Desperate Sons

by Les Standiford

  Though some members of Parliament opposed various of the measures as unnecessarily oppressive, North was adamant. He was not out to “enslave America. I deny it. I have no such intention.” These were, he said, but necessary steps “to bring them to a sense of their duty.”

  As for any contention that the Americans now saw the error of their ways and were willing to indemnify the East India Company, North recounted the fate of the good ship Fortune, which had arrived in Boston harbor on March 6, bearing 28½ chests of tea. Though it had not been East India Company tea, it had been tea nonetheless, and on the following day, fifty or sixty men dressed as Mohawks had boarded the ship, locked a customs man in a cabin, pulled chests of tea from the hold, and dumped the tea overboard. “Is this, Sir, feeling their error?” North asked indignantly. “Is this, Sir, reforming?”

  Though there were some who were willing to take on what North intended as rhetorical questions, most in Parliament were of the opinion that the reprehensible behavior of the Massachusetts colonists indeed needed punishing. The first of North’s measures, the Boston Port Act, was passed on March 31, 1774, stipulating “WHEREAS dangerous commotions and insurrections have been fomented and raised in the town of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England, by divers ill-affected persons, to the subversion of his Majesty’s government, and to the utter destruction of the publick peace. . . . That from and after the first day of June, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-four, it shall not be lawful for any person or persons whatsoever to lade put, or cause or procure to be laden or put, off or from any quay, wharf, or other place, within the said town of Boston, or in or upon any part of the shore of the bay, commonly called The Harbour of Boston . . . any goods, wares, or merchandise, whatsoever.”

  In fact, the Port of Boston was to be closed to all commercial traffic until such time as the king was satisfied “that peace and obedience to the laws shall be so far restored in the said town of Boston, that the trade of Great Britain may safely be carried on there, and his Majesty’s customs duly collected.” A further provision made it clear that one condition of such satisfaction would be the reimbursement of the East India Company for its losses “by or on behalf of the inhabitants of the said town of Boston to the united company of merchants of England trading to the East Indies, for the damage sustained by the said company by the destruction of their goods sent to the said town of Boston.”

  Furthermore, the act stipulated, similar “reasonable” satisfaction would have to be made to the customs officers who had suffered in the melee. And to ensure that the provisions of the Port Act were vigorously enforced, the king appointed none other than General Gage as the new governor of Massachusetts colony.

  When Gage sailed into Boston harbor in early May carrying word of his appointment as well as the passage of the Port Act, the results were predictable. At a hastily called meeting, the town’s Correspondence Committee authorized Samuel Adams to draft a series of letters to all the colonies informing them of the news and calling for the support of their beleaguered colony.

  “General Gage is just arrivd here, with a Commission to supercede Govr Hutchinson,” the alarmed Adams wrote, adding that one of the first orders of business announced by the new governor had been the relocation of the government’s center of operations. “It is said that the Town of Salem about twenty Miles East of this Metropolis is to be the Seat of Government—that the Commissioners of the Customs and their numerous Retinue are to remove to the Town of Marblehead a Town contiguous to Salem and that this if the General shall think proper is to be a Garrisond Town. Reports are various and contradictory.”

  It was a case of gross overreaction on the part of the British, Adams said. “It appears that the Inhabitants of this Town have been Tryed condemn’d and are to be punished . . . without their having been accused of any crime committed by them,” he proclaimed, adding that Boston would not be able to survive the closing of its port without the aid of its neighbors, nor should any other colony suppose it would be spared such treatment should the Crown so decide. The only course of action was to unite. In a letter of May 13 to the Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence, Adams spelled out the situation with typical bluntness: “This Attack, though made immediately upon us, is doubtless designd for every other Colony, who will not surrender their sacred Rights & Liberties into the Hands of an infamous Ministry. Now therefore is the Time, when ALL should be united in opposition to this Violation of the Liberties of ALL. Their grand object is to divide the Colonies.”

  In his various missives, Adams counseled fellow Sons in Massachusetts and elsewhere that it was surely the British ministry’s hope that Bostonians would be left to languish by their fellow colonists. Therefore, he contended, the most effective way of proving otherwise and forcing the British to reconsider would be to form a pan-colonial boycott of all trade with the mother country. The town of Newburyport had already announced that it would no longer trade “southward of South Carolina nor to any part of Great Britain” until the port of Boston was reopened, and Adams drafted a call for similar resolutions, not only by all other towns in Massachusetts but by all other colonies as well.

  Adams also supported the convening of a colonial congress to solidify plans for such a boycott but meantime pressed his colleagues to call for an immediate cessation of consumption of British goods, with the fine points to be dealt with later. At the same time, he was growing increasingly doubtful of the merchants’ willingness to comply with any boycott. Since their very livelihoods were at stake, it seemed unlikely that he could count on unanimous support from that quarter. Increasingly, then, he directed his calls to “the body of the people” for support of his plan. Though “violence and submission” would prove equally fatal responses to the edicts of the “barbarians” in England, he counseled, economic warfare would bring them to their knees.

  If some merchants did indeed waver in their support of the boycott, the punitive nature of the Boston Port Act stirred the moral outrage of other leaders throughout the colonies, many of them previously unmoved by calls for joint opposition to British rule. For one thing, the Port Act was clearly designed to punish. It was directed at one port and one colony and made no pretense of being cloaked among other “regulations of trade.” The Port Act was retribution for the destruction of tea in Boston harbor, pure and simple, and furthermore it would bring great hardship on the citizens of an entire colony, the vast majority of whom had had nothing to do with the event and simply wished for an unbroken supply of food, clothing, and other necessities.

  Christopher Gadsden wrote Adams that all supporters of liberty in South Carolina sympathized with Boston’s suffering and pledged that shipments of rice were on the way from his colony to Massachusetts. The Virginia House of Burgesses met to declare a day of mourning for their northern brethren, committees in Maryland issued proclamations of support, and churches in Maryland and Philadelphia tolled their bells from morning to night on June 1, the day the Port Act took effect. Yet take effect the act did, and, soon thereafter, other news arrived in Boston that even more punishment was on the way.

  The Massachusetts Government Act was passed by Parliament on May 20, removing the power of the colony to elect the members of the governor’s executive council and granting the governor sole authority to appoint judges, sheriffs, justices of the peace, and jury members. Henceforth town meetings would be limited to one each year. There would no longer be a shadow government to meet as it pleased and issue proclamations willy-nilly. The government of Massachusetts was being taken from the hands of an irresponsible citizenry and put back where it belonged.

  A companion piece of legislation, the Administration of Justice Act, was passed by Parliament on the same day, provoking equal outrage from colonial leaders, who quickly dubbed it “the Murder Act.” In recognition of the attempts of the citizens of Massachusetts Bay to “throw off the authority of Parliament,” the act stipulated that beginning August 1, it would be within the governor’s discretio
n to move the trial of any government official accused of murder—or any other capital offense upon a person—while acting “in support of the public peace of the province.”

  If it was the governor’s opinion that “an indifferent trial cannot be had within the said province, in that case, it shall and may be lawful for the governor . . . to direct, with the advice and consent of the council, that the inquisition, indictment, or appeal, shall be tried in some other of his Majesty’s colonies, or in Great Britain.” The very thought that a trial such as that of the troops involved in the Boston Massacre might be moved to Great Britain seemed beyond the pale of reason to any colonist. Indeed, the veiled message within the Justice Act seemed to be: “We will deal with you colonists as we wish and we will do so with impunity.” Even to those who considered the destruction of the tea a reprehensible action, the Justice Act seemed little better.

  George Washington, previously hardly known as a radical, took on something of an Adams-like flair in his letters of the time, decrying the Justice Act as a thinly veiled justification for the most tyrannical actions. Though he supported the notion that the East India Company should be indemnified for its losses, he informed his Tory friend George William Fairfax in a July 4 letter that he found the Coercive Acts “subversive of everything that I hold dear and valuable.” Washington told Fairfax that the actions of General Gage since returning to Massachusetts (and calling the trade boycott “treason”) had been nothing short of despotic and likened the new governor to a pompous Turkish pasha. Washington became a champion in the Virginia assembly for the Fairfax Resolves, a set of resolutions passed on July 18, which called for an end to the importation of slaves and a ban on trade with Great Britain.

  A fourth piece of legislation often lumped with those acts specific to Massachusetts was passed on June 2. The Quartering Act of 1774 provided for the governor of any of the colonies to order the use of other buildings if barracks were not provided for the housing of British troops. Because it did not require that colonies supply provisions for the troops as previous such acts had, however, it did not occasion the same general outcry as did the provisions directed at Massachusetts.

  “Will the People of America consider these measures, as Attacks on the Constitution of an Individual Province in which the rest are not interested,” Samuel Adams asked Richard Henry Lee of Virginia in a letter of July 15, “or will they view the model of Government prepar’d for us as a Sistem for the whole Continent? Will they, as unconcern’d Spectators, look upon it to be design’d only to top off the exuberant Branches of Democracy in the Constitution of this Province? Or, as part of a plan to reduce them all to Slavery? These are Questions, in my Opinion of Importance, which I trust will be thoroughly weighed in a general Congress.”

  Adams was not the only one to call for such a gathering, of course, for the general feeling of the day was that the colonies would soon be faced with a momentous decision, and even moderate interests preferred that any pan-colonial actions be decided upon after discussion and judicious deliberation, not via letters between Committees of Correspondence. In his History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Hutchinson refers to a letter sent earlier in 1774 from Benjamin Franklin to the Massachusetts Assembly suggesting such a congress, and he was also aware that John Hancock was promoting the concept in letters and speeches. On May 15, 1774, Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougall wrote to Boston on behalf of the New York Committee of Correspondence in support of the boycott of British goods, so long as it might be “agreed upon by Committees from the Principal Towns on the Continent, to meet in a general Congress to be held here for that Purpose.” And on May 17, the Rhode Island Assembly voted to propose a Continental Congress for the purpose of designing an effective plan of response to the British legislation; less than a month later it met again to select delegates to such a meeting.

  In New York, the Sons of Liberty met in May with a delegation from the merchants, who feared being left out of any future meeting where serious measures might be adopted across the colonies. The result was the formation of a “Committee of Fifty-one,” balanced between radical and conservative interests. When that committee finally met to choose delegates to the convention during the summer, a decidedly moderate slate was chosen, leaving radical Sons such as Sears and McDougall out.

  By mid-June the Massachusetts Spy reported that “A Politico-Mercantile Congress seems now to be the voice of all the Colonies,” with numerous sites having been suggested. The paper suggested that New York, where Sears and McDougall had originally proposed that the meeting be held, was now graciously granting the aggrieved colony of Massachusetts the right to choose the time and place.

  In any case, on June 17, Adams convened a meeting of the Massachusetts Assembly and cleared the gallery for some serious work. When a loyalist observer gleaned Adams’s intentions, he hurried out of the chambers to inform the governor. Gage, infuriated, sent an emissary with an edict declaring the meeting illegal. Those assembled were to quit the chambers at once. When Gage’s minion arrived, however, he found the doors bolted, and no one answered his summons.

  While the emissary read Gage’s orders to the closed doors, Adams carried on his work inside, steadfastly guiding a momentous resolution through the chamber. There would indeed be a Continental Congress, to which all colonies would be urged to send a delegation, and it would take place in Philadelphia on September 1, 1774.

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  Congress of Sons

  When the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on September 5, there were fifty-six delegates present, representing every colony but that of Georgia. That colony’s assembly had formed a Committee of Correspondence early in January 1774 and for a time had engaged Benjamin Franklin as its agent in London. In June, radicals had gone so far as to erect a liberty pole outside Tondee’s Tavern in Savannah-Towne, “where gathered the Sons of Liberty” on July 24 and August 10. Still, outside its port city, the sparsely populated and conservative province (there were barely 50,000 residents, half of them slaves) traditionally provided little support for such a radical notion as independence. Though a few parishes voted to send delegates to Philadelphia, the lack of interest of most and the staunch opposition of the London-born governor, James Wright, determined that Georgia would not be represented in the Congress.

  For Samuel Adams, the journey to Philadelphia would be the first time in his life that the fifty-two-year-old activist had ventured outside the colony of Massachusetts. Though the Harvard-educated Adams had contemplated a career first as a clergyman and then as an attorney, he had inherited an interest in liberal politics from his father that had led him into work with the Boston Town Assembly from the mid-1740s, shortly after his graduation.

  Though it remains an open question as to whether Samuel Adams ever worked actively as a brewer (his father owned a malting house that produced one of the ingredients necessary for making beer, and Samuel was for a time a partner in that enterprise), he did work for a short period as an accountant and later as a not-so-assiduous tax collector for the town. With the help of a small inheritance from his father, his work for the assembly, and the willingness of his wife, Elizabeth, to work at menial jobs from time to time, Adams made do. But, as his biographers are agreed, money and appearances always took second place to his struggles against the British and on behalf of liberty. From time to time, friends, grateful for Adams’s ever-whispering pen, stepped in to help with more practical affairs. As one associate, the Boston businessman John Andrews, put it:

  The ultimate wish and desire of the high Government party is to get Samuel Adams out of the way, when they think they may accomplish every of their plans: but however some may despise him, he has certainly very many friends. For not long since some persons (their names unknown) sent and ask’d his permission to build him a new barn, the old one being decay’d, which was executed in a few days. A second sent to ask leave to repair his house, which was thoroughly effected soon.

  On the eve of Adams’
s departure for Philadelphia, others who were fearful that the activist’s indifferent appearance might belie his eloquence took certain steps:

  A third [friend] sent to beg the favor of him to call at a taylor’s shop and be measur’d for a suit of cloaths . . . which were finish’d and sent home for his acceptance. A fourth presented him with a new wig, a fifth with a new hat, a sixth with six pair of the best silk hose, a seventh with six pair of fine thread [stockings], a eighth with six pair shoes, and a ninth modestly enquir’d of him whether his finances want rather low than otherways. He reply’d it was true that was the case, but he was very indifferent about these matters . . . upon which the Gentlemen oblig’d him to accept of a purse containing about 15 or 20 Johannes. I mention this to show you how much he is esteem’d here. They value him for his good sense, great abilities, amazing fortitude, noble resolution, and undaunted courage: being firm and unmov’d at all the various reports that were propagated in regard to his being taken up and sent home, notwithstanding he had repeated letters from his friends, both in England as well as here, to keep out of the way.

  Adams was constitutionally unable to “keep out of the way,” however, and, according to a story told by his daughter Hannah, shortly before his travels turned down the offer of a sinecure from the newly appointed Governor Gage in return for simply “making peace with the King.” Though the offer was never put into writing, some observers say that had Adams agreed to put his pen down and keep his mouth shut, he might have looked forward to a payment of as much as £1,000 per year.