Colonial America
Page 75
Some historians have tended to see the disputes between the central and local authorities as evidence that the colonial political system could not have survived in the long run. They argue that the imperial system was too inflexible, saddling the colonies with incompetent officials, offering insufficient reward to native-born white North Americans, and containing fundamental constitutional inconsistencies.7
Certainly the Crown sent too many ineffective place-seekers, most of whom were total strangers to North America. But colonial opposition to them did not constitute disloyalty to the Crown, only a protest against its representatives. Many of these disputes in any case were motivated by local men's desire for office. Once that objective had been attained, those who had vociferously condemned a particular measure or official often adopted what they had so recently denounced. The quality of governors also improved as the century progressed, one reason being the stricter guidelines drawn up by the Board of Trade. Though some infractions of these rules did take place, the worst excesses of Cornbury and his predecessors were not to be repeated. When governors fell foul of the population it was because of their lack of judgment, not because of peculation or extortion. In addition the Crown sent out many good governors, notably the veteran Nicholson and his successor, Spotswood, in Virginia, and the able Robert Hunter of New York. Even appointees in the era of the duke of Newcastle from 1725 to 1760 were not as incompetent as has usually been suggested. Where able men were appointed, comparative harmony was the result, as Shirley demonstrated in Massachusetts.8
Another popular explanation of the conflict between the Crown and the assemblies is that the Board of Trade and Privy Council saddled the governors with rigid instructions which prevented them from dealing with each situation as it arose. But most of the hundred-odd articles in these instructions were designed to introduce the incumbent to the routine of provincial administration, while other provisions merely asserted the need for a godly atmosphere. The most controversial directives were those already outlined: to prevent the assemblies from accumulating too many privileges and to ensure that mercantilist policies were observed. In any case, under emergency conditions many governors ignored the strict letter of their instructions and took contrary actions which the Board of Trade and Privy Council retrospectively had to accept. No governor who had shown himself adept was removed for being flexible.
Ironically, it was often locally born governors like Lewis Morris who were most inflexible, not having the confidence of appointees from Britain as to how far they could ignore their instructions. For example, William Burnet accepted a paper money bill from the New Jersey assembly in 1723, even without a suspending clause, in return for a better salary. Morris felt he had no such latitude and suffered prolonged confrontation as his reward.
A further criticism of the colonial system of government has been that it offered too little in the way of rewards for the local elites. No provincials were raised to the peerage, and only two were rewarded with baronetcies: William Phips for his capture of Port Royal; and William Pepperell for the capture of Louisburg in 1745. Even the imperious Joseph Dudley failed to secure such an honor, while William Byrd II was snubbed on two counts. Not only did he not receive the governorship of Virginia; he also failed to secure a bride from the ranks of the British aristocracy which would have advanced his political influence and self-esteem. Such rebuffs may have fueled resentment against the imperial connection, since many visiting provincials often suffered an identity crisis in Britain, not least when disparaging comments were made about their country being a haven for convicts and the poor.9
Many provincials, though, were appointed to the most senior administrative positions of governor or lieutenant governor. In Massachusetts, local men held the governorship for 35 out of the 50 years following the Glorious Revolution, and almost all the men appointed in Rhode Island and Connecticut were colonials, though New England was perhaps the exception. Appointees in Virginia, New York, and South Carolina invariably came from the mother country.
Nevertheless, colonial elites everywhere could look to places on the council and positions in the judiciary. The superior courts were staffed by local men, even though most had no formal legal training. The same was true of the councils, where in addition to executive, legislative, and judicial responsibilities, membership allowed participation in the special perquisite of granting lands. A large number of positions were also available in the county courts, town meetings, and provincial militias, creating in the local inhabitants a strong sense of running their own affairs. The only areas of government not staffed exclusively by colonials were the customs, vice-admiralty judgeships, and a few positions (like colony secretary) for which British-born governors liked to bring over their own men. Until the 1760s thwarted ambition does not appear to have been a serious political problem.
A final reason for asserting that the imperial system was doomed has been that the Crown and the assemblies had incompatible views about their constitutional relationship. The constitutional settlement which followed the Glorious Revolution in Britain placed most actual authority with the King-in-Parliament. Essentially this meant the House of Lords and House of Commons possessed all lawmaking power, though the Crown could still influence Parliament through its patronage towards individual members of Parliament. Colonial political leaders in British North America, however, understood their own legislatures to possess lawmaking power over local colonial affairs. They also believed it was their local legislatures, not Parliament, that protected their liberties against monarchical overreaching. Parliament (they believed) had no place in their political relationship, other than to regulate trade within the empire as it had done with the Navigation Acts. Nothing in this understanding of their constitution prepared them for Parliament's attempts to assert direct legislative authority over the colonies after 1763.
Ironically the colonists' different understanding of their constitutional relationship with the king may have made the colonists more enthusiastic about the British monarchy than their counterparts in the British Isles. One historian has recently argued that the colonists shared a royalist political culture, bound together by their passionate devotion to a purportedly benevolent Protestant king, at a time when British subjects at home had become more devoted to an abstract concept of the nation. The strength of patriarchal family structures in the colonies may have helped to reinforce expectations among ordinary white colonists that a benevolent political patriarch would protect their interests and promote their welfare.10
Thus conflicts between colonial assemblies and appointed governors may have reflected the divergent opinions and interests of their members, rather than a systemic failure of the colonial political system. The colonial intention was not to dismantle or deny the legitimacy of royal government. The assemblies believed that they were merely performing their proper role in watching over the executive. In any case, greater activity by the assemblies did not necessarily mean a decline in the powers of the Crown. And although governors occasionally voiced the need for parliamentary intervention, no one talked of radical restructuring or ultimate separation from Britain, even in Massachusetts. Such talk occurred only after 1760.
4 Parties and Factions in the Age of Walpole
One reason for not seeing the period 1715–60 solely in terms of a developing conflict between the Crown and the assemblies is that both intercolonial and intracolonial disputes were equally prevalent.
Most intercolonial conflict occurred over boundaries. Imprecise wording and lack of proper surveys prior to the drafting of the seventeenth-century charters meant that every colony had some dispute with its neighbors. Connecticut and Rhode Island remained in disagreement over their boundary until 1728. Massachusetts and New Hampshire were in contention during the 1730s. New Hampshire and New York had to negotiate in the 1740s, while from 1748 onwards there were disturbances on the Massachusetts border with New York when squatters invaded the Livingston manor. Pennsylvania and Maryland had a long-running dispute o
ver their border, while Connecticut claimed the northeast corner of Pennsylvania by virtue of its 1664 charter.
Political strife in this period, however, was actually most prevalent between rival groups inside each colony. Disputes were carried on under various guises, for at that time political parties were not considered legitimate. In a just polity where magistrates did their duty, subjects were expected to be loyal. Factiousness was equated with self-interest. Accordingly, all those who were politically active argued that they were acting for the common good. This was the key to legitimacy in government or opposition.
The nature of the struggles varied from colony to colony. In some they revolved around commerce and agriculture. In others they were the result of religious and ethnic disagreements. Elsewhere the conflicts can be explained in terms of tidewater versus piedmont. Often it was a mixture of all three.
In Massachusetts the conflict was perhaps one of the clearest cases of commerce versus country. In Boston a nucleus of the wealthier classes, especially those involved in trade with Britain, like the Dudley and Hutchinson families, generally supported the executive. At times they and their allies in the other seaports and market-oriented constituencies were sufficiently powerful to dominate the assembly, where Thomas Hutchinson was speaker for two years. Most of the country towns, jealous of such commercial wealth, opposed them.
The conduct of politics in Massachusetts was influenced by another ingredient. As one historian has shown, a number of politicians in the country party began their careers by shaking the political tree as the prelude to climbing it. Among them were men like James Otis, Sr., Robert Hale, and John Choate. All were effectively professional politicians who used their skills to manage the untutored backcountry members in the Massachusetts assembly. Their behavior did not result in constant battle with the Crown or commercial interests, since an accommodation was their ultimate objective. Even Elisha Cooke, Jr., the most vitriolic member of the country party, indicated a willingness to support Governor Belcher in the 1730s.11
In Connecticut political tensions tended to be sectional, with the older towns of the Connecticut River Valley and New Haven arrayed against the more recent eastern settlements, like the burgeoning commercial centers of Norwich and New London. The older towns had been formed by religious covenants which still permeated their political culture. The newer towns, in contrast, had been founded as commercial ventures and reflected their more materialistic origins. They demanded cheap credit through the issue of paper currency, which appalled leaders from the older towns.
In New York the political lines were not always clear. Locals called the divisions “court” and “country,” while later commentators preferred the terms “Whig” and “Tory,” but “town” and “country” would often be more appropriate, since New York City, with its strong commercial interests, often found itself ranged against the farming communities of the Hudson River and Long Island. Divisions sometimes also took on a religious complexion, especially between the Anglicans and Presbyterians, while ethnicity was a third factor with such a mixture of English, Dutch, Scottish, Huguenot, and German inhabitants.
New York City was generally dominated by the large Anglo-Dutch families, whose interests were increasingly commercial rather than landed and who also tended to be Anglican. Their leaders were Adolphe Philipse and later James DeLancey. The country party was led by Lewis Morris and Philip Livingston. The latter was a Presbyterian. Although large landowners themselves, Morris and Livingston cultivated the support of the “middling sort” of small farming communities of the Hudson, including the Dutch, together with the growing artisan class in New York City. The main arguments after 1710 centered on the question of taxation: should the provincial government be financed by quitrents or customs? Quitrents would bear more heavily on the small farms: customs burdens would fall chiefly on the commerce of New York. Defense was another intermittent issue. The tidewater area around the city believed that the frontier counties should look after themselves.
During Hunter's governorship, the Morris group dominated, since Hunter wanted to reduce the power of the elite. Governor Burnet initially continued this alliance when he arrived in 1720, but as support for the Philipse faction increased in the assembly, Burnet began to look to them. This was the situation which greeted Governor William Cosby on his arrival in 1731. Cosby's injudicious prosecution of the newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger for seditious libel quickly discredited his political allies. Accordingly, in the mid-1730s the Morris faction once more achieved ascendancy, only to find the situation reversed again in the 1750s when the DeLanceys came back into power. Although both sides claimed to be representing the people, and cultivated their votes at election time, none of this maneuvering involved much principle, for as Philip Livingston confessed during the Cosby episode, “We change Sides as Serves our Interest best not the Country's.”
New Jersey was similarly riven by sectionalism, religious antagonism, and differing economic interests. Early in its history it also had a problem with absentee landowners, since many proprietors preferred to be domiciled in the relative comfort of New York or Philadelphia rather than in the wilds of East or West New Jersey.
However, with the governorship of Robert Hunter, most took up residence in the province to provide an effective governing elite, helping to alleviate the divisions between the east and the west. But most important was the development of tolerance between the Anglicans and Quakers, who dominated the upper and lower houses of the general assembly even though they made up only one-quarter of the population. They were helped in their electoral dominance by the inability of the Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, and Baptists to work together or to vote in sufficient numbers.12
Several other factors helped the development of a more cooperative spirit. One was the need for unity to combat the dominance of New York and Philadelphia. Another was that New Jersey fortunately had no exposed frontier to defend. Finally, all the contending parties agreed to keep government to a minimum, thus avoiding contentious issues that bedeviled other provincial governments.
New Jersey's political harmony broke down in the 1740s when doubts arose over the validity of various land titles. Since obtaining their original grant in 1664, the Elizabeth and Newark associates13 had continued issuing patents well beyond the original area, following additional acquisitions from the Indians, thus causing conflict with the proprietary titles purchased from Berkeley and Carteret. In 1745 the East Jersey proprietors decided to challenge the activities of the Elizabeth and Newark associates in the courts, provoking numerous evictions and riots, during which the inmates of several jails were released. The struggle was then transferred to the council and the assembly. The council, representing the large landowners, demanded a draconian public order act to intimidate the rioters into accepting new proprietary patents requiring the payment of quitrents. The assembly, representing the smaller farmers and property-owners, preferred conciliation, seeing the disturbances as essentially a conflict between two sets of landowners. Eventually the assembly got its way. An amnesty was granted; and tempers cooled when many of the small farmers, who had been unaware of the legal pitfalls of purchasing land in New Jersey, finally had their titles confirmed.
We have already seen that Pennsylvania's politics were dominated by the conflict between the proprietary family and the Quakers. Here too there was an element of town versus country. The wealthy commercial elements in Philadelphia were frequently in conflict with the small Quaker farming communities in Bucks and Chester counties. From the 1720s onwards the demographic balance of Pennsylvania began to change following the influx of large numbers of Germans and Scots-Irish. Until the 1750s these newcomers were too remote or inexperienced to participate regularly in the political process. To the extent that they had political representation at all, they generally supported the Quakers because of the latter's opposition to the attempts of the Penn family to raise the price of land. After 1755 these settlers broke from the Quakers over the issue of front
ier defense, and after 1760, they were to undermine both the proprietary and Quaker factions.
In the South the factional fighting was generally less pronounced. A principal reason was that the presence of large numbers of slaves made members of the planter elite readier both to cooperate with one another and to listen to the white small farmers. Their alliance helped to prevent any rebellion by the slaves. The result was a tacit political consensus, which in Virginia led to a mere one-third of constituencies being contested after 1728. This rapprochement was briefly threatened in 1735 over the Tobacco Inspection Act, which many small farmers believed would exclude their produce from the market. Otherwise this harmony was marred only by the occasional dispute between the council and the assembly. The council was dominated by older members of the elite, who sought to protect their interests from attack by the younger generation in the house. Another cause of occasional discord was competing economic interests, such as those between the Ohio and Loyal Land companies in Virginia.14
The one exception to consensus politics was North Carolina, where the number of enslaved African Americans was significantly smaller. The main conflict here was between the northern and southern parts of the province. The northern counties around Albemarle Sound were settled mainly by people from Virginia who, as in their former colony, produced tobacco. The southern area around Cape Fear had been populated largely by people from South Carolina, who cultivated rice and made pitch and tar for the navy. Until the 1730s the northern counties dominated the legislature. But as the Cape Fear region expanded, it began to demand more representation and the removal of the provincial capital from Edenton to New Bern. These demands were effectively realized in 1734 when Governor Gabriel Johnston, a planter from the Cape Fear region, took office. The northern counties responded by refusing to pay their taxes and seceding from the assembly. Eventually, in 1754 a new governor, Arthur Dobbs, secured a compromise involving a more equitable distribution of seats, though a permanent site for the capital still had to be decided. One factor bringing the two regions closer was the arrival of the Scots-Irish, Germans, and other groups in the piedmont area, who posed a challenge to both north and south.