The Glorious Cause, page 33
At the end of October the Provincial Congress adjourned, not to reconvene until the final week of November. When it did, it had the results of the first Continental Congress to consider. The Association seemed weak to many of these Massachusetts men, and they refused to approve it until they found a means of toughening its requirements. There was a rural animus against the city in the demand that the sales of all imported goods be banned sometime after nonimportation went into effect. The Congress eventually decided that no such goods, even though they were legally imported before December 1, 1774, should be sold after October 10, 1775. They had been tricked by the merchants before, or believed so, and they did not propose to let it happen again.12
Early in December the Provincial Congress dissolved itself, but not before ugly words were spoken in arguments over what to do about the troops in Boston. Sam Adams had returned from Philadelphia to take part in this second series of meetings and he rather liked what he heard from western tongues. Not surprisingly, Adams favored large-scale preparations—20,000 militia seemed an appropriate number to him and an immediate attack on the redcoats an appropriate course of action. Other easterners were not so sure—Thomas Cushing among them, who argued that in an assault on the British army, Massachusetts would fight alone, for only the most blatant outrages by the British would bring the other colonies into a war. Adams professed to believe that the other colonies would not hesitate but would rush to the defense of Massachusetts, whereupon Cushing flared out: “that is a lie, Mr. Adams, and I know it and you know that I know it.”13
There were no such abrasive encounters among Virginia’s leaders in the autumn of 1774. Even the merchants fell all over themselves in declaring their satisfaction at the Association adopted by the first Continental Congress. Well they might, for in August just before the Continental Congress convened, the provincial convention closed down the county courts. This action was a response to the attempts by Scottish factors and merchants resident in Virginia to collect debts before the association adopted by Virginia brought business to a stop. These Scottish businessmen were pressing hard on their debtors in the local courts. Now with the Continental Association replacing the local agreement, the merchants attempted to head off reprisals against themselves.14
They had reason to be concerned. At the urging of the rump of the Burgesses the previous spring, meetings of freeholders in at least thirty counties had discussed stopping all trade with Britain, and though they had usually agreed that nonexportation was not expedient, most favored closing Virginia to imports from Britain. And in the two months following the close of the first Continental Congress about half of Virginia’s sixty-one counties had chosen committees to enforce the Continental Association; most of the remainder followed suit early in 1775.
The committees made two simple—and correct—assumptions in the enforcement of the Association: first, that the majority of Virginians approved the means recommended by Congress, and, second, that because of this support, exposure to public disapproval was the most effective technique in dealing with violators. After their election, the committee ordinarily selected their chairmen—the elder James Madison in Orange, Edmund Pendleton in Caroline, Landon Carter in Richmond, Benjamin Harrison in Charles City: all important planters—and then proceeded to require merchants and planters to sign the Association. Anyone refusing to sign or even protesting against the requirement could expect to be branded an “enemy of the country.” Alexander Leckie felt the Caroline committee’s displeasure, for example, when at a public meeting at which all present were expected to sign the Association he said to a young Negro standing near by, “Piss, Jack, turn about, my boy, and sign.” Three weeks later Leckie published his apology for this jocularity and for other unguarded comments—he had said “damn them all” when contributions were being raised to defray the expenses of Virginia’s delegates to the Continental Congress, and he had spread the story that Walker Taliaferro, a local patriot, had violated the agreement of 1770. Leckie’s new mood was servile: he found the “weight of public censure and public hatred” absolutely “insupportable.” He had plenty of company. John Morris was denounced to the committee for “Certain expressions foreign from the Good of this Country” and was compelled to confess publicly that he was “Heartily Sorry.” David Wardrobe, a schoolmaster in Westmoreland County, was denounced for having written a letter considered “false, scandalous, and inimical” to America. The committee warmed to its work after delivering itself of this judgment and urged the local vestry to deny Wardrobe the use of its building for his school. Parents were told not to send their children to Wardrobe for instruction, and he himself was called upon to publish his contrition in the Virginia Gazette. He did so in the most abject terms: “I do, most heartily and willingly, on my knees, implore the forgiveness of this country for so ungrateful a return made for the advantages I have received from it, and the bread I have earned in it, and hope, from this contrition for my offence, I shall be at least admitted to subsist amongst the people I greatly esteem, and desire that this may be printed in the Virginia Gazette”.15
Although procedures for protecting freedom of speech and the press were not deeply embodied in judicial process as they were to be by the end of the Revolution, the action against Wardrobe and others was clearly repressive. Nor was Wardrobe’s case the most flagrantly repressive, though his fear is obvious. The Orange County committee forced John Wingate to turn over pamphlets in his possession which were critical of the Continental Congress. Terror was employed in these cases and in many others, as speech was controlled, the newspapers censored, and dissent crushed.16
Suppressing dissent enabled the committees to enforce the ban on imports from Britain and the West Indies. The committees also sometimes resorted to direct action against violators. There were several small tea parties in Virginia rivers during the autumn, for example. Merchants usually avoided the destruction of proscribed goods, however, by storing them with committees—or more commonly, asking that the committees sell the goods. This procedure allowed the merchants to save their investment in the imports, for the committees returned the costs and sent the profits to Boston’s poor. Prohibiting imports opened the door to profiteers—those merchants who had large inventories and small scruples. The committees were ready to deal with such people, sometimes by setting maximum prices—as, for example, in Caroline County—or by inspecting merchants’ accounts for evidence of profiteering, a technique also used in Caroline. A few merchants held out only to find their names published in the paper and themselves designated enemies to the country. When this occurred, the offender found himself ostracized and cut off from trade and society.
By the end of the year the Association was in full effect, and the local committees were, as Governor Dunmore sadly observed, the government of Virginia. The governor did his best to prevent the House of Burgesses from supporting local measures by postponing its meeting throughout the Winter of 1774–75. He could not prevent the organizing of militia and the collecting of arms, however, and both proceeded within the counties. George Washington and his friend George Mason organized the militia in Fairfax; under their guidance the county committee levied a tax of three shillings on every tithable. The money collected was spent for military supplies, and the committee which had no legal authority to tax backed up the collection by requesting that the name of anyone who refused to pay be reported to it. Though most counties did not go this far, many organized independent companies with men voluntarily putting themselves under drill and discipline. The young James Madison, soon to be elected to the Orange County committee of safety which his father chaired, predicted that “Such firm and provident steps will either intimidate our enemies or enable us to defy them.”17
There were pockets of indifference and even resistance to the Association and to proposals that America should arm itself. The colony of Georgia was one such pocket, where Governor James Wright, now playing on fears of the Indians and the need for British protection, adjourning the House and discouraging a provincial congress which met in 1775, managed to keep “patriotism” off balance. Far to the north in Pennsylvania, the Quakers damped down hotheads; and in Fairfield County, Connecticut, several towns controlled by Anglicans denounced the Association and all opposition to the Crown. Yet in both Pennsylvania and Connecticut, the Association went into effect as local committees enforced nonimportation. South Carolina also saw sundry committees spring up, and imports from Britain virtually stopped. Despite western indifference, North Carolina observed nonimportation. Maryland’s committees proved almost as vigorous as Virginia’s, arousing so much terror in an Annapolis merchant, Anthony Stewart, that in October he burned his ship, the Peggy Stewart, which had recently arrived laden with tea. In Maryland in December a provincial convention ordered the regulation of prices and the enforcement of the Association by local committees.18
III
Parliament and the ministry learned only gradually of the American hatred of the Intolerable Acts. Both bodies regularly suspended operations around mid-August, and the year 1774 was no exception. Dartmouth followed events of the summer more closely than anyone else and even rushed back to London from the country when he heard that weapons were being smuggled from Europe to the colonies. The news that a Continental Congress would meet did not shake him even though he regarded it as an illegal body. He wrote to a friend that if the Congress should adopt an accommodating “tone” or produce a temperate proposal, its origins and character might be overlooked. The king took a less flexible line in a letter to North, writing that “the dye is now cast, the Colonies must either submit or triumph; I do not wish to come to severer measures but we must not retreat; by coolness and an unremitted pursuit of the measures that have been adopted I trust they will come to submit.” And according to the king, after the colonies were brought to their senses, “there must always be one tax to keep up the right, and as such I approve of the Tea Duty.” Lord North’s attitudes too were hardening as he received reports of the likelihood of the Congress adopting nonimportation. Should the colonies decide not to trade with Britain, he remarked to Thomas Hutchinson, “Great Britain, would take care they should trade no where else.”19
North’s ministry had more on its mind in the early autumn than American affairs. At the end of September it announced that elections for a new Parliament would be held. The Parliament elected in 1768 was not due to expire until 1775, but the ministry decided to surprise the opposition and secure a majority for another seven years. America figured in this decision only incidentally, though North’s government expected further trouble overseas in 1775 and did not wish to have to deal with it while holding elections. American problems played little part in the elections except in those few constituencies where Wilkesite radicals demanded repeal of the Intolerable Acts. The electorate was small; policy was not an issue; and the voters were apathetic. Earlier in the year Burke had complained that “any remarkable highway robbery on Hounslow Heath would make more conversation than all the disturbances in America.” And with the elections imminent he noted that the present discontent in America and the possibility of difficulties there in the future “operate as little as the division of Poland.” The ministry had expected nothing else, and by mid-November the returns indicated that it had another handsome majority in the House of Commons.20
The day after the ministry announced that elections would be held, the bad news began pouring in from General Gage. He had attempted to enforce the Boston Port Act vigorously and thereby added to his problems. The Act provided that goods were not to be loaded or unloaded “at any wharf in the port, at any island, creek, landing-place, bank, or other place whatsoever.” Gage interpreted these phrases to mean movement of goods anywhere within the harbor and proceeded to cut off nearby islands and Charlestown across the river. Smuggling followed almost inevitably. The mobbing of mandamus councillors, the closing of the courts, and the preparations for war by towns, and soon the Provincial Congress, alarmed him even more.
Not surprisingly, Gage’s letters to the ministry conveyed something of his desperation and panic. He was not up against the Boston “rabble” and he said so; rather, he faced the “freeholders and farmers” of New England. To crush them he needed reinforcements, and he had already ordered regiments from New York and Canada to Boston. Nor did he hesitate to tell the ministry that he needed troops from home. None of these reinforcements would arrive soon, of course. While he waited, feeling naked and vulnerable, Gage recommended the suspension of the Intolerable Acts. These acts, after all, had aroused the Americans.21
Although there was fear in Gage’s account, there was also realism. He could not hope to put down a rebellion with the forces under his command, and lifting the Intolerable Acts surely would have undermined the most extreme radicals in America. The king and the ministry saw things differently. They shared Gage’s displeasure as the news of American resistance came in; Thomas Hutchinson noted that Dartmouth and John Powall were “thunder-struck” on learning of the Suffolk Resolves. North told Hutchinson that matters seemed “desperate” and insisted that “Parliament would not—could not—concede. For aught he could see it must come to violence.” A few days later he was saying flatly that Massachusetts was “in actual rebellion, and must be subdued.” The king shared these opinions—”the New England Governments are in a State of Rebellion, blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this Country or independent”—but he was repelled by Gage’s proposal to suspend the Intolerable Acts—”the most absurd,” he told North, “that can be suggested.”22
Gage indeed had very nearly undone himself in his dispatches of late summer and early fall, and by December his recall was certain. The month before, Suffolk, Secretary of State for the Northern Department, had urged that Gage be relieved of his command, but the king held back as news of the Congress worsened—the ministry learned from an informer what the Congress did even though its sessions were secret—and as Gage’s panic deepened. With Gage simultaneously clamoring for 20,000 troops, urging that a decisive blow be struck, and recommending suspension of the Intolerable Acts, the king decided he had had enough. He thereupon offered the American command to Jeffrey Amherst, a soldier with wide experience in America. Amherst, who detested America and hated service there, turned his king down. Soon after, as a temporary expedient the king decided to send a major general to aid Gage, a decision that eventually resulted in the dispatch of Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne.23
The problem of policy—what response should be given to the rebellious actions of the Americans—remained. By late January the ministry had decided on a policy—one, as it turned out, strikingly similar to the old one which, of course, had nearly brought open rebellion. The main features of this policy looked toward repression: New England’s trade was to be strictly confined to the empire and the fisheries were to be closed to New England’s ships; reinforcements of ships and troops were to be sent to Gage and Admiral Graves, and as a measure of conciliation an offer was made to stop taxing the colonies (while the right to tax was to remain) if the colonies agreed to support all civil and military needs. There was ambivalence in this policy though, to be sure, its main emphasis was on coercion. Both Dartmouth and North yearned for reconciliation before force had to be used. The king was not averse to trying conciliation so long as the right to tax was not yielded; he, however, had none of the hope that his ministers still retained.24
In January before the ministry could present its American program to Parliament, it had to head off Chatham’s last great attempt to restore peaceful relations. Ever secretive and dramatic, Chatham concealed his plans from the Rockinghams, the major opposition to the ministry, and did not try to draw them to his side. His proposal involved the withdrawal of troops from Boston and the passage of legislation which would reaffirm Parliament’s sovereignty but also provide that the colonies should not be taxed without their consent. Chatham also proposed that in return for recognition the Congress should grant the Crown a perpetual revenue. The Coercive Acts would be lifted and so would a dozen other statutes the colonies had complained of in the last ten years.25
It was a daring and hopeless proposal. It presumed to recast imperial relations in such fundamental ways as to imply that members of Parliament were creatures utterly without pride, that they would admit errors without a blush once they were exposed, and act speedily to correct them. It also assumed that the Americans had not really meant to reject Parliament’s sovereignty and that they would back off if Parliament repealed disagreeable statutes and promised not to exercise its legitimate right to tax them.
Parliament did not spend much time in disposing of Chatham’s fancy, and in the next two months it moved to approve the ministry’s program. In the first week of February both houses approved an address to the king declaring the colonies in rebellion and calling for forceful measures to ensure obedience to the laws and sovereignty of England. The members spoke long and the debate dragged on, but the issue was never in doubt. Two weeks later North held out his “olive branch” to the colonies: an offer to desist from taxing any colony that made acceptable provisions for the support of civil and military government within its boundaries. After this proposal received Parliamentary approval, the ministry pushed through legislation restraining New England’s trade and fisheries—extended in April to all the colonies except New York and North Carolina. Burke observed sardonically that by this legislation the government proposed “to preserve your authority by destroying your dominions.”26
