Book: Formation of the Union

A >> Albert Bushnell Hart >> Formation of the Union




[Sidenote: Effect of the discussion.]

The practical effect of Otis's speech has been much exaggerated. John
Adams, who heard and took notes on the argument, declared, years later,
that "American independence was then born," and that "Mr. Otis's oration
against Writs of Assistance breathed into this nation the breath of life."
The community was not conscious at the time that a new and startling
doctrine had been put forth, or that loyalty to England was involved. The
arguments drawn from the rights of man and the supremacy of the charters
were of a kind familiar to the colonists. The real novelty was the bold
application of these principles, the denial of the legality of a system
more than a century old.

[Sidenote: Enforcement.]

So far was the home government from accepting these doctrines that in 1763
the offensive Sugar Act was renewed. New import duties were laid, and more
stringent provisions made for enforcing the Acts of Trade; and the ground
was prepared for a permanent and irritating controversy, by commissioning
the naval officers stationed on the American coast as revenue officials,
with power to make seizures.


25. THE STAMP ACT (1763-1765).


[Sidenote: Plan for a stamp duty.]
[Sidenote: Questions of troops.]

The next step in colonial control met an unexpected and violent
resistance. In the winter of 1763-1764 Grenville, then English prime
minister, called together the agents of the colonies and informed them
that he proposed to lay a small tax upon the colonies, and that it would
take the form of a stamp duty, unless they suggested some other method.
Why should England tax the colonies? Because it had been determined to
place a permanent force of about ten thousand men in America. A few more
English garrisons would have been of great assistance in 1754; the Pontiac
outbreak of 1763 had been suppressed only by regular troops who happened
to be in the country; and in case of later wars the colonies were likely
to be attacked by England's enemies. On the other hand, the colonies had
asked for no troops, and desired none. They were satisfied with their own
halting and inefficient means of defence; they no longer had French
enemies in Canada, and they felt what seems an unreasonable fear that the
troops would be used to take away their liberty. From the beginning to the
end of the struggle it was never proposed that Americans should be taxed
for the support of the home government, or even for the full support of
the colonial army. It was supposed that a revenue of one hundred thousand
pounds would be raised, which would meet one-third of the necessary
expense.

[Sidenote: Stamp Act passed.]

Notwithstanding colonial objections to a standing army, garrisons would
doubtless have been received but for the accompanying proposition to tax.
On March 10, 1764, preliminary resolutions passed the House of Commons
looking towards the Stamp Act. There was no suggestion that the
proposition was illegal; the chief objection was summed up by Beckford, of
London, in a phrase: "As we are stout, I hope we shall be merciful."

The news produced instant excitement in the colonies. First was urged the
practical objection that the tax would draw from the country the little
specie which it contained. The leading argument was that taxation without
representation was illegal. The remonstrances, by an error of the agents
who had them in charge, were not presented until too late. Franklin and
others protested to the ministry, and declared the willingness of the
colonies to pay taxes assessed in a lump sum on each colony. Grenville
silenced them by asking in what way those lump sums should be apportioned.
After a short debate in Parliament the Act was passed by a vote of 205 to
49. Barré, one of the members who spoke against it, alluded to the
agitators in the colonies as "Sons of Liberty;" the phrase was taken up in
the colonies, and made a party war-cry. George the Third was at that
moment insane, and the Act was signed by a commission.

[Sidenote: Expectations of success.]

Resistance in the colonies was not expected. Franklin thought that the Act
would go into effect; even Otis said that it ought to be obeyed. It laid a
moderate stamp-duty on the papers necessary for legal and commercial
transactions. At the request of the ministry, the colonial agents
suggested as stamp collectors some of the most respected and eminent men
in each colony. Almost at the same time was passed an act somewhat
relaxing the Navigation Laws; but a Quartering Act was also passed, by
which the colonists were obliged, even in time of peace, to furnish the
troops who might be stationed among them with quarters and with certain
provisions.


26. THE STAMP ACT CONGRESS (1765.)


[Sidenote: Internal and external taxes.]

Issue was now joined on the question which eventually separated the
colonies from the mother-country. Parliament had asserted its right to lay
taxes on the colonists for imperial purposes. The colonies had up to this
time held governmental relations only with the Crown, from whom came their
charters. They had escaped taxation because they were poor, and because
hitherto they had not occasioned serious expense; but they had accepted
the small import duties. They found it hard to reconcile obedience to one
set of laws with resistance to the other; and they therefore insisted that
there was a distinction between "external taxation" and "internal
taxation," between duties levied at the ports and duties levied within the
colonies.

[Sidenote: Remonstrances.]

The moment the news reached America, opposition sprang up in many
different forms. The colonial legislatures preferred dignified
remonstrance. The Virginia Assembly reached a farther point in a set of
bold resolutions, passed May 29, 1765, under the influence of a speech by
Patrick Henry. They asserted "that the General Assembly of this colony
have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and
impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony;" and that the Stamp Act"
has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom."
On June 8, 1765, Massachusetts suggested another means of remonstrance, by
calling upon her sister colonies to send delegates to New York "to
consider of a general and united, dutiful, loyal, and humble
representation of their condition to his Majesty and to the Parliament."

[Sidenote: Riots.]
[Sidenote: Non-Importation.]

Meanwhile opposition had broken out in open violence. In August there were
riots in Boston; the house of Oliver, appointed as collector of the stamp
taxes, was attacked, and he next day resigned his office. Hutchinson was
acting governor of the colony: his mansion was sacked; and the manuscript
of his History of Massachusetts, still preserved, carries on its edges the
mud of the Boston streets into which it was thrown. The town of Boston
declared itself "particularly alarmed and astonished at the Act called the
Stamp Act, by which we apprehend a very grievous tax is to be laid upon
the colonies." In other colonies there were similar, though less violent,
scenes. Still another form of resistance was suggested by the
organizations called "Sons of Liberty," the members of which agreed to buy
no more British goods. When the time came for putting the act into force,
every person appointed as collector had resigned.

[Sidenote: Stamp Act Congress.]

These three means of resistance--protest, riots, and non-importation--were
powerfully supplemented by the congress which assembled at New York, Oct.
1765. It included some of the ablest men from nine colonies. Such men as
James Otis, Livingston of New York, Rutledge of South Carolina, and John
Dickinson of Pennsylvania, met, exchanged views, and promised co-
operation. It was the first unmistakable evidence that the colonies would
make common cause. After a session of two weeks the congress adjourned,
having drawn up petitions to the English government, and a "Declaration of
Rights and Grievances of the Colonists in America." In this document they
declared themselves entitled to the rights of other Englishmen. They
asserted, on the one hand, that they could not be represented in the
British House of Commons, and on the other that they could not be taxed by
a body in which they had no representation. They complained of the Stamp
Act, and no less of the amendments to the Acts of Trade, which, they said,
would "render them unable to purchase the manufactures of Great Britain."
In these memorials there is no threat of resistance, but the general
attitude of the colonies showed that it was unsafe to push the matter
farther.

[Sidenote: Repeal of the Stamp Act.]

Meanwhile the Grenville ministry had given place to another Whig ministry
under Rockingham, who felt no responsibility for the Stamp Act. Pitt took
the ground that "the government of Great Britain could not lay taxes on
the colonies." Benjamin Franklin was called before a committee, and urged
the withdrawal of the act. The king, who had now recovered his health,
gave it to be understood that he was for repeal. The repeal bill was
passed by a majority of more than two to one, and the crisis was avoided.

[Sidenote: Right of taxation asserted.]

To give up the whole principle seemed to the British government
impossible; the repeal was therefore accompanied by the so-called
Dependency Act. This set forth that the colonies are "subordinate unto and
dependent upon the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain, and
that Parliament hath, and of right ought to have, full power to make laws
and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and
people of America subjects to the Crown of Great Britain in all cases
whatsoever." Apparently matters had returned to their former course. The
gratitude of the colonies was loudly expressed; but they had learned the
effect of a united protest, they had learned how to act together, and they
were irritated by the continued assertion of the power of Parliament to
tax and otherwise to govern the colonies.


27. REVENUE ACTS (1767).


[Sidenote: Townshend's plans.]
[Sidenote: Quarrel with New York.]

The repeal of the Stamp Act removed the difficulty without removing the
cause. The year 1766 was marked in English politics by the virtual
retirement of Pitt from the government. His powerful opposition to
taxation of the colonies was thus removed, and Charles Townshend became
the leading spirit in the ministry. Jan. 26, 1767, he said in the House of
Commons: "I know a mode in which a revenue may be drawn from America
without offence.... England is undone if this taxation of America is given
up." And he pledged himself to find a revenue nearly sufficient to meet
the military expenses in America. At the moment that the question of
taxation was thus revived, the New York Assembly became involved in a
dispute with the home government by declining to furnish the necessary
supplies for the troops. An Act of Parliament was therefore passed
declaring the action of the New York legislature null,--a startling
assertion of a power of disallowance by Parliament.

[Sidenote: Enforcement.]

The three parts of the general scheme for controlling the colonies were
now all taken up again. For their action against the troops the New York
Assembly was suspended,--the first instance in which Parliament had
undertaken to destroy an effective part of the colonial government. For
the execution of the Navigation Acts a board of commissioners of customs
was established, with large powers. In June, 1767, a new Taxation Act was
introduced, and rapidly passed through Parliament. In order to avoid the
objections to "internal taxes," it laid import duties on glass, and white
lead, painters' colors, paper, and tea. The proceeds of the Act, estimated
at, £40,000, were to pay governors and judges in America. Writs of
Assistance were made legal. A few months afterwards,--December, 1767,--a
colonial department was created, headed by a secretary of state. The whole
machinery of an exasperating control was thus provided.

[Sidenote: Question of right of taxation.]

Issue was once more joined both in England and America on the
constitutional power of taxation. The great principle of English law that
taxation was not a right, but a gift of the persons taxed through their
representatives, was claimed also by the colonies. Opinions had repeatedly
been given by the law officers of the Crown that a colony could be taxed
only by its own representatives. The actual amount of money called for was
too small to burden them, but it was to be applied in such a way as to
make the governors and judges independent of the assemblies. The principle
of taxation, once admitted, might be carried farther. As an English
official of the time remarked: "The Stamp Act attacked colonial ideas by
sap; the Townshend scheme was attacking them by storm every day."


28. COLONIAL PROTESTS AND REPEAL (1767-1770).


[Sidenote: Colonial protest.]
[Sidenote: Massachusetts circular.]
[Sidenote: Coercive measures.]

This time the colonies avoided the error of disorderly or riotous
opposition. The leading men resolved to act together through protests by
the colonial legislatures and through non-importation agreements. Public
feeling ran high. In Pennsylvania John Dickinson in his "Letters of a
Farmer" pointed out that "English history affords examples of resistance
by force." Another non-importation scheme was suggested by Virginia, but
was on the whole unsuccessful. In February, 1768, Massachusetts sent out a
circular letter to the other colonies, inviting concerted protests, and
declaring that the new laws were unconstitutional. The protest was
moderate, its purpose legal; but the ministry attempted to destroy its
effect by three new repressive measures. The first of them, April, 1768,
directed the governors, upon any attempt to pass protesting resolutions,
to prorogue their assemblies. The second was the despatch of troops to
Boston: they arrived at the end of September, and remained until the
outbreak of the Revolution. The third coercive step was a proposition to
send American agitators to England for trial, under an obsolete statute of
Henry the Eighth.

[Sidenote: Effect of the tax.]

Meanwhile the duties had been levied. The result was the actual payment of
about sixteen thousand pounds; this sum was offset by expenses of
collection amounting to more than fifteen thousand pounds, and
extraordinary military expenditures of one hundred and seventy thousand
pounds. Once more the ministry found no financial advantage and great
practical difficulties in the way of colonial taxation. Once more they
determined to withdraw from an untenable position, and once more, under
the active influence of the king and his "friends," they resolved to
maintain the principle. In April, 1770, all the duties were repealed
except that upon tea. Either the ministry should have applied the
principle rigorously, so as to raise an adequate revenue, or they should
have given up the revenue and the principle together.


29. SPIRIT OF VIOLENCE IN THE COLONIES (1770-1773).


[Sidenote: Troops in Boston.]
[Sidenote: Collision with the mob.]

Repeal could not destroy the feeling of injury in the minds of the
colonists; and repeal did not withdraw the coercive acts nor the troops.
The garrison in Boston, sustained at the expense of the British treasury,
was almost as offensive to the colonists of Massachusetts as if they had
been taxed for its support. From the beginning the troops were looked upon
as an alien body, placed in the town to execute unpopular and even illegal
acts. There was constant friction between the officers and the town and
colonial governments, and between the populace and the troops. On the
night of March 5, 1770, an affray occurred between a mob and a squad of
soldiers. Both sides were abusive and threatening; finally the soldiers
under great provocation fired, and killed five men. The riot had no
political significance; it was caused by no invasion upon the rights of
Americans: but, in the inflamed condition of the public mind, it was
instantly taken up, and has gone down to history under the undeserved
title of the Boston Massacre. Next morning a town meeting unanimously
voted "that nothing can rationally be expected to restore the peace of the
town and prevent blood and carnage but the immediate removal of the
troops." The protest was effectual; the troops were sent to an island in
the harbor; on the other hand, the prosecution of the soldiers concerned
in the affray was allowed to slacken. For nearly two years the trouble
seemed dying down in Massachusetts.

[Sidenote: Samuel Adams.]
[Sidenote: Committee of Correspondence.]

That friendly relations between the colonies and the mother-country were
not re-established is due chiefly to Samuel Adams, a member of the
Massachusetts General Court from Boston. His strength lay in his
vehemence, his total inability to see more than one side of any question,
and still more in his subtle influence upon the Boston town meeting, upon
committees, and in private conclaves. He seems to have determined from the
beginning that independence might come, ought to come, and must come. In
November, 1772, he introduced into the Boston town meeting a modest
proposition that "a committee of correspondence be appointed ... to state
the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in particular as Men, as
Christians, and as Subjects;--and also request of each Town a free
communication of their Sentiments on this subject." The committee blew the
coals by an enumeration of rights and grievances; but its chief service
was its unseen but efficient work of correspondence, from town to town. A
few months later the colony entered into a similar scheme for
communication with the sister colonies. These committees of correspondence
made the Revolution possible. They disseminated arguments from province to
province: they had lists of those ripe for resistance; they sounded
legislatures; they prepared the organization which was necessary for the
final rising of 1774 and 1775.

[Sidenote: "Gaspee" burned.]
[Sidenote: Tea.]
[Sidenote: Hutchinson letters.]
[Sidenote: Boston Tea-party.]

Shortly before the creation of this committee, an act of violence in Rhode
Island showed the hostility to the enforcement of the Acts of Trade. The
"Gaspee," a royal vessel of war, had interfered legally and illegally with
the smuggling trade. On June 9, 1772, while in pursuit a vessel, she ran
aground. That night the ship was attacked by armed men, who captured and
burned her. The colonial authorities were indifferent: the perpetrators
were not tried; they were not prosecuted; they were not even arrested. On
Dec. 16, 1773, a similar act of violence marked the opposition of the
colonies to the remnant of the Townshend taxation acts. The tea duty had
been purposely reduced, till the price of tea was lower than in England.
Soon after the appointment of the Committees of Correspondence public
sentiment in Massachusetts was again aroused by the publication of letters
written by Hutchinson, then governor of Massachusetts, to a private
correspondent in England. The letters were such as any governor
representing the royal authority might have written. "I wish," said
Hutchinson, "the good of the colony when I wish to see some fresh
restraint of liberty rather than the connection with the parent state
should be broken." The assembly petitioned for the removal of Hutchinson,
and this unfortunate quarrel was one of the causes of a decisive step, the
Boston Tea-party. An effort was made to import a quantity of tea, not for
the sake of the tax, but in order to relieve the East India Company from
financial difficulties. On December 16, the three tea ships in the harbor
were boarded by a body of men in Indian garb, and three hundred and forty-
two chests of tea were emptied into the sea. Next morning the shoes of at
least one reputable citizen of Massachusetts were found by his family
unaccountably full of tea. In other parts of the country, as at Edenton in
North Carolina, and at Charleston in South Carolina, there was similar
violence.


30. COERCIVE ACTS OF 1774.


[Sidenote: Public feeling in England.]

The British government had taken a false step by its legislation of 1770,
but the colonies had now put themselves in the wrong by these repeated
acts of violence. There seemed left but two alternatives,--to withdraw the
Tea Act, and thus to remove the plea that Parliament was taxing without
representation; or to continue the execution of the Revenue Act firmly,
but by the usual course of law. It was not in the temper of the English
people, and still less like the king, to withdraw offensive acts in the
face of such daring resistance. The failure to secure the prosecution of
the destroyers of the "Gaspee" caused the British government to distrust
American courts as well as American juries. One political writer, Dean
Tucker, declared that the American colonies in their defiant state had
ceased to be of advantage to England, and that they had better be allowed
quietly to separate. Pitt denied the right to tax, but declared that if
the colonies meant to separate, he would be the first to enforce the
authority of the mother-country.

[Sidenote: Coercive statutes.]
[Sidenote: Quebec Act.]

Neither orderly enforcement, conciliation, nor peaceful separation was the
policy selected. England committed the fatal and irremediable mistake of
passing illegal statutes as a punishment for the illegal action of the
colonists. Five bills were introduced and hastily pushed through
Parliament. The first was meant as a punishment for the Tea-party. It
enacted that no further commerce was to be permitted with the port of
Boston till that town should make its submission. Burke objected to a bill
"which punishes the innocent with the guilty, and condemns without the
possibility of defence." The second act was intended to punish the whole
commonwealth of Massachusetts, by declaring void certain provisions of the
charter granted by William III. in 1692. Of all the grievances which led
to the Revolution this was the most serious, for it set up the doctrine
that charters proceeding from the Crown could be altered by statute.
Thenceforward Parliament was to be omnipotent in colonial matters. The
third act directed that "Persons questioned for any Acts in Execution of
the Law" should be sent to England for trial. It was not intended to apply
to persons guilty of acts of violence, but to officers or soldiers who, in
resisting riots, might have made themselves amenable to the civil law. The
fourth act was a new measure providing for the quartering of soldiers upon
the inhabitants, and was intended to facilitate the establishment of a
temporary military government in Massachusetts. The fifth act had no
direct reference to Massachusetts, but was later seized upon as one of the
grievances which justified the Revolution. This was the Quebec Act,
providing for the government of the region ceded by France in 1763. It
gave to the French settlers the right to have their disputes decided under
the principles of the old French civil law; it guaranteed them the right
of exercising their own religion; and it annexed to Quebec the whole
territory between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes. The
purpose of this act was undoubtedly to remove the danger of disaffection
or insurrection in Canada, and at the same time to extinguish all claims
of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia to the region west of
Pennsylvania.


31. THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS (1774).


[Sidenote: Gage's quarrel with Massachusetts.]

The news of this series of coercive measures was hardly received in
Massachusetts before General Gage appeared, bearing a commission to act as
governor of the province; and in a few weeks the Port Bill and the
modifications of the charter were put in force. If the governor supposed
that Boston stood alone, he was quickly undeceived. From the other towns
and from other colonies came supplies of food and sympathetic resolutions.
On June 17th, under the adroit management of Samuel Adams, the General
Court passed a resolution proposing a colonial congress, to begin
September 1st at Philadelphia. While the resolutions were going through,
the governor's messenger in vain knocked at the locked door, to
communicate a proclamation dissolving the assembly. The place of that body
was for a time taken by the Committee of Correspondence, in which Samuel
Adams was the leading spirit, and by local meetings and conventions. In
August, Gage came to an open breach with the people. In accordance with
the Charter Act, he proceeded to appoint the so-called "mandamus"
councillors. An irregularly elected Provincial Congress declared that it
stood by the charter of 1692, under which the councillors were elected by
the General Court. The first effect of the coercive acts was, therefore,
to show that the people of Massachusetts stood together.

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