviii
the colonies there was general agreement among the colonists that Par-
liament’s levy of a colonial stamp tax or other “internal” tax, such as a
land tax, was unconstitutional and should be opposed on principle. But
prior to passage of the Townshend Act, many of the colonists had stated
or clearly implied that the colonists recognized the authority of Parlia-
ment to levy “external” taxes, including import duties, on the colonies.
In the spring of , the British Ministry, headed by George Gren-
ville, proposed, and Parliament passed, the American Act of , levy-
ing import duties for revenue (as distinguished from duties to regulate
trade) on several articles imported into the colonies and adopted a res-
olution for a stamp tax to be levied at the next session of Parliament.
The following October, the Connecticut Legislature approved a
pamphlet protesting against the resolution for a colonial stamp tax on
the ground that such a tax was an “internal” tax and that levying an in-
ternal tax on the colonies was an invasion of colonial rights and privi-
leges. However, far from challenging the right of Parliament to levy du-
ties for revenue on colonial imports, classified as an “external” tax, the
pamphlet implied that such duties were acceptable in principle. It even
suggested that if Parliament considered it necessary and proper to raise
a revenue in the colonies, the revenue be raised by levying duties on
“the Importation of Negroes, and on the Fur Trade etc.”¹⁰
This pamphlet was sent by the Governor to the colony’s London
Agent, Richard Jackson, a member of Parliament, for his guidance.¹¹
A month later, the Massachusetts Legislature (the House of Repre-
sentatives and Council jointly) took similar action. It adopted a petition
to the House of Commons, signed on behalf of both branches of the
Legislature, protesting against the proposed stamp tax as encroaching
on the Legislature’s exclusive right to levy “internal taxes” on the colony.
The Legislature also protested against the duty on molasses imported
into the colonies, levied by the recent American Act of , but only
on the ground that the duty was excessively high, and the Legislature
did not protest at all against the other duties levied by the act.¹²
True, the Speaker of the House, in sending the petition to the House’s
London Agent, advised him to “collect the sentiments of the Repre-
sentative Body of the People” from an earlier letter from the House
protesting against Parliament’s levying any kind of tax on the colony.¹³
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But there is no evidence that this communication was made known to
the members of the House of Commons, and, even if it was, the House
was justified in giving superior weight to the petition.
In , the colonial Stamp Act Congress and the Assemblies of
most of the colonies, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, adopted
resolutions denying the right of Parliament to levy any kind of taxes on
the colonies.¹⁴ But this action was counterbalanced by the subsequent
testimony (February, ) of Franklin in hearings in the House of Com-
mons concerning the proposed repeal of the Stamp Act. As London
Agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly and the most distinguished colo-
nial in Great Britain, his testimony carried weight.
Franklin stated that, though the colonists denied the right of Parlia-
ment to levy the recently imposed colonial stamp tax, they did not ob-
ject in principle to Parliament’s levying duties for revenue on colonial
imports and exports. The difference, he explained, was that “an internal
tax [such as a stamp tax or a tax on property] is forced from the people
without their consent, if not laid by their own representatives,” whereas
a duty on exports “is added to the first cost and other charges on the
commodity, and when it is offered to sale, makes a part of the price. If
the people do not like it at that price, they...are not obliged to pay it.”
Furthermore, said Franklin, “the sea is yours; you maintain by your
fleets the safety to navigation in it...;you may have therefore a
natural and equitable right to some toll or duty on merchandizes
carried,...towards defraying the expense you are at in ships to main-
tain the safety of that carriage.”¹⁵
Franklin’s testimony seemed to be confirmed by the absence of op-
position in the colonies to an act passed a few months later levying a
duty for revenue on molasses imported into the colonies.
It was not until after the publication throughout the thirteen colonies
in – of John Dickinson’s famous “Farmer’s Letters,” denying
the right of Parliament to levy any kind of colonial taxes for revenue,
that the Whigs united in taking this stand.
The position of colonial Whigs concerning the other chief point
in dispute, Parliament’s regulation (restriction) of colonial trade, also
changed between and .
Initially, all the colonial petitions conceded, expressly or by implica-
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