The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (41 page)

Economic coercion in the form of a refusal to import British goods

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had worked three years before, and now in 1768, official and unofficial bodies looked to it again. Predictably the first attempts to conclude a nonimportation pact were made in Boston. The Junto, as the group around Sam Adams was called, tried first in the town meeting in October 1767; the legislature not sitting, the town, which had been a bellwether to the province, seemed a logical place to begin. The merchants who had already sounded their dislike of stopping trade now packed the meeting and voted down the proposals to end trade with Britain until the repeal of the new taxes. The best the Junto could get was a voluntary nonconsumption agreement, binding only those who signed not to use a list of British imports which did not even include all the dutied articles. The town also resolved to encourage local manufactures and singled out paper and glass as especially worthy of domestic production.
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The town recommended nonconsumption to the province as a whole and in irresistible language. Its subscribers proposed to stimulate local "industry," to cut the rise of British "superfluities," to curtail "luxury." This is the language of the Protestant ethic, appealing to values still deeply embedded in the culture of New England, and only slightly less so in the middle and southern colonies, where it later appeared in agreements banning importation of British goods. Its force was probably greatest in small towns where Protestantism survived uncorrupted by urban fashions. In any case during the next three months towns all over New England took up Boston's example and signed their own agreements not to consume British imports.

Whether the popular leaders in Boston ever believed that nonconsumption would affect British policy is not clear. But early in 1768 they pushed merchants toward closing down imports from Britain. To be sure not all merchants needed pressure; John Rowe, for example, confided to his diary his belief that the Townsbend duties were "as dangerous as the Stamp Act,"
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and Rowe agreed with other merchants in March to limit most British imports for a year. This agreement never went into effect, for these Boston merchants decided not to observe its terms until their competitors in New York and Philadelphia concurred. By mid-April virtually every merchant in New York had signed a similar agreement, but in June, a deadline set by the New Yorkers, the merchants of Philadelphia, despite pleas from John Dickinson, refused.
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Philadelphia's merchants were neither grasping nor "unpatriotic." They did not lack principles, and they did not admire the new import duties. But they were freer than their colleagues in Boston and New York, freer of popular intimidation. Mobs had made themselves known in Philadelphia three years earlier but the city had not endured the convulsions of Boston and New York. And one important faction, the Quaker party led by Franklin and Galloway, playing for time and craving a royal charter, had dampened or at least divided popular enthusiasm. Hence in this atmosphere of moderation, though not of brotherly love, the merchants of Philadelphia felt able to defend their rights to business and profits even though they despised Parliamentary usurpation.
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Within eighteen months of the refusal of Philadelphia in June 1768, the atmospheres had darkened everywhere in America, and nonimportation had spread to every colony but New Hampshire. As before, Boston provided the impetus. Why merchants in Boston decided to draft another agreement is not hard to fathom. They had given up their first attempt only after Philadelphia backed away. Now, on August 1, another try seemed promising, indeed imperative, for revulsion against Hillsborough's circular letter was spreading; more importantly, the town had experienced riots against the racketeering of Customs commissioners, and it was listening to rumors that British troops would soon arrive. The merchants discussed their problems several times in the summer and on August 1, 1768, agreed to stop importation of most British goods for the year beginning January 1. Sixty of sixty-two merchants at this meeting signed, and within a few days almost all others in the town had followed suit.
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Near the end of August, merchants in New York approved an agreement requiring the importation of British goods to stop November 1 and not to resume until the repeal of the Townshend duties. Coupled with Boston's, the New York agreement drew Philadelphia to center stage. Newspapers in New York City and Boston printed letters and articles with unflattering remarks on the public spirit of Philadelphia merchants, and private correspondence must have been no less blunt. Still, the Philadelphia merchants held back until March 1769, when they finally entered an agreement similar to New York's. Most merchants subscribed within a couple of weeks, and their example inspired their associates in nearby Newcastle County, Delaware, to form a similar association in late August.
New Jersey merchants also explicitly acknowledged

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the importance of action in Pennsylvania and New York but delayed formal agreements until June 1770. They may have restricted trade before that time, however. When they did finally conform publicly, they moved in response to mass meetings in New Brunswick and in Essex County.
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While Philadelphia was dallying, nonimportation was gaining support in much of New England with the notable exceptions of Rhode Island, always a maverick, and New Hampshire, rarely one. In many of the towns of Massachusetts and Connecticut private organizations of merchants and town meetings both declared their commitments to nonimportation. Sometimes only one group acted, but in any case the town as a whole was thereby understood to be obligated to avoid bringing in or consuming goods from Britain. These agreements imposed sanctions of a sort, as for example in Norwich, Connecticut, where the town meeting promised to "frown upon all who endeavour to frustrate these good designs, and avoid all correspondence with those merchants who shall dare to violate these obligations." By autumn of the next year, 1769, the Connecticut assembly had given its approval in the form of resolutions of support of nonimportation.
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The southern colonies were not far behind despite the presence, especially in Virginia and Maryland, of a sizable group of Scottish factors who represented British commercial houses. Other merchants, for the most part native-born Americans, agreed with their brothers in the northern colonies that nonimportation required too great a sacrifice from a single financial interest, namely, themselves. Still Virginia acted in May 1769, Maryland in June, South Carolina in July, Georgia in September, and North Carolina in November.
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George Washington had helped precipitate Virginia's decision by sending a copy of the Philadelphia pact to his neighbor George Mason and by proposing in May that the House of Burgesses take the lead. When the burgesses met, they felt compelled to denounce Parliamentary taxation once more and to repeat the case for their own claims. Governor Botetourt decided against allowing this exercise to go on under his nose and dissolved the House well before it could enter any agreement.
Undis-

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couraged, the former burgesses met as private citizens in the house of Anthony Hay of Williamsburg and joined in an agreement to end most importation from Britain. These Virginians did not bind themselves quite as tightly as northern subscribers did, but they proved their seriousness by prohibiting the importation of slaves after November 1. They promised also not to slaughter lambs weaned before May 1 of any year, a prohibition intended to stimulate the production of wool for home manufactures. All these restraints were to remain in force until the Townshend acts were repealed.
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While Virginia's nonimportation moved from the center -- the Burgesses -- outward into the counties, Maryland's began in the counties and eventually produced a broad agreement across the colony. The beginnings may have been in Baltimore, where in March 1769 a group of merchants, after considerable cajoling from Philadelphia's new believers, promised not to import British goods until the repeal of the Townshend acts. Two months later a meeting in Anne Arundel County concluded a similar agreement, followed by almost every other county in Maryland and on June 20 by a general meeting in Annapolis which formed a nonimportation association for the colony. Slightly more than half of the members of this meeting had sat in the lower house of the legislature the year before. In most respects the Maryland association resembled Virginia's, although it did not prohibit the importation of slaves.
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The third "tobacco colony," North Carolina, followed Virginia's example even more closely than Maryland. Governor Tryon dissolved the assembly early in November whereupon sixty-four of its seventy-seven members agreed on nonimportation resolutions modeled on Virginia's, including a ban on bringing in slaves. Most of these subscribers were planters -- not merchants.
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Charleston planters and artisans carried South Carolina into nonimportation in July after a series of public meetings. By September most of the town and many in surrounding counties and parishes had subscribed to an agreement that barred importation of British goods with the exception of clothing for slaves, blankets, tools, powder, lead, wool cards,

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