The Glorious Cause, page 32
This part of the declaration seems to have commanded broad support in the Congress. There was less, but still a majority, for what followed—the colonies would “cheerfully consent” from the necessity of the case, and “a regard to the mutual interest of both countries” to the regulation of “our external commerce.” This portion of the declaration marked the triumph of the Adamses, Richard Henry Lee, and those like them who favored a clear rejection of all the claims of the right of Parliament to govern in America. The remainder of the declaration drove the point home—the colonies acknowledged their allegiance to the Crown, freely given—but they would not accept “Acts of Parliament” which violated their rights. And lest there be any doubt, the Congress listed the “infringements and violations” perpetrated by Parliament.
While the delegates worked on the declaration, they also decided on the ways nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation could be made realities. They entered rough water almost immediately. The South Carolina delegation now revealed how tightly tied its tongue was to the pursestrings of planters at home. The South Carolinians told the Congress that unless rice and indigo were exempted from the ban on exports, they would not sign the “Association,” as the agreement on trade restrictions was now called. This announcement drew protests, but after the Carolinians agreed that only rice had to be protected, Congress caved in.45
The Association provided that the ban on imports from Britain would take effect on December 1; nonconsumption of East India Company tea would begin immediately; the prohibition of exports to Britain would, if it were still necessary, be observed after September 10, 1775. Everyone recognized that these instructions had little chance of success without force behind them. To give them force the Congress called for the election of a committee “in every county, city, and town” by those qualified to vote for representatives in the legislature. The committees would enforce the Association as committees in the preceding ten years had enforced earlier agreements. Not every town had such a committee, of course, but layers of committees would not leave much room for evasion. Under the Association, the committees were charged to operate as no government in America had ever operated. They were to inspect customshouse books, publish the names of offenders in local newspapers, and “break off all dealings” with violators, now baptized as “the enemies of American liberty.”46
The delegates signed the Association on October 20. They spent the next few days on the petition to the king and the addresses to the people of Great Britain, America, and Quebec. Petitioning the king aroused no great enthusiasm; Washington and John Adams, for example, believed that it held no promise of bringing a redress of grievances. The Congress did not even bother to send one to Parliament, in part no doubt because a petition might be understood as an admission that Parliament had some authority in America.
On October 26, Congress dissolved itself with the understanding that if need arose a second meeting would be held on May 10, 1775. An outsider reading the letters and diaries of the delegates might have concluded that dissolution came just in time. The delegates showed fatigue; they had worked hard. But they may have been as tired of one another as they were from their labors. John Adams, who had squirmed under the wit and eloquence of his colleagues throughout the meeting, gave way to his temper two days before the Congress closed up. “In Congress grumbling and quibbling as usual.” And then, because some got on his nerves more than others, this entry on Edward Rutledge, “Young Ned Rutledge is a perfect Bob o’Lincoln—a Sparrow—a Peacock—excessively vain, excessively weak, and excessively variable and unsteady—jejune, inane, and puerile.”47
Despite such feelings, the delegates departed Philadelphia full of respect for one another. They had demonstrated that they and the people they represented shared common interests and values. For a while their interests, especially their economic interests, had threatened to pull them apart, but in the end they put together the Continental Association. The Association expressed values which tied Americans together and suggested that in their desire to protect their right to self-government there was a moral concern transcending the constitutional questions in conflict. Morality made its way into the Association through the resolve to “encourage frugality, economy, and industry” and in the avowal to “discountenance and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shews, plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments. . . .”48 In declaring their intention to honor Puritan standards, Congress did not argue that it had found another weapon against tyrannical government. But of course it had. For it intended to remind Americans that their virtue—their commitment to the public interest—underlay their political freedom. Indeed the Congress intended that Americans should remember that without virtue all kinds of freedom would perish. That the Congress cited frugality, economy, and industry and scourged extravagance and dissipation was no accident. It chose the only words Americans knew, words born of the Protestantism that had existed in the colonies since their founding. The emphasis on the ethics of Puritanism recalled Americans to an older way of life, one perhaps that they were in danger of forgetting in the urge to get and spend that filled so much of their lives in the eighteenth century. Now in the crisis with Britain they continued to consider what sort of people they were, and the Congress in its incantation to lean and spare living threw up a challenge to them.
12
War
The delegates to the first Continental Congress rode home to the applause and admiration of the continent—or a part of it. The Massachusetts delegates found their pace slowed by invitations to dine and to be entertained. For a time it seemed that every town between Philadelphia and Boston wanted to pay its respects. The Massachusetts men, having been dazzled by the food and wine and elegance in Philadelphia, managed to control their appetites on the road, begging off as politely as possible from all but necessary stops. In Palmer “alias Kingston,” Massachusetts, they lodged with one Scott and his wife, both “great Patriots” according to John Adams. Scott and the local physician, Dr. Dana, were delighted by the Congress, believing that Parliament would repeal the Intolerable Acts and thereafter content itself with regulating trade. “Scotts faith is very strong that they will repeal all the Acts this very Winter,” Adams noted in his Diary, adding skeptically that “neither the Doctors nor Scotts faith are my Faith.”1
This expectation of Parliament’s surrender may have accounted for a part of the approval of the Congress. Perhaps more Americans shared John Adams’s skepticism and did not mind very much that the crisis would most likely continue. Adams learned more in Palmer about the so-called “Powder Alarm,” begun by the rumor that swept through many of the colonies early in September that Gage had seized the powder stored in Charlestown—learned indeed that some had been disappointed when the rumor turned out to be false, thereby depriving them of a chance to fight the regulars.2
Those delegates who recorded their opinions believed that prospects for peace were bleak; and peace would continue only if Britain backed down. John Dickinson wrote Arthur Lee, then in London, that “I wish for peace ardently, but must say, delightful as it is, it will come more grateful by being unexpected.” Dickinson’s phrasing is interesting, implying that the circumstances the colonies found themselves in were something less than war, though hardly peaceful. Dickinson’s and Adams’s expectations probably represented prevailing views in the Congress. Although neither man made much of the possibility that they might be seized as rebels and shipped off to England for trial for their part in the Congress, other delegates did admit to being nagged by this fear during and after the meeting.3
Still, the applause gratified most of the delegates, especially since it did not stop. The newspapers printed the Continental Association, and provincial conventions and local committees sent their congratulations and hastened to reimburse the delegates for the expenses incurred in Philadelphia. But if the admiration of the colonies continued to pour forth, it soon ran up against its opposite, a tide of abuse and criticism of the Congress and all its works. Much of this criticism was in the form of anonymous essays published in newspapers and tracts. Many of the answers these pieces incited were also unsigned. Almost all of them were undistinguished, though many were composed by men already distinguished or soon to become so.
The critics of Congress included one of its members, Joseph Galloway. He had thought hard before the Congress met about the relations of the colonies to England, and nothing he heard in Philadelphia changed his mind: Parliament must hold supreme power in the empire. But the colonies had rights, and Galloway remained convinced that an Anglo-American union would provide the best means to protect them. Galloway had little more of substance to offer. He had, however, in the Congress caught a glimpse of the future: he had seen a desire for independence—the “ill-shapen, diminutive brat, Independency”—and his vision made him unhappy.4
Galloway explained himself in a pamphlet which did not conceal his disdain of popular leaders. Others shared his feelings, though not necessarily his grand plan for a union of England and America. Among the most scornful of Congress was Daniel Leonard, a lawyer who lived in Bristol County, Massachusetts. Leonard wrote as “Massachusettensis”; and John Adams answered him as “Novanglus.” The letters of these two men saw rough charges exchanged—and the desire for independence raised and denied.5
The pamphlet conflict between Samuel Seabury, an Anglican priest, and Alexander Hamilton, a student at King’s College, New York, was even harsher. Seabury predicted war would occur if Americans followed the lead of Congress. Hamilton does not seem to have feared war. His answers to Seabury showed a rhetorical skill and a firm commitment to American rights.6
These exchanges—and many others—revealed that divisions over Parliamentary power persisted in America. Congress was a popular body—it had the support of the majority of the American people, one suspects—but some opposed its measures. Still more held back, restrained by old loyalties and by fear of a future outside the empire.
II
In a situation of ambiguity, the initiative belonged to those on the attack, to those with a program or a policy to carry out. The Association, of course, expressed the policy and proposed the means of carrying it out—those seemingly ever-present provincial, county, and town committees whose formal power did not exist but who now assumed the powers of government. In their most successful form—that is, their most extreme form in Massachusetts and Virginia—they simply took over and all but expelled traditional authority.
General Gage unwittingly gave these bodies their opportunity when he dissolved the Massachusetts legislature early in October before it even met. The first Provincial Congress eased into its place later in the month and Massachusetts had something approaching a revolutionary government. But long before Gage acted and the Provincial Congress convened, a small-scale political revolution had occurred in western Massachusetts.
Western Massachusetts contained two counties, Hampshire and Berkshire, and about 15 percent of the colony’s population. The Connecticut River cut through the region and gave it a means for shipping its lumber, hides, meat, and crops to the outside world. The most important towns of the area grew near the river, but most of its people got their livings farming in the Connecticut River Valley and in the narrow spaces of the Berkshires.7
A few great men had run the West and everyone in it for more than a generation. There was Israel Williams of Hatfield, an able, tough-minded merchant, land speculator, and politician. Colonel John Worthington did the same for Springfield, and Joseph Hawley, though different in several ways from the others—he did not speculate in land—had things to his liking in Northampton. These men, their families, and a handful of others like them—in many cases related to them, the Stoddards and the Partridges, for example—dominated the valley so thoroughly as to earn the name the River Gods.
The River Gods did not ignore politics. They, their kin, and their henchmen served as judges, selectmen, town clerks, and sheriffs, or effectively controlled all these offices and virtually all others through their mastery of business and their connections to the royal governor in Boston. Only Joseph Hawley remained aloof from Boston, and largely through his own efforts he managed to keep his hand in public affairs in Northampton despite his aberrant refusal to tie himself to the governor.
The other River Gods looked upon the agitation against imperial policies with a horror similar to Bernard’s and Hutchinson’s. Since the River Gods actually possessed power that the eastern Tories dreamed of, they kept western Massachusetts quiet while Boston rioted and protested. They ignored the Stamp Act, and they regarded nonimportation at the time of the Townshend acts with equal indifference. They did not take offense at Hillsborough’s circular letter in 1768, but six of the representatives they sent to the House voted with the “Glorious Ninety-two,” those worthies who chose to defy Hillsborough, and three did not even bother to attend the session which took up this celebrated issue. The next year, 1769, the West returned three of its rescinders to the House; only two others survived the purge in the remainder of the colony. Nor did the West take Sam Adams’s convention seriously. One delegate appeared from all the towns of Hampshire County, and none from Berkshire.
The River Gods unknowingly ran up a debt for the obedience they compelled: the hatred of thousands of ordinary men who resented all the bowing and scraping they had to do. In 1772, when news spread that the English ministry had decided to pay superior court justices from the customs rather than leave that responsibility to the legislature, part of the debt was called due in the West, as six towns passed resolutions condemning this new policy. The courts were hated anyway; the River Gods and their crowd used them against small borrowers, and used them without mercy.
The Intolerable Acts—in particular the ones revoking the charter and removing the administration of justice even farther from popular control—were simply not to be borne; all the latent animosities broke free. In July and August mobs closed the county courts; they remained closed until 1778 in Hampshire and until 1781 in Berkshire. Town and county conventions—extralegal bodies—met and established their own courts, or in some cases turned the whole business over to the town meeting, which still had claims to legitimacy. In Pittsfield, for example, the town appointed a special committee to try cases; other towns relied on already overburdened selectmen. In the East these actions were watched closely, and in Boston grand and petit jurymen refused to take oaths, thereby bringing the superior court to a close.
These actions humiliated the River Gods, but they soon felt the anger of their people more directly. Israel Williams and Colonel John Worthington were named to the mandamus council, the new royal agency created by the Massachusetts Government Act. Neither dared accept, but before they could make their refusal known they were mobbed by angry crowds and made to resign in public. Colonel Worthington was completely intimidated and in effect switched sides, breaking his old ties with the eastern establishment. Israel Williams accepted the loss of his power but spoke of his dislike of patriot actions. In February 1775, long after he had turned down the appointment to the council, he received another visit from the crowd, which evidently expected something approaching obsequious behavior from Tories. Williams did not crack, and he spent the night in a smokehouse breathing the aroma of wood fires and cured meat. After that he was quiet.
Mandamus councillors far from the protection of the troops in Boston endured similar abuse. After Timothy Ruggles’s appointment became known, he was warned by a friend in Hardwicke not to return home: “There are those here who I am satisfied thirst for your blood, and they have influence enough over others to put them upon spilling it.”8 Timothy Paine, visited by a crowd of two thousand people in Worcester, was forced to write out his resignation which contained an abject apology for accepting an appointment he had not sought, and then was compelled to read it aloud, hat in hand, in the middle of the mob. The Worcester crowd included several militia companies which then marched off to Rutland, twelve miles to the northwest, in search of another councillor who fled before they arrived. Daniel Leonard also drew a crowd which “formed themselves into a Battalion before my House.”9 This group was not easily put off and that night fired shots into the house.
These tactics worked. Virtually every councillor who failed to make his way to sanctuary in Boston resigned, and the rump in Boston exercised paper powers. Outside Boston the government resided in local bodies, towns, conventions, committees, and occasionally mobs. The conventions and committees drew most of the energies of resistance to themselves—they were unencumbered by traditional methods—and took upon themselves the organization of political and military resources.
Stopping trade with Britain was the easiest task these agencies had. By closing up Boston, the British had shut off imports. Warm spirits outside Boston now wanted the civilian population to evacuate the city in preparation for an attack on the troops. The Boston committee looked askance at this proposal, as did indeed most leaders in the countryside. Throughout the summer these men gathered together to plan actions short of war but in preparation for it. The men of Worcester County were especially active, meeting in August to reject all Parliamentary claims to authority in America, calling for larger gatherings, and attending one in Boston with delegates from Middlesex, Suffolk, and Essex counties. Early in September the Worcester Convention closed the county courts and began to reorganize the militia, first forcing the resignation of all officers and then urging towns to select new ones whose loyalty to the “common cause” was unimpeachable.10
All these local maneuverings led finally to the meeting of a Provincial Congress early in October. Gage had already adjourned the legislature before it had a chance to meet. The representatives and a good many other delegates then convened in Cambridge. There the newly aroused countryside showed its zeal, first by sending many more delegates than it ordinarily did to the legislature—Hampshire County, for example, sent thirty-nine rather than its usual twenty—and then by driving through measures looking toward war. Within three weeks, under western leadership, the Provincial Congress approved an appropriation of £20,000 for arms and ammunition, the money apparently to come from taxes ordinarily collected by the regular government. It also created a committee of safety and, after making certain that its membership would be controlled by westerners, authorized the committee or any five of its members to arm, supply, and order the militia into action. What was said at the Provincial Congress may have been even more warlike than any of these acts, as a number of once-passive delegates urged that Boston should be evacuated and then attacked and burned to the ground with his majesty’s garrison inside.11
