The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (52 page)

The Boston Port Act was the first of five acts the Americans called the Intolerable Acts. Parliament passed the others in the three months following passage of the Boston Port Act. The next two -- the Massachusetts Regulatory Act (commonly called the Massachusetts Government Act) and the Impartial Administration of Justice Act -- occasioned greater opposition and livelier debate, but both passed with large majorities. The Massachusetts Government Act embodied proposals which had been made at various times before by officials who had long insisted that Parliament must establish its supremacy in America. And if to do so involved altering a royal charter, an act for which no precedent existed, too bad for precedents and charters. In simple terms, the Act converted the Massachusetts government into a royal affair: the House would continue as an elective body but the Council from August on would be nominated by the Crown; the governor would appoint and remove, if he wished, most civil officials; towns would no longer meet except with royal permission; and sheriffs -- not freeholders -- would select juries. Obviously this Act considerably reduced local control in Massachusetts; a related statute, the Impartial Administration of Justice Act, further cut

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down colonial power by providing that any royal official accused of a capital crime in the colony might be sent to England or another colony for trial.
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During the debate on these bills Rose Fuller proposed the repeal of the Townshend duty on tea. The motion was neither irrelevant nor out of order, but presented on the assumption that the new coercive policies in America had no chance if the duty remained. Once the tax was removed the Americans might swallow their medicine. Fuller moved repeal on April 19, and Burke immediately gave his support in a speech on American taxation. The speech is memorable for its wit and its brilliant. reconstruction of the government's dismal efforts to bring order into colonial affairs without the advantage of a coherent policy. The government's way, Burke said, was "meanly to sneak out of difficulties into which they had proudly strutted." But the speech also revealed once again the limits on sympathy for the colonials' version of the constitution. To be sure, Burke urged that the duty on tea should be lifted, but on grounds of expediency not of constitutional right. The Declaratory Act had stated what Parliament might do -- "bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever" -- from that line not even the friends of America deviated.

The king signed the two bills on May 20. Two weeks later he gave his assent to still another quartering bill, the latest attempt to force civil authorities in America to provide housing and provisions for troops. The Quartering Act of 1765 had required the authorities to furnish barracks; the next year an amended statute allowed billeting of troops in inns, taverns, and vacant buildings. This one permitted the quartering of troops with private families. It passed the Commons without a division early in May and went through the Lords easily, though Chatham spoke against it.
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All four statutes were meant to be punitive and were also calculated to reduce the colonies to a proper subordination. The Quebec Act which became law late in June had neither of these purposes, but because of its timing and its provisions, it was regarded as one of the Intolerable Acts, as part of Parliament's response to the Boston Tea Party.

Although many colonists branded the legislation closing the port of Boston and altering the government of Massachusetts the Intolerable Acts, just as many seemed in spring 1774 quite willing to tolerate the intolera-

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ble. Sam Adams and the Boston committee of correspondence, however, were no more able to accept such complacency than they were the punishment of Boston. The full extent of Parliament's reactions became known only gradually, but news of the most drastic measure, the shutting up of Boston, arrived on May 10 and was widely dispersed through the colonies by the end of the month.

Adams did not wait for this information to spread before acting. He and the committee proposed that the town suspend all trade with Great Britain and the British West Indies and that the rest of America do the same. The town meeting gave the proposal its support almost immediately, but at that point a different spirit showed itself.

The last try at nonimportation had ended with accusations of had faith ringing in all the colonies. John Mein's charges that John Hancock and associates had cheated had created suspicions of Boston, and the understandable desires of merchants everywhere to make money inhibited whatever enthusiasm they might once have felt about still another stoppage of business. Even those aroused enough to break off their trade were concerned that they not act alone, that such action be taken everywhere with no chiseling. By this time, with recent experience in mind, guaranteeing such united action did not seem easy. Therefore, the tendency of merchants almost everywhere was to hang back while awaiting evidence that economic coercion against Britain would be concerted in all the colonies.

The evidence of merchants' intentions promised anything but joint action. In Boston the reluctant among them must have taken heart when General Gage arrived on May 13 with a commission as governor. Soon afterwards a group of merchants proposed to pay for the tea destroyed in December and commissioned Thomas Hutchinson, who was leaving for England at the beginning of June, to carry their offer to London. The Boston committee of correspondence could not ignore this opposition and a few days later announced that it was sponsoring a "Solemn League and Covenant" for the public's signature. This covenant pledged its signers to stop all trade with Great Britain, to refuse to purchase any English goods imported after August 31, and to break off trade with anyone refusing to sign. The next step was to mobilize the town meeting; here again the radicals proved their political mastery as the town voted against payment for the tea on June 17 and ten days later endorsed the Solemn League and Covenant. Neither action came easily -- the merchants fought savagely against both, moving in the town meeting that the committee of correspondence be dissolved.

That motion failed, but the intimidation intended by the "Solemn League" failed too, as more than one hundred merchants signed and published a protest against it and its parent, the committee of correspondence.
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Adams and the committee won these struggles, but their victory was worthless. To be sure, several New England towns supported nonimportation, and more than one committee of correspondence responded favorably to appeals from Boston for support. Outside New England there were promises of supplies for "suffering Boston" and there were denunciations of the Intolerable Acts. Perhaps the most impressive was sounded in Virginia, where in late May the House of Burgesses declared that Boston was enduring a "hostile Invasion" and set aside June 1, the day Boston was to be shut up, as a "Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, devoutly to implore the divine Interposition for averting the heavy Calamity, which threatens Destruction to our civil Rights, and the Evils of Civil War. . . ." A fastday must have gratified Puritan Boston, where such days had a long and honorable tradition. Reverting to such a technique was intended to arouse sensitivities to threats against liberty such as had been present during the English Civil War. Jefferson claimed the inspiration for such a technique for himself and half a dozen other burgesses, among them Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee. These spirits, very much aware of their boldness, "cooked up" a resolution based on the forms and language, suitably modernized for eighteenthcentury readers, employed in the Puritan Revolution. Derivative, "cooked up," and bold as it was, the resolution with its call for a fastday struck a pleasing note in the ears of older burgesses who speedily approved it. The governor, Lord Dunmore, reacted as governors representing outside authority always did and dissolved the House.
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From other colonies came similar, though less forceful, expressions of support for Boston. These muted declarations barely concealed the struggles behind them between merchants and popular leaders. The issue dividing them concerned the action to be taken in response to the Boston Port Act. Each "side" included various shadings of opinion, but most seemed to have agreed with Boston's claim that it was representing the "common cause," that its liberties stood for all, and that if Parliament suppressed it, all would lose their liberties.
Acceptance of these proposi-

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tions did not carry all groups to an agreement on what should be done. Boston's call for stoppage of all trade with Britain aroused open opposition in virtually all merchant groups, and skepticism even among some "popular" groups -- among mechanics, for example, in New York. The way nonimportation had collapsed four years earlier had disenchanted many merchants and others as well. In 1770, merchants in several cities had been unable to resist large profits while the competition tied itself up. Merchants in Boston had been accused of such tactics; and appeals from Boston thereafter were always slightly suspect. Boston's merchants distrusted those in nearby Rhode Island, and there was a mutuality of suspicion in New York and Philadelphia.
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In an environment heavy with mistrust, the proposal to convene a continental congress drew surprising agreement. The reasons are fairly clear. Some merchants who had felt themselves betrayed in 1770 retained confidence in action that united their kind in all the colonies. If both obligations and penalties were clear, they reasoned, economic coercion had a chance of success. Other merchants, probably a smaller number, expected to be able to forestall any concerted action in a general meeting. But even these men seem to have believed that Parliament's action presented a threat to political liberty as well as to business. The question was, as before, how to respond -- not whether to respond.

While Boston's leaders plotted, and arguments over this problem went on everywhere, colonial legislatures and unofficial bodies began to cut through the debate and to act. Connecticut's lower house was one of the first; early in June it instructed its committee of correspondence to choose delegates to what became the first Continental Congress. Less than two weeks later Rhode Island's General Assembly chose its own delegates. Five colonies -- Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware, North Carolina -- resorted to provincial assemblies, extraordinary bodies substituting for legislatures dissolved by peace-loving governors. A similar agency, the convention, chose Virginia's delegates in August; local committees made the choices in New York, and in South Carolina the Commons House of the assembly ratified the selections of the inhabitants. Georgia in 1774, badly frightened by an uprising of Creek Indians on the northern frontier, decided against sending delegates, lest it be deprived of British arms. Boston was distant, the Indians close by; danger may not have revived loyalty in Georgia but it subdued daring.
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These local conflicts over the tactics to be used in responding to

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