3. Unemployment was symptomatic of the rapid shifts in technology and the relations of production then besetting silk weaving, the first branch of British textile manufacture to undergo industrialization. The London weavers, who possessed a long-standing intellectual tradition, achieved an early consciousness of class, understood the efficacy of collective action, and took the first steps in Britain toward industrial organization. By permitting combinations of masters and journeymen to set wages, the Spitalfields Acts of 1765 and 1773 in effect recognized trade-unionism among the weavers. See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966), passim; Charles Wilson, England ’s Apprenticeship, 1603–1763 (London, 1965), 195, 351; and Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780–1880 (London, 1969), 32–3. On the king’s reaction to the riots, see Brooke, King George III, 113–16; and Ayling, George the Third, 127–9.
4. Lawson, Grenville, 217–18.
5. Brooke, King George III, 121–2.
6. William James Smith, ed., The Grenville Papers, vol. 3 (1853; reprint, New York, 1970), 215–16 (10 July 1765).
7. Ibid., 215.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT: The Assemblies Vacillate
1. On the responses of the various colonial assemblies, see Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (New York, 1968), 111–19; also, esp., Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (New York, 1963): 132–4 (R.I.), 294–5 (Conn.), 121, 196 ff. (N.Y.). Similar inaction characterized N.H. (139), N.J. (139, 147, 198), Md. (100–8), N.C. (139), S.C. (201–2), and Ga. (202–3). On Pa., see ibid., 311–12; and Benjamin Newcomb, Franklin and Galloway: A Political Partnership (New Haven, Conn., 1972), 113–18; quotation from Galloway to Franklin, 18 July 1765, ibid., 116.
2. On the Hopkins-Howard-Otis controversy, see Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1775, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 500–5, 524–30, 546–52; quotation from Defence of the Halifax Libel at 550 (original italics deleted here). On representation and the differing American and British understandings of this critical doctrine, see Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969), 25–8, 173–85, et passim.
3. Quotation: Bernard to John Pownall, May 1765, in Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 140.
4. “To consider”: Massachusetts circular letter, quoted in Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 139. Delegation: ibid., 139–41. “Never consent”: Bernard to the Board of Trade, 8 July 1765, quoted ibid., 140.
5. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, vol. 3, Planter and Patriot (New York, 1951), 129–30; Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry: A Biography (New York, 1974), 22–34.
6. Resolutions: Freeman, Planter and Patriot, 133; Beeman, Henry, 33–5 (“steps necessary” and “alone, unadvised”: quoted from Henry’s memoir on the resolves, at 35). The Virginia Resolves are reprinted in their variant forms in Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764–1766 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 47–50; these quotations follow Henry’s manuscript, 47.
7. On 8 May, a party of between twenty and thirty young men attacked ten Overhill Cherokee warriors passing through the Shenandoah Valley on their way to the Ohio Country, killing five. Fauquier issued a proclamation offering rewards for the perpetrators and tried urgently to reassure the Cherokee headmen that the killers would be brought to justice. He was clearly paying more attention to this affair than to the Burgesses until debates on Henry’s resolves. See the series of letters from this period in George Reese, ed., The Official Papers of Francis Fauquier, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, 1758–1768, vol. 3, 1764–1768 (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 1235–48.
8. All quotations in this and the previous paragraph are from Fauquier to the Board of Trade, 5 June 1765, ibid., 1250–1.
9. Jefferson’s reactions: Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time, vol. 1, Jefferson the Virginian (Boston, 1948), 88–94 (quotation is from Jefferson to William Wirt, 5 Aug. 1815, at 93). On Henry’s rhetorical style, see Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982), 266–9; and T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great TidewaterPlanters on the Eve of the Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1985), 188–90.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE: Mobs Respond
1. On the resolves, see the variant versions in Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764–1766 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 49–50; and the discussion in id. and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (New York, 1963), 127–30. The sixth and seventh resolves were probably written by John Fleming, who represented Cumberland County, and/or George Johnston, member for Fairfax; they were the only colleagues to whom Henry had shown his own five resolves (Richard R. Beeman, Patrick Henry, A Biography [New York, 1974], 39–40). The resolutions quoted here follow the version in the Newport Mercury.
2. On the composition of the Loyal Nine, see Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 160–1; G. B. Warden, Boston, 1689–1776 (Boston, 1970), 163; Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: ColonialRadicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (New York, 1972), 58, 85–6, 307; and the description of a meeting on 15 Jan. 1765 by John Adams, in Lyman H. Butterfield et al., eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 1, Diary, 1755–1770 (New York, 1964), 294. “The People of Virginia have spoke”: Edes, quoted in Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 135. (The “insipid Thing” was the polite protest against parliamentary taxation that Thomas Hutchinson had stage-managed through the Council and House of Representatives in late 1764.)
3. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, 53–8, 69–70; Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 161 ff; Peter Shaw, American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 16–18, 180–97 passim; Dirk Hoerder, Crowd Action in Revolutionary Massachusetts, 1765–1780 (New York, 1977), 91–7; George P. Anderson, “Ebenezer Mackintosh: Stamp Act Rioter and Patriot,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications 26 (1927): 15–64.
4. There are many accounts of the events on August 14. This one follows Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 161–5; Hoerder, Crowd Action, 97–101; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 10, The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 (New York, 1967), 292–4; Bernard to Halifax, 15 Aug. 1765, in Morgan, Prologue,106–8; and Diary of John Rowe, entry of 14 Aug. 1765, in Anne Rowe Cunningham, ed., The Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759–1762, 1764–1779 (Boston, 1903; reprint, 1969), 88–9. Boston’s High Street ran the length of the neck, connecting the town peninsula to the mainland; it was thus as close to a thoroughfare as the town could be said to possess in 1765. Later renamed Washington Street, in 1765 it had four separately named stretches from the neck to the Province House: Orange Street, Newbury Street, Marlborough Street, and Cornhill. Deacon Elliot’s Corner was a small square where Frog Lane (today’s Boylston Street) entered from the west, dividing Orange from Newbury. See Lester Cappon et al., eds., Atlas of Early American History: The Revolutionary Period, 1760–1790 (Princeton, N.J., 1976), 9.
5. Bernard to Halifax, 15 Aug. 1765, in Morgan, Prologue, 108.
6. On the Wheelwright bankruptcy, see John Cary, Joseph Warren: Physician, Politician, Patriot (Urbana, Ill., 1961), 45–7, 120–1. Quotation and comparison of the panic and the Lisbon earthquake: James Otis to George Johnstone et al., 25 Jan. 1765, Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings 43 (1909–10): 204–7 (quotation at 205). See also the account in Letters and Diary of Rowe, 74–5 (diary entries of 15–21 Jan. 1765). Wheelwright complicated Boston’s problems by making over his assets to a relative before he left, and then dying—intestate— soon after he arrived in the French West Indies; the probate proceedings on his estate lasted more than twenty-five years (Nathaniel Wheelwright Probate Records, docket 14148, Suffolk County Courthouse,
Boston).
7. Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 29–32.
8. The following account derives from Hoerder, Crowd Action, 104–10; Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 166–9; Bailyn, Ordeal, 70–155 passim; Gipson, Thunder-Clouds Gather, 295–7.
9. Bernard to the Board of Trade, 31 Aug. 1765, quoted in Lawrence Henry Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution, 1763–1775 (New York, 1962), 93.
10. Hutchinson to Richard Jackson, 30 Aug. 1765, in Morgan, Prologue, 108–9.
11. Ibid., 109.
12. The following account is based on Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 191–4; Thomas Moffat to Joseph Harrison, 16 Oct. 1765, in Morgan, Prologue, 109–13; and Jensen, Founding, 111–12.
13. Gipson, Thunder-Clouds Gather, 303–4 (McEvers), 306–7 (Coxe), 302–3 (Meserve), 316 (Mercer; quotation is from Mercer to Rockingham, 11 Apr. 1766, ibid.), 319–20 (South Carolina), 317–18 (North Carolina).
14. Ibid., 312–14.
15. Lawrence Henry Gipson, American Loyalist: Jared Ingersoll (New Haven, Conn., 1971), 177–85. On the participation of former provincials in the mob that compelled the resignation and on Fitch’s loss of office, see Harold Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven, Conn., 1990), 214–15, 222–4. On Fitch’s effort to justify himself publicly by pamphlet, and on his later career, see Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Fitch, Thomas”; and Gipson, Ingersoll, 252–313, esp. 290–3, 296 n. On the transfer of assembly dominance from the Old Light, western, and conservative party to the New Light eastern insurgents, see Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 261–6; on the cultural significance of Ingersoll’s resignation, ibid., 284–8. See also Oscar Zeichner, Connecticut’s Years of Controversy, 1750–1776 (Williamsburg, Va., 1949), 44–77.
16. The following account derives from Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 312–24; Gipson, Thunder-Clouds Gather, 307–11; and Benjamin Newcomb, Franklin and Galloway: A Political Partnership (New Haven, Conn., 1972), 115–25.
17. Morgan, Prologue, 51–2, reprints the resolves.
CHAPTER SEVENTY: Nullification by Violence, and an Elite Effort to Reassert Control
1. James M. Johnson, Militiamen, Rangers, and Redcoats: The Military in Georgia, 1754–1776 (Macon, Ga., 1992), 55–66. See also John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 214–15; and W. W. Abbott, The Royal Governors of Georgia, 1754–1775 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 105–16. Ironically, the British government disbanded the rangers in March 1767 as an economy measure ( Johnson, Militiamen, 67).
2. “Journals of Capt. John Montresor,” ed. G. D. Scull, New-York Historical Society, Collections14 (1881): 336–9 (entries for 23 Oct.–5 Nov. 1765; quotations at 337); Shy, Toward Lexington, 211–14; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 10, The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 (New York, 1967), 304–6. An excellent account of New York in the immediate postwar period and the Stamp Act crisis unfortunately came to hand too late to influence this narrative and the preceding account of the effects of the postwar depression on the northeastern port towns. It is, however, generally consistent with my own understanding, in that it stresses the significance of both the Seven Years’ War and Cadwallader Colden as influences on New Yorkers’ behavior in the years 1763–66. See Joseph S. Tiedemann, Reluctant Revolutionaries: New York City and the Road to Independence, 1763–1776 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), 43–6 (impact of postwar depression), 49–55 (character of Colden), 55–61 (significance of the war), and 62–82 (riot and aftermath).
3. Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 (New York, 1972), 68–9.
4. The nine colonial assemblies that passed resolves were Va. (31 May), R.I. (Sept.), Pa. (21 Sept.), Md. (28 Sept.), Conn. (25 Oct.), Mass. (29 Oct.), S.C. (29 Nov.), N.J. (30 Nov.), and N.Y. (18 Dec.); see Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764–1766 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 47–62. Mass., R.I., Conn., N.Y., N.J., Pa., Del., Md., and S.C. sent delegations to the Stamp Act Congress. N.H.’s assembly, in the pocket of Gov. Benning Wentworth, declined to send a delegation, while the governors of Va., N.C., and Ga. refused to convene their assemblies and thus prevented the election of delegates (Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution [New York, 1963], 139). Except where otherwise noted, the following account of the congress’s proceedings derives from C. A. Weslager, The Stamp Act Congress (Newark, Del., 1976), 107–68.
5. Only Christopher Gadsden, delegate from South Carolina, protested against petitioning the House of Commons, on the grounds that the colonies derived none of their rights from it; he withdrew the motion when more conservative delegates objected (Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 147–8).
6. Morgan, Prologue, 68.
7. Mob restraint: Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, 69–71. Quotation: Francis Bernard to John Pownall, 1 and 5 Nov. 1765, ibid. Boston’s merchants made a large donation to the mobs and provided Ebenezer Mackintosh with a splendid uniform, a gold-laced hat, a cane, and a speaking trumpet. He marched, as “Captain-General of the Liberty Tree,” at the head of the parade, arm-in-arm with a member of the Council. Later the merchants footed the bill for a magnificent “union” dinner at which two hundred men from the mobs and other antistamp constituencies celebrated the victory of liberty—and order (Peter Shaw, American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution [Cambridge, Mass., 1981], 180, 188–90).
8. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, 72–4.
9. Origins and spread of nonimportation: ibid., 74; Bernhard Knollenberg, Origin of the American Revolution, 1759–1766 (New York, 1960), 192–3, cites articles from the Providence Gazette and the Connecticut Courant from Oct. 1764. Boston’s association: Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763–1776 (1918; reprint, New York, 1966), 78, 80. “Upwards of Two Hundred”: “The New York Agreement, October 31, 1765,” in Morgan, Prologue, 106. Philadelphia: Schlesinger, Colonial Merchants, 79. Thomas M. Doerflinger, in A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 189, notes that the Philadelphia merchants had been divided, generally, between antiproprietary Quakers who favored submission and proprietary Anglicans and Presbyterians who opposed it. Their evident unity on nonimportation may have reflected fears of violence, if they did not comply.
10. 14 Oct. 1765; reprinted in Robert J. Taylor et al., eds., Papers of John Adams, vol. 1, September 1755–October 1773 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 147.
11. Ploughjogger to the Boston Evening-Post, 20 June 1763, in Papers of Adams, 1:63. (Adams wrote three Ploughjogger letters in 1763, then no more until October 1765.)
12. Quotation: diary entry, 18 Dec. 1765, in L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 1, Diary 1755–1770 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 263; weather: entry of 19 Dec., ibid., 265 (“A fair Morning after a severe Storm of 3 days and 4 Nights. A vast Quantity of rain fell”).
13. Diary and Autobiography, 1:285 (entry of 2 Jan. 1766).
14. On the significance of women in resistance, see esp. Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston, 1980), 155–94; and Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1980), 35–42.
15. Diary and Autobiography, 1:282–4.
PART X: EMPIRE PRESERVED? 1766 CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE: The Repeal of the Stamp Act
1. Paul Langford, The First Rockingham Administration, 1765–1766 (Oxford, 1973), 77–83, and Peter D. G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis (Oxford, 1975), 132–8.
2. For an assessment of Rockin
gham’s character, personality, and habits, see Langford, Rockingham Administration, esp. 16–21 and 244–8; also (less critically) Ross J. S. Hoffman, The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham, 1730–82 (New York, 1973), esp. ix–xii, 1–21, 79–80, 94, 333–4.
3. Since late May 1765, Temple had been reconciled with his younger brother, George Grenville, which meant that he had been estranged from his brother-in-law, William Pitt; thus Pitt’s demand that Temple be offered the Treasury was either a ploy to detach him from Grenville (for Temple was notoriously covetous of both honors and office), or a nonnegotiable demand intended to make it clear that Pitt had assumed office on his own terms. Temple, it seems, hoped to restore the old family alliance, with himself as first lord of the Treasury and Pitt and Grenville as secretaries of state for the Southern and Northern Departments. See Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 330–1, 339–40.
4. Langford, First Rockingham Administration, 104–5, 135–8; Ayling, Elder Pitt, 335–7, 343–4; Thomas, British Politics, 175–6.
5. On the massacre, see Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (1930; reprint, New York, 1961), 403–15. The voting strength of the King’s Friends was reckoned in Jan. 1766 at about 148; see Langford, Rockingham Administration, 156–8.
6. Edmund Burke would later make the alienation of the Rockinghams from the King’s Friends a major theme of Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), alleging that Bute’s allies had deliberately undermined the Rockingham ministry. Paul Langford, in A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989), 527–8, dismisses this view as “a sublime and beautiful form of sour grapes”; but cf. Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody: A Thematic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke (Chicago, 1992), esp. i–lii.
7. “Plan of Business,” 28 Nov. 1765 [misdated 27 Nov.], in Langford, Rockingham Administration,111. I have reordered Rockingham’s phrases for syntactical clarity.
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