“On the Conduct of the Comittee of Correspondence”

When John Andrews complained to his out-of-town relative about the Solemn League and Covenant, he didn’t know what he was talking about. And that was part of his complaint.

The Boston committee of correspondence sent its draft non-consumption agreement to all towns in Massachusetts and to allies outside of the colony on 8 June. But it didn’t make those documents public within Boston.

Andrews later wrote:

it was not known to be in being in this town (but by the few who promoted it) till near a month after it had been circulated through the country: in which time it went through whole towns with the greatest avidity, every adult of both sexes putting their names to it, saving a very few.

It was sent out in printed copies by the Clerk to the Committee. W[illiam]. Cooper, who accompanied it with a letter intimating that the measure was in general adopted here, whereas upon enquiry I can’t find that a single person in the town has signed it—and the only excuse they now make for so absurd a piece of conduct is, that it originated altogether from the country, without any of their advice or interposition; thinking so palpable a falsehood will remove the just prejudices of the more rational and judicious people among us.

By the time Andrews composed that letter, Boston’s Loyalist-leaning newspapers had published the text of the Solemn League and Covenant. But, as I concluded back here, that 23 June publication reflected the Worcester version. The Boston committee would thus have been accurate to say “it originated…from the country.”

“Altogether” would have been misleading to say since most of the Worcester text echoed Boston’s. But I rather suspect that Andrews inserted that adverb. He tended to exaggerate details, such as that it took “near a month” for the non-consumption agreement to appear in Boston rather than fifteen days.

Still, Andrews was far from alone in his anger at the committee of correspondence. On 17–18 June, as I recounted back here, Boston had a town meeting to hash out the situation. Voters ended up endorsing the committee, but that was before people had read its work.

A week later, everyone in Boston had been able to see the Solemn League and Covenant (Worcester edition) and the letter Cooper had sent. The Loyalists and merchants demanded another session of the ongoing town meeting on the morning of Monday, 27 June.

As described back here, that meeting brought in so many people it moved to Old South.

The complaints led to a motion “that some Censure be now passed By the Town on the Conduct of the Comittee of Correspondence; and that said Committee be annihilated.” Some leading politicians and traders spoke for and against that proposal.

In fact, the discussion went on for so long that the day grew “dark” (in late June!). And still the proponents of the motion said “they had farther to offer.” Cooper as town clerk put on record that those men had been “patiently heard.” The meeting voted to adjourn for the day and pick up their discussion on Tuesday at 10:00 A.M.

TOMORROW: The final vote.

“Not a topsail vessel to be seen”

Dissecting the multiple texts of the Solemn League and Covenant boycott and following the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman’s uncomfortable wriggling around that issue in Westboro pulled me past the debate over that document in Boston.

So I’m going back to mid-June 1774. Many of Boston’s merchants thought the top priority should be finding a way to lift the Port Bill, even if that meant (as George Erving and John Amory proposed) raising money privately to pay the cost of the tea destroyed in December.

The town’s political leaders, on the other hand, felt that standing up to Parliament’s oppressive laws was more important than regaining some expedient advantages in business.

The merchant John Andrews, who normally supported the Whigs (albeit at an ironic distance), joined their opponents on this issue. He saw the town’s economic situation as dire, as he wrote in a 12 June letter to a relative in Philadelphia:

Our wharfs are intirely deserted; not a topsail vessel to be seen either there or in the harbour, save the ships of war and transport, the latter of which land their passengers in this town tomorrow.

Four regiments are already arriv’d, and four more are expected. How they are to be disposed of, can’t say. Its gave out, that if ye. General Court don’t provide barracks for ’em, they are to be quarter’d on ye. inhabitants in ye. fall: if so, am determin’d not to stay in it.

Only five days after Andrews wrote, Gen. Thomas Gage dissolved the Massachusetts General Court, as recounted here. That legislature never had a chance to provide quarters for the troops in Boston—or to refuse to.

Nonetheless, those soldiers were never housed in private homes, nor did Gage invoke the revised Quartering Act to put them into “uninhabited buildings” and taverns. Instead, the royal government built barracks and rented buildings from willing landlords, including warehouses empty because of the lack of trade.

Andrews still thought royal officials were being too strict:

The executors of the [Boston Port] Act seem to strain points beyond what was ever intended, for they make all ye. vessels, both with grain and wood, entirely unload at Marblehead before they’ll permit ’em to come in here, which conduct, in regard to ye. article of wood has already greatly enhanced the price, and the masters say they won’t come at all, if they are to be always put to such trouble, as they are oblig’d to hire another vessel to unload into, and then to return it back again, as they have no wharves to admit of their landing it on.

Nor will they suffer any article of merchandize to be brought or carry’d over Charles river ferry, that we are oblig’d to pay for 28 miles land carriage to get our goods from Marblehead or Salem. Could fill up a number of sheets to enumerate all our difficulties.

Nonetheless, at this time Andrews saved his worst criticism for Boston’s zealous Whigs, “those who have govern’d the town for years past and were in a great measure the authors of all our evils, by their injudicious conduct.” Now those men were supposedly threatening to finish off the town’s trade with the Solemn League and Covenant.

TOMORROW: Back to town meeting.

(The picture above, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society, is one version of Christian Remick’s painting of the Crown fleet in Boston harbor as seen from Long Wharf in 1768.)

“Instead of the Agreement which the people have signed”

By the first week of July 1774, people in Westboro had started to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, promising not only not to buy goods from Britain but not to do business with anyone who did.

The town’s minister, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, had shown that he didn’t think that was a good idea. He wasn’t coming out and condemning this latest boycott, either, though. He just wanted to avoid controversy.

Supporters of the non-consumption movement kept up pressure on Parkman, presumably because if he came out on their side it would be even easier to sign up everyone else in town. Members of Westboro’s committee of correspondence visited Parkman again on 7 July, as he recorded in his diary:

Messrs. Daniel Hardy, Edwards Whipple etc. here. The former is disturbed that I would not so much as read, at the late Town-Meeting, what their Committee had prepared to be signed. I gave him some Reason for my refusing: namely that I was aware that if I heard it, I must either approve or condemn it — but do which I will, I must of necessity be blamed.

If I approved of their Draught, I must have exposed my Self to the resentments of Authority which I must teach all Men to avoid: for I must teach and injoin that “every soul be subject to the higher powers” — “to obey Magistrates” — as Rom. 13.1 and Tit. 3.1. If I Should dislike it, I was aware that they would not be easily turned aside notwithstanding from what they had done. I was not o’ mind to render my Self Obnoxious either way.

Soon Parkman received word from his son that “at Boston and other Towns, they did not conform to the Governors late proclamation etc.” Gov. Thomas Gage’s threats were having little effect.

Rather than openly oppose the boycott, some people suggested that communities shouldn’t commit to any action until they heard what the upcoming Continental Congress recommended. But that body wouldn’t meet for another two months. Some towns instead added clauses to their Solemn League and Covenant votes saying that they could revisit the details based on that congress’s resolves.

Parkman continued to try his own delaying tactics on 18 July:

The Town Met again on the Article of Signing the Engagement to break off the Commercial Dealings with Great Britain. They Send their Committee to Me to let me see what they have drawn up; and if I pleased in Order to my Signing it. I sent my Regards to the Town, with my Request, that it might be suffered in my Hands a little while for my Review, and I will make them Some Return before or at their next Meeting.

Nine days later, Dr. James Hawes of the town committee and his wife visited the minister in the afternoon. Avoiding another political sore spot, Parkman offered chocolate instead of tea. Hawes left a copy of Westboro’s agreement.

The next day, Parkman wrote:

Transcribed the Towns Agreement for my own use. I cannot, as it is, like it: It is ill draughted.

Ah, there was the problem! The prose. (Not.)

On 1 August, the minister once again recorded a gathering “on the Affair of Subscribing the Agreement” that didn’t make it onto the official record of town meetings. His own son Breck “found it necessary to subscribe,” he wrote.

By this point Parkman had come up with his own form of the pledge (which I don’t think survives). But the men of Westboro no longer cared about what their minister thought. “I went to the Meeting House with a paper fit to be subscribed and read it to a Number of persons,” he wrote; “but the Town were busy and did not call for it.”

At that same meeting, Westboro agreed to help pay for the Massachusetts delegates’ expenses going to Philadelphia; that money was being collected outside the province’s regular taxation process to avoid the governor’s veto. Ministers were usually exempt from taxation, but Parkman wrote: “I sent my Quota thereto.” He was willing to avoid this extralegal equivalent of tax to avoid controversy. (This was also the day Calvin Piper got badly hurt falling from a horse.)

Finally Parkman recognized he wouldn’t convince anyone but himself about the boycott. On 4 August he wrote:

N.B. Instead of the Agreement which the people have signed, I have drawn up what I think may be more Safe for me, if I shall be obliged to Sign any thing.

The town had yet another unrecorded meeting “upon some of their Liberty Affairs” on 8 August. Four days later, Parkman stated that he had received an issue of the Boston Gazette with news of the Massachusetts Government Act.

For years the province’s Whigs had been warning people that there was a conspiracy to take away people’s legal rights. This new law curbed town meetings, eliminated the elected Council, increased the royal governor’s appointive powers, and limited jury pools. The radicals’ dire warnings, which moderates like Parkman had thought overblown, appeared to be coming true. In his diary he wrote: “May God Sanctifie to us this heavy stroke! and help us rightly to improve such privilege and Libertys as remain!”

“I prayed they would not be hasty in signing”

Gen. Thomas Gage’s 30 June 1774 proclamation against the Solemn League and Covenant boycott reached the town of Westboro on 2 July.

The Rev. Ebenezer Parkman wrote in his diary: “N.B. Governor Gage has issued out a Proclamation against Combinations—Assemblys for signing a solemn League and Covenant etc.”

By that point, the townspeople had been debating the call for a strict non-consumption pact for two weeks. They were looking at both the Boston and Worcester versions. Their new committee of correspondence had already spoken with Parkman, as well as hearing from the Rev. Nathan Stone of Southboro.

So what effect did the governor’s royal proclamation have? It certainly slowed down one important person in town, but he was already leery of anything that might be controversial. That person was the Rev. Mr. Parkman himself.

On 4 July he wrote about a meeting never entered into the official town record:

Town Meet on the Affair of signing some Draught, for the public Relief. Old Mr. Whitney and Capt. Jonas Brigham are sent to me to desire me to go and assist ‘em, by prayer and advice. Went and prayed.

After prayer the Moderator (Mr. Daniel Forbes) requested me to communicate to them my Thoughts, if I had prepared something etc. I told him I had made no formal Draught: but read the Introduction and some other parts of my Remarks on the Covenant from Boston. Also what I wrote at Bottom of the Letter signed William Cooper.

Sundry persons urged my tarrying and advising them with respect to what their own Committee had drawn up, but I answered that I did not care to meddle with it; for I conceived it was not safe for me to do it, Safe either for me or for them, especially by reason of the Governors Proclamation. I craved the Liberty to retire; not but that I was heartily ready and willing to improve my small Abilitys to my utmost in their service.

It was asked me whether I would read their paper if it were Sent Me. I did not refuse to do that in [onelay?] for them and I said I had no desire or Intention to offend any one of them all, not the least; but intreated, and challenged the Liberty of Briton and a New Englandman: and I prayed they would not be hasty in signing every thing; I could not advise to signing any Thing Seeing there was no immediate Necessity; Boston itself had not and their meeting was adjourned to the 19th.

I conceived they would know better how to conduct if they waited a while, and had better perhaps till after the proposed Congress. I observed that there was not such an Alternative as was mentioned in the Covenant, viz. of Suffering Blood-shed or slavery, unless we would withdraw Commerce with Great Britain; for by the News from Newport it appeared that their Messengers to the Congress would propose a general Address and Supplication to the King from all the Colonys jointly.

Before I retired I openly declared, for the Ease and satisfaction of all their minds, that I had signed no paper of Address or Recommendation of the late Governor and that I could not but take it ill that numbers of persons had been ready to take up a Reproach against their Neighbour.

When I retired, they, as I understood went on to ripen for signing, and that many did sign.

Despite Parkman’s clear reluctance, men at that (unofficial) gathering joined the boycott. Two days later, the minister continued to fret: “all Conversations are upon the Governors Proclamation prohibiting Combinations and Covenants against Great Britain.” But, like Gage, he had lost his sway over his parishioners. Now he was trying to preserve his standing.

TOMORROW: Holding out to the last.

(The picture above shows the Jonah Warren House in Westboro, the oldest part estimated to have been built in the 1720s.)

“An unwarrantable, hostile, and traiterous Combination”

As I’ve been recounting, in June 1774 leaders of the Massachusetts General Court were maneuvering to send delegates to the Continental Congress before Gov. Thomas Gage could learn of their plan and dissolve the assembly.

The Boston town meeting was working through a dispute with a group of influential citizens, mostly merchants, who thought its committee of correspondence was out of control.

That committee had promoted a sweeping boycott of British goods and any shopkeepers who continued to sell such goods, which it called a Solemn League and Covenant. The Worcester committee of correspondence sent out a revised proposal that got more traction in the countryside.

Then Gov. Gage weighed in. On 29 June, from his office in Salem, he issued “A PROCLAMATION For discouraging certain illegal Combinations”:

Whereas certain Persons, calling themselves a Committee of Correspondence for the Town of Boston, have lately presumed to make, or cause to be made, a certain unlawful Instrument, purporting to be A Solemn League and Covenant, intended to be signed by the Inhabitants of this Province; whereby they are most solemnly to covenant and engage, to suspend all commercial Intercourse with the Island of Great Britain, until certain Acts of the British Parliament shall be repealed:

And whereas printed Copies of the said unlawful Instrument have been transmitted, by the aforesaid Committee of Correspondence, so called, to the several Towns in this Province, accompanied with a scandalous, traiterous, and seditious Letter, calculated to inflame the Minds of the People, to disturb them with ill-grounded Fears and Jealousies, and to excite them to enter into an unwarrantable, hostile, and traiterous Combination, to distress the British Nation by interrupting, obstructing, and destroying her Trade with the Colonies, contrary to their Allegiance due to the King; and to the Form and Effect of divers Statutes made for securing, encouraging, protecting, and regulating the said Trade; and destructive of the lawful Authority of the British Parliament, and of the Peace, good Order, and Safety of the Community:

And whereas the Inhabitants of this Province, not duly considering the high Criminality, and dangerous Consequences to themselves of such alarming and unprecedented Combinations, may incautiously be tempted to join in the aforesaid unlawful League and Covenant, and thereby expose themselves to the fatal Consequences of being considered as the declared and open enemies of the King, Parliament, and Kingdom of Great Britain:—

In observance therefore of my duty to the King; in Tenderness to the Inhabitants of this Province; and to the End that none who may hereafter engage in such dangerous Combinations, may plead, in Excuse of their Conduct, that they were ignorant of the Crime in which they were involving themselves; I have thought fit to issue this Proclamation, hereby earnestly cautioning all Persons whatsoever within this Province against signing the aforesaid, or a similar Covenant, or in any Manner entering into, or being concerned in such unlawful, hostile, and traitorous Combinations, as they would avoid the Pains and Penalties due to such aggravated and dangerous Offences.

And I do hereby strictly enjoin and command all Magistrates and other Officers, within the several Counties in this Province, that they take effectual Care to apprehend and secure for Trial, all and every Person who may hereafter presume to publish, or offer to others to be signed, or shall themselves sign the aforesaid, or a similar Covenant, or be in any wise aiding, abetting, advising, or assisting therein.

And the respective Sheriffs of the several Counties within this Province are hereby required to cause this Proclamation forthwith to be posted up, in some public Place, in each Town, within their respective Districts.

Boycotts had been a non-violent way for Americans to show their displeasure with Parliament since the Stamp Act. I’m not convinced “non-importation” had much real effect on British government policy—a new set of ministers with new ideas about the easiest way to raise revenue seems to have been a bigger factor in the repeal of the Stamp Tax and most of the Townshend duties. But colonists certainly viewed those consumer actions as useful.

Now Gen. Gage was declaring such campaigns illegal. He cited imperial trade policy but no Massachusetts law. One could make the argument that because official town committees were organizing this boycott, it had become a legitimate target for the governor’s action.

But Gage wasn’t just telling local officials to stay in their lanes. He was threatening to prosecute anyone who signed the covenant, suggesting they were “enemies of the King, Parliament, and Kingdom of Great Britain.” The general was literally trying to dictate people’s choices about where to shop and what to shop for.

TOMORROW: What effect did that have?

“They came to hear my Sentiments of the Covenant”

The town of Westboro provides a good look at how one rural community responded to the invitations from Boston and Worcester to join the Solemn League and Covenant boycott in the summer of 1774.

The Boston committee of correspondence sent out its call on 8 June. Five days later, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman (shown here) wrote in his diary:

Town Meeting to consider a Letter from the Town Clerk of Boston and there is come also a printed Covenant for them to Sign, in which they are to join with Others, and Solemnly bind themselves to renounce all Trade with Great Britain till the Bill for blocking up the Harbour of Boston Shall be repealed.

N.B. Little is said about supplicating the Throne of Grace on this Great Occasion. But they Chose a Committee to consider what is best to be done, and report to the Town.

The town meeting record for that day shows that Westboro set up a committee of correspondence. Legally, the warrant for that meeting didn’t mention the proposed non-consumption agreement, only Boston’s 12 May plea for support. But Parkman’s diary shows the Solemn League and Covenant was part of the discussion.

It’s notable that most of that 13 June meeting addressed military preparation, approving the purchase of a “4 Pounder and 4 Hundred Wt of Ball,” a carriage for that artillery piece, and gunpowder, and generally getting ready for “an allarum.” In “this dark and distressing Time of Perplexity,” the town majority already saw armed defense as worth spending money on.

Westboro didn’t record another town meeting until October, when men chose representatives to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. But Parkman’s diary shows how his parishioners continued to discuss the non-consumption agreement—two committee members visited him the next day. 

On 17 June, the minister wrote that six of the town’s committee came to him:

They came to hear my Sentiments of the Covenant which they had received from Boston and another from Worcester, which I, in part gave them. It was Said from among the Committee that they Should be glad I would be at the Town meeting, when they were to report.

Parkman then stated—and underscored—that on the afternoon of 20 June “The Town Meet on the Affair of Signing a Covenant of Non-importation etc.” That gathering didn’t make it into the official record. Perhaps it was deemed a committee meeting, or perhaps conversations without votes weren’t thought to need an official record.

Jonathan Bond, the first man designated for the town’s committee of correspondence, visited Parkman on 27 June:

Deacon Bond came and delivered me 4 Papers of the public affairs relative to Signing a Covenant etc. I copyed the Covenant with alterations.

Parkman probably diluted the text, given his reluctance for confrontation. The next day, the deacon’s son came by:

Thomas Bond here about the Boston papers, Covenant etc. Read him my Draughts: he Seems to fall in with them. He carrys back those I borrowed.

With Parkman’s blessing Westboro observed a fast on Thursday, 30 June. The Rev. Nathan Stone came from Southborough to preach. Parkman wrote:

Mr. Stone preached a.m. on Deut. 29.24.25. [Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt]

N.B. At the End of the Sermon he delivered his Mind concerning the Covenant that is going about the Country to be Signed in all places by all persons, on highest Penalty. May God add His Blessing!

Discussions continued on 1 July:

N.B. Mr. Daniel Forbes one of the Committee of Correspondence here. Shewed him my Remarks on the Covenant etc. He desires me to let Dr. [James] Hawes (who is another) See some of my papers concerning those Matters.

But then another voice entered the conversation.

TOMORROW: Here comes the general.

Sorting Out the Solemn League and Covenants

In his 1915 study of the Solemn League and Covenant for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Albert Matthews concluded that the text of that boycott agreement he called Form A was the original text from the Boston committee of correspondence, and Form B the variation from Worcester.

Matthews based that conclusion on several points:

(1) As the form sent out from Boston was frequently, if not generally, regarded as too drastic, it is reasonable to infer that the more drastic of the two forms was the one sent out from Boston, and of the two forms A and B, A is the more drastic.

(2) Every town in Massachusetts received a copy of the Boston form. Westford is in Middlesex County and so presumably would have received only the Boston form. The document [from Westford] exhibited to-day is form A.

(3) Every town in Worcester County received a copy of the Boston form and also a copy of the Worcester form. At the bottom of the broadside (form B) owned by the American Antiquarian Society is written, in the hand of Isaiah Thomas, the words “This came from Sutton.” Since Sutton is in Worcester County, the Sutton document might conceivably be either the Boston form or the Worcester form; but as a matter of fact the Sutton document is form B, and so presumably is the Worcester form.

(4) Five newspapers were published in Boston in 1774, but only two of these printed the Solemn League and Covenant,…and this is form A. It is reasonable to assume that the only form printed in the Boston papers was the form sent out by the Boston Committee of Correspondence.

When I started this series of postings, I thought that was convincing. But as I looked at Matthews’s sources and others, I found myself coming to the opposite conclusion.

Here are some points Matthews missed. First, he assumed that people objected to the Boston committee’s draft as “too drastic,” and indeed the merchants of the town did make that complaint. But in a footnote Matthews acknowledged that organizers in Worcester had circulated “even more drastic” language, so we have to consider the possibility that those men thought the Boston draft wasn’t drastic enough.

Matthews assumed that the Worcester committee sent its draft only to other towns in Worcester County. But he quoted evidence that Braintree considered text “much like the Worcester covenant” on 27 June and Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) had received “the non-importation Agreement form’d at Worcester” by 30 June.

The Boston News-Letter did indeed print Form A, but it prefaced it this way: “The foregoing is a Copy of a Covenant, which I am told great Pains are now taking to promote in the Country.” The newspaper didn’t specify the agreement that followed was the Boston committee’s proposal. Rather, the phrase “in the Country” hinted at a rural origin.

The 22 June Pennsylvania Journal printed Form B below “a Circular Letter, written by the Committee of the Town of BOSTON,” suggesting that printer William Bradford had received them together. The Boston text sent on 8 June most likely reached Bradford days before the Worcester text sent on 13 June. Even if he had both in hand, Bradford clearly cited documents from Boston.

We know that the Boston committee spread its text outside of Massachusetts. Silas Deane wrote a letter responding to a copy in Wethersfield, Connecticut, on 13 June, before he could have received the Worcester committee’s version. That appears to have been Form B. [Deane’s letter casts doubt on that book’s assertion that Wethersfield actually adopted the Solemn League on 15 June; I’ve found no official town action.] Form B was also the basis of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, variation (Form C).

In contrast, we don’t know that the Worcester committee sent its text outside Massachusetts. Its letter referred to recipients as “fellow-countrymen,” which in this period usually meant people from the same colony.

Finally, here are two facts that Matthews acknowledged but set aside. A copy of Form A at the Massachusetts Historical Society is labeled “Worcester Covenant.” The printer’s type and watermark of that copy match the printed letter issued by Worcester’s committee on 13 June—though Matthews explained that away by saying all these documents must have been printed in Boston since Isaiah Thomas hadn’t yet set up the first press in Worcester.

Looking at all that evidence, I reconstruct the sequence of events this way:

• late May and early June: The Boston committee of correspondence and Worcester County radicals both drafted calls for a stronger boycott on British goods until the Boston Port Bill was repealed.
• 8 June: The Boston committee sent out its printed circular letter and suggested Solemn League and Covenant (Form B) to all towns in Massachusetts and to allies in other colonies.
• by 10 June: After feedback from Worcester, if not other places, the Boston committee sent a second printed circular letter approving other language as long as it led to the same broad boycott.
• 13 June: The Worcester committee of correspondence wrote a new Solemn League and Covenant (Form A) based mostly on the Boston text but incorporating some of its earlier draft and sent that out with a printed circular letter to all towns in Massachusetts.
• 20 June: Worcester formally adopted its form of the Solemn League and Covenant.
• 22 June: The Pennsylvania Journal printed the Boston committee’s draft.
• 23 June: The Boston News-Letter printed the Worcester committee’s draft, saying it was being promoted “in the Country.”
• 27 June: Braintree adopted the Solemn League and Covenant in a form “much like the Worcester covenant,” according to the 30 June Massachusetts Spy.
• before 28 June: The Portsmouth, New Hampshire, committee of correspondence sent out its variation on the Boston draft (Form C).
• 30 June: Falmouth considered “the non-importation Agreement form’d at Worcester” and decided to ask other towns what they were doing.
• 4 July: Westford adopted the Solemn League and Covenant with the Worcester text and started gathering signatures.
• 14 July: Attleboro adopted the Solemn League and Covenant with the Worcester text and started gathering signatures.

In sum, Worcester’s version of the Solemn League and Covenant became the standard text within Massachusetts while Boston’s version spread outside the colony. This was an early example of Worcester’s radicals (who were, of course, not living under military occupation) being more confrontational than the usual troublemakers in Boston.

TOMORROW: One town’s debate.

“The enclosed covenant is by no means inconsistent”

Having returned from a busy convention in California, I’m going back to the Solemn League and Covenant of June 1774.

Or, more accurately, the multiple overlapping boycott covenants that appeared in print that month, first in broadsides and then in the 22 June Pennsylvania Journal and the 23 June Boston News-Letter.

Albert Matthews discussed two texts in 1915, calling them Form B and Form A, respectively.

He briefly mentioned a third variation, which I’ll call Form C. This was a revision of Form B created and distributed by the committee of correspondence in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, by the end of June 1774. The Library of Congress displays a copy here.

Another copy of Form C survives in the papers of the Rev. Jeremy Belknap at the Massachusetts Historical Society; he cautioned his parishioners in Dover, New Hampshire, against signing on until they’d heard from what would be the Continental Congress.

According to Frederick Chase’s History of Dartmouth College and the Town of Hanover, the voters of Plainfield, New Hampshire, did adopt the text of Form C on 28 July. Town histories of Mason and Wilton, New Hampshire, show those towns adopted Form C while adding a proviso that signers could vote to revise its terms.

We can thus think of Form C as the New Hampshire variation on a document that originated in Massachusetts. But the big question remains: Which of Form A and Form B was the Boston original?

In early June, as the Boston committee of correspondence finalized its text, Whigs in Worcester County were also thinking about a boycott. In a footnote, Matthews shared evidence that William Henshaw (1735-1820, shown above) of Leicester and Timothy Bigelow (1739–1790) of Worcester privately circulated a draft non-consumption agreement. At the bottom of a copy at the American Antiquarian Society, Henshaw wrote: “It is thought best not to sign any agreement yet, as it is expected we shall have the plan of a General one from Boston very soon.”

We thus know that there was a text in Worcester before the town received the Boston committee’s Solemn League and Covenant broadsides, mailed on 8 June. Furthermore, Matthews deemed that draft text to be “still more drastic” in wording than either Form A or Form B.

On 10 June, as I discussed back here, the Boston committee sent out a second circular letter saying they didn’t mean to suggest that all towns adopt their language. Some organizers must have asked to use other language—but we don’t know if those people wanted the pledge to be more strident or less.

Three days later, Worcester’s committee of correspondence issued its own printed letter, signed by chairman William Young. The state archives shares a copy received by the selectmen in Southboro. The Worcester committee noted how “the committee of Boston in their last letter have informed us that they do not mean to dictate to us,” and concluded “the enclosed covenant is by no means inconsistent with the spirit or intention of the form sent out by them.”

Thus, on 18 June Worcester sent out its own text, different in some respects from Boston’s. A week later, the town formally adopted that language.

But was that Form A or Form B?

TOMORROW: Who’s pushing who?

“So they painted the little maid”

The Discover Quincy website now says in its description of the Dorothy Quincy Homestead in Quincy:

The childhood home of Dorothy Quincy, who became Mrs. John Hancock; the second President of the Continental Congress, first signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first Governor of Massachusetts.

There’s no mention of any other Dorothy Quincy.

But there was (at least) one, and records are clear that that house was named after an earlier woman named Dorothy Quincy (1709–1762, shown here courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society). She was an aunt of the woman who married Hancock.

The earlier Dorothy Quincy married the merchant and mill-owner Edward Jackson. One of their children was the merchant and politician Jonathan Jackson. The other child, a daughter named Mary Jackson, married the Boston merchant and politician Oliver Wendell.

A portrait of young Dorothy (Quincy) Jackson descended in the Wendell family to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who became a very popular author. He wrote about the painting and its subject in “Dorothy Q.: A Family Portrait” in 1871. That poem begins:

Grandmother’s mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view,—
Look! there's a rent the light shines through,
Dark with a century’s fringe of dust,—
That was a Red-Coat’s rapier-thrust!
Such is the tale the lady old,
Dorothy’s daughter’s daughter, told. . . .

This was one of several poems Holmes wrote about the memory of the Revolution and its shadow on his time, such as “The Last Leaf” and “Under the Washington Elm.” He was so good at creating images and phrases that people overlook how he often simultaneously raised questions about those icons.

But Holmes wasn’t correct on the painting’s subject, either. His footnote for this poem said:

Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters. . . . The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up.

Dorothy (Quincy) Jackson’s father was an Edmund Quincy, but a later Edmund Quincy was the father of the later Dorothy Quincy. That Dorothy Quincy did have an uncle named Josiah Quincy, but a later Josiah Quincy was the Patriot who died in 1775. So the confusion is understandable.

Nonetheless, it’s worth maintaining the knowledge of how the Dorothy Quincy Homestead got its name. It represents a confluence of the Colonial Revival and the Fireside Poets, and it stood for decades of family history. Discover Quincy’s current write-up is all about big names from the Revolutionary years only.

“Over-emphasized the early conflict in the northern colonies”?

Last month Gene Procknow reviewed Alan Pell Crawford’s This Fierce People: The Untold Story of America’s Revolutionary War in the South, just published.

Procknow reports that Crawford

asserts that Revolutionary War historians have over-emphasized the early conflict in the northern colonies, leaving the impression that the conflict was “George Washington’s War.” As evidence, he cites that a more significant percentage of the eight-year war occurred in the southern colonies, while Washington’s army remained relatively inactive in the north.

He praises the book’s focus on particular individuals’ experiences, starting with the Bavarian-French volunteer Baron de Kalb. That allows the book to cover “over one hundred battles” vividly without bogging down in details.

“Storytelling is the veteran journalist and political analyst’s strong suit,” Procknow says of Crawford. “The book is laced with vignettes that engender reader interest and comprehension.”

However, the review also faults Crawford for repeating details from secondary sources not backed up by contemporaneous evidence, citing multiple examples, from Gen. Horatio Gates’s purported nickname to important details of the Battle of Guildford Court House.

“What government policy towards the colonies was supposed to be”

The History of Parliament site shared Dr. Robin Eagles‘s profile of Lord North, prime minister from 1770 to nearly the end of the Revolutionary War.

The length of that term would have marked North as an unusually successful prime minister—except for one thing.

Eagles writes:

North was able to draw on a lengthy political apprenticeship. He had been returned to the Commons in his early twenties in 1754, and had become a predictably fast friend of the king, continuing the family tradition of loyal dependability. He accepted his first post in government in 1759 and from 1767 had served as chancellor of the exchequer. All of this ought, on the face of it, to have made him well prepared for the task ahead.

All of North’s good qualities – and there were plenty of them – were insufficient for a crisis of the proportions that was about to assail his administration from America. Some were out of North’s control; others stemmed from policies to which he had contributed in previous administrations.

Perhaps the biggest problem was that no one ever seemed entirely sure quite what government policy towards the colonies was supposed to be, though there should have been little doubt given the king’s own very clear determination to keep America as a British possession. North’s own response left everyone mildly confused. On one occasion, he was asked what the government plan was, only for him to reply that no one had come up with one.

Keeping the American colonies was not a plan but a goal, of course. Neither George III nor Lord North nor the other administrators contemplated what concessions they might make to achieve that goal until it was too late for compromise.

“Newport baker Godfrey Wainwood purchased Robert”

At Small State, Big History, Robert A. Selig recently discussed slave sales in Newport, Rhode Island, during and at the end of the Revolutionary War.

As Selig notes, just before the war the small colony had started to move away from importing enslaved people. (Rhode Island merchants were still entirely free to transport captives elsewhere, though.)

In “Newport’s Last Slave Auction: Rochambeau’s Prizes,” Selig writes of cases like this:

According to court documents, the slave named Robert who initiated the legal proceedings ran away from his owner in early in 1781, leaving behind his enslaved mother and father. Robert hailed from Port Royal in Caroline County, Virginia . . . .

Perhaps Robert and the others thought that their chances of securing freedom would improve by boarding a French vessel but it is more likely that they mistook the French vessel for a British ship. Either way, boarding the French vessel did not mean freedom but rather more years in slavery. Destouches brought the slaves to Newport—where based on a 1774 Rhode Island law forbidding the importation of slaves they should have been freed.

Destouches was probably unaware of that law but Rhode Island and Newport authorities should have been and thus should have prohibited the sale. They did not. Maybe they did not want to annoy their “illustrious ally.” . . .

On 13 June the sale went ahead as planned. After trading bids with Henry Sherburne, Newport baker Godfrey Wainwood purchased Robert for 170 Spanish silver dollars . . .

In 1789 a dispute arose over the length of the contract Robert was supposed to work for Wainwood; Wainwood claimed nine years, Robert claimed seven years. After lengthy legal proceeding it was in the fall of 1791 that Robert was finally “[wrested] from the iron grasps of despotism and [restored] to the capacity of enjoying himself as a man.”

Mention of the Newport baker Godfrey Wainwood immediately caught my eye.

Wainwood was the man who turned in his ex-wife for trying to send a ciphered letter into Boston in the summer of 1775, setting off the investigation that unmasked Dr. Benjamin Church as a paid British agent.

A German-speaking immigrant, Wainwood managed to establish himself solidly in Newport. Purchasing an enslaved man reflected growing wealth.

“The Fate of This Country” in Concord, 20 July

Last Saturday, Minute Man National Historical Park celebrated Archeology Day by unveiling musket balls found last year near the North Bridge.

There were also fine technical talks about recent archeology projects in national parks across the Northeast and about analyzing musket balls from Revolutionary War battles.

This Saturday, 20 July, the park’s programming continues with “The Fate of This Country: Massachusetts Militia on Alarm 1757–1775.” The event description says:

In 1757, the people of Massachusetts were under threat of French invasion. Through the crisis, they learned valuable lessons to better prepare themselves for the future. In 1774, a new threat emerged, and the people drew from their past experiences to confront it.

Join us across the street from the home of Major John Buttrick, who marched on alarm in 1757 and 1775, for two interpretive talks that explore the experiences of the Massachusetts militia on alarm.

Those talks will take place at the North Bridge Visitor Center at 1:00 and 3:00 P.M. They are scheduled to last about thirty-five minutes.

Visitors will also be able to enjoy the park’s ongoing presentations on such topics as “Concord’s North Bridge: History and Memory” and “Enemies to Their Country.”

“Like a torrent are rushing upon it with increasing violence”

As I wrote yesterday, the text of the Solemn League and Covenant that towns like Westford and Attleboro approved was not the first version of that document printed in an American newspaper.

On 22 June 1774, one day before Margaret Draper published the agreement in Boston, William Bradford’s Pennsylvania Journal issued a “Postscript” or supplement that included an article datelined “Philadelphia.” It began:

The following is a Circular Letter, written by the Committee of the Town of BOSTON, to the neighbouring towns with a copy of an agreement, which was to begin signing in every town in that government nearly at the same time.

The newspaper then printed William Cooper’s 8 June letter followed by a text that started the same way as what would appear in Draper’s Boston News-Letter.

But at the end of the second point, this text added the phrase “and never to renew any commerce or trade with them.”

Then it went on in a different direction. This text didn’t include an oath for retailers to swear. It included language not seen in the News-Letter version:

And, Whereas the promoting of industry, œconomy, arts and manufactures among ourselves is of the last importance to the civil and religious welfare of a community; we engage,

3dly, That from and after the first day of October next ensuing, we will, not by ourselves, or any for, by, or under us, purchase or use any goods, wares, manufactures or merchandize, whensoever or howsoever imported from Great Britain, until the harbour of Boston shall be opened, and our charter rights restored. And,

Lastly, As a refusal to come into any agreement which promises the deliverance of our country from the calamities it now feels, and which, like a torrent are rushing upon it with increasing violence, must evidence a disposition enimical to, or criminally negligent of, the common safety…

Both versions conclude with similar promises to shun doing business with any “contumacious importers.” The News-Letter text said signers wouldn’t buy “any article whatever” from those people. The Pennsylvania Journal text said they would be shunned “forever.” Both absolutes, but in different dimensions.

In comparing these two texts in 1915, Albert Matthews called the version that first surfaced in Philadelphia “Form B.” He didn’t cite that newspaper article but rather drew on a broadside at the American Antiquarian Society.

Matthews concluded that Form A was Boston’s proposed text and Form B originated in Worcester, created because Boston’s was “too drastic.” More recent scholars disagree.

COMING UP: The Worcester connection.

“We will suspend all commercial intercourse with the said island”

In his 1915 study of the Solemn League and Covenant, Albert Matthews based what he called Form A on a printed broadside preserved in Westford, as shown here and here.

Matching broadsides survive in the state archive and in Attleboro, as reported here.

That text also matches what appeared in Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter on 23 June 1774, printed at the request of an opponent of the boycott campaign.

The broadside version had blank spaces for leaders of each town to write in its name and the date in “June [blank] 1774” on which it voted to sign onto the agreement.

The text itself consists of a preamble and four promises for consumers:

1st, That from henceforth we will suspend all commercial intercourse with the said island of Great Britain, until the said act for blocking up the said harbour be repealed, and a full restoration of our charter rights be obtained. And,

2dly, …that we will not buy, purchase or consume, or suffer any person, by, for or under us to purchase or consume, in any manner whatever, any goods, wares, or merchandize which shall arrive in America from Great Britain aforesaid, from and after the last day of August next ensuing. . . .

3dly, That such persons may not have it in their power to impose upon us by any pretence whatever, we further agree to purchase no article of merchandize from them, or any of them, who shall not have signed this, or a similar covenant . . .

Lastly, we agree, that after this, or a similar covenant has been offered to any person and they refuse to sign it, or produce the oath, abovesaid, we will consider them as contumacious importers, and withdraw all commercial connexions with them, so far as not to purchase of them, any article whatever, and publish their names to the world.

This was the oath for retailers to swear if they wanted to retain their customers:

I [blank] of [blank] in the county of [blank] do solemnly swear that the goods I have now on hand, and propose for sale, have not, to the best of my knowledge, been imported from Great Britain, into any port of America since the last day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy four, and that I will not, contrary to the spirit of an agreement entering into through this province import or purchase of any person so importing any goods as aforesaid, until the port or harbour of Boston, shall be opened, and we are fully restored to the free use of our constitutional and charter rights.

The last part of the broadside was a generous stretch of blank paper for individual people to fill up with their signatures, as we can see on the copy above.

TOMORROW: Form B.

“The foregoing is a Copy of a Covenant…”

The Boston committee of correspondence’s Solemn League and Covenant went further than previous boycotts by having ordinary people pledge not to buy any goods from Britain after a certain date, and to shun business with anyone who continued to sell.

That’s why the 30 May town meeting voted “That the Comittee of Correspondence be & hereby are directed, to comunicate the Non Consumption Agreement aforesaid to the other Towns in the Province.” Not just non-importation by merchants but non-consumption by everyone.

According to the merchant John Andrews, that agreement was “sent out in printed copies by the Clerk to the Committee. W[illiam]. Cooper,” along with his printed letter dated 8 June 1774.

One might think that it would therefore be easy to identify the official text of that boycott agreement.

But there’s a lingering mystery about the Solemn League and Covenant. Two different texts were printed in American newspapers by the end of the month. Both also exist as broadsides carrying the date of June 1774. To add to the muddle, a third text was also printed as a broadside.

In 1915 Albert Matthews compared the two June 1774 texts for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, calling them Form A and Form B. I guess I’ll call that third version Form C when I get to it.

Normally the Boston town government favored the Edes and Gill print shop. The letter and broadside might well have come from its presses. On 20 June Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette editorialized in favor of it:

The Solemn League & Covenant for a non-consumption of British Merchandize is an Ax to the Root of the tree; by coming into it we establish our own Manufactures, save our Money, and finally our Country from the destruction that threatens it.

But that newspaper didn’t report the actual text of the new agreement. The Boston committee evidently didn’t want to publicize details of the boycott in town, at least not until a lot of rural communities had signed on to it.

Instead, the recently widowed Margaret Draper printed the document in her Boston News-Letter on 23 June. This wasn’t an official release. The document was prefaced with a request to print it and followed by:

The foregoing is a Copy of a Covenant, which I am told great Pains are now taking to promote in the Country. As I think it is of the most pernicious Tendency, as at present circumstanced, I beg Leave through your Paper to propose some Questions relating thereto.

Nearly a full column of political questions and argument followed. Then came an even longer series of questions leading to the suggestion not to take any action until “the approaching Congress.”

Four days later Mills and Hicks’s Boston Post-Boy printed the entire text of Cooper’s letter followed by the same form of the Solemn League and Covenant as in the News-Letter.

In other words, the Solemn League and Covenant wasn’t announced by Boston’s committee of correspondence. It was leaked by opponents through the Loyalist press.

TOMORROW: Form A.

“For every inhabitant in each town to sign”

Among the Bostonians objecting to the town committee of correspondence’s Solemn League and Covenant of June 1774 was John Andrews. Normally a supporter of the Whigs, that merchant wrote on 12 June:

Our committee of correspondence, not content with the calamities already come upon us, have issued out letters to every town in the province (without consulting ye. town in regard to the expediency of such a measure) accompanied with a Solemn League and covenant, so stil’d, for every inhabitant in each town to sign, whereby they obligate themselves by the most sacred oaths not to purchase any kind of goods fabricated in England, either already here, or that may be hereafter imported.

Such is the cursed zeal that now prevails: animosities run higher than ever, each party charging the other as bringing ruin upon their country; that unless some expediency is adopted to get the Port open by paying for the tea (which seems to be the only one) am afraid we shall experience the worst of evils, a civil war, which God avert! . . .

those who have govern’d the town for years past and were in a great measure the authors of all our evils, by their injudicious conduct—are grown more obstinate than ever, and seem determin’d to bring total destruction upon us: which may be sufficiently evinced by all their conduct. They not only intend to deprive us of trade in future, but render us utterly incapable of contributing that assistance which will be absolutely necessary for the support of the indigent the approaching fall and winter, by their cruel endeavors to stop the little inland trade we expected.

Andrews hadn’t seen the text of the Solemn League and Covenant as of 12 June, but obviously he didn’t like what he’d heard about it.

The complaint that the committee had acted “without consulting ye. town” isn’t entirely fair. A vote in the town meeting had ordered the committee to send a non-consumption agreement to other towns. Another vote scheduled the next meeting session more than two weeks away with no indication that the committee should hold their work until then. But clearly Andrews wished he (or like-minded colleagues) had had a chance to review the details.

There may also have been pushback from the other Massachusetts towns who received the printed letter from Boston, accompanied by a printed pledge with blanks to fill in. On 10 June, only two days after sending out his first letter, town clerk William Cooper sent a follow-up, also printed:

Whereas several of our brethren, members of the committees of correspondence in the neighbouring towns, have since our letter of the 8th instant applied to us, to know whether it was expected that the form of the covenant which we inclosed in our letter should be literally adopted by the several towns:

We have thought it necessary to inform our respectable fellow countrymen, that the committee, neither in this or any other matter mean to dictate to them, but are humbly of opinion, that if they keep to the spirit of that covenant, and solemnly engage not to purchase any goods which shall be imported from Great Britain after the time stipulated, and agree to suspend dealing with such persons as shall persist in counteracting the salutary design, by continuing to import or purchase British articles so imported, the end we proposed will be fully answered, and the salvation of North-America, under providence, thereby insured.

That suggests other towns’ selectmen or committees resented something about the Boston documents. Did the problem lie in the parameters of the boycott, the language, or the speed of the campaign? Or simply in Boston appearing to issue forms for smaller towns to fill out?After all, this was a crusade for local self-government.

TOMORROW: Conflicting texts.

“Universally come into a solemn league”

By the end of May 1774, Boston had held several sessions of a town meeting about how to respond to the Boston Port Bill.

On the afternoon of 13 May, the meeting had resolved, with no dissent, that some sort of continent-wide boycott was the solution to the crisis.

Over the next couple of sessions, the meeting kept asking for its committee to recommend a specific plan. Thomas Cushing kept replying that the committee didn’t yet have a report. Then the town would ask the committee to “sit again”—i.e., get to work.

On 30 May, the town meeting spelled out what it wanted by voting:

That the Committee appointed to receive Proposals & consider of Ways & Means, be desired to prepare a Paper, to be carried to each Family in the Town, the Report of which to be, not to purchase any Articles of British Manufactures, that can be obtained among Ourselves, & that they will purchase Nothing of, but totally desert those who shall Counter-work the Salutary Measures of the Town.

Voted, That the Comittee of Correspondence be & hereby are directed, to comunicate the Non Consumption Agreement aforesaid to the other Towns in the Province.

The meeting also said that the next session would be on 17 June. The committee shouldn’t expect any more guidance until then.

The committee of correspondence acted on 8 June. Town clerk William Cooper sent out a two-page printed letter to rural towns that began:

GENTLEMEN,

THE evils which we have long foreseen are now come upon this town and province, the long meditated stroke is now given to the civil liberty of this country? How long we may be allowed the enjoyment of our religious liberty is a question of infinite moment. . . .

How the committee got from trade restrictions to “our religious liberty” isn’t at all clear, but they definitely played on New England’s religious sentiment and tradition.

Boston’s letter said the people of Massachusetts should “universally come into a solemn league, not to import goods from Great Britain, and not to buy any goods that shall hereafter be imported from thence.” That phrase “solemn league” echoed the name of an agreement from 1643, early in the English Civil War. The actual agreement the committee sent included another word from that original, “covenant.” As a result, this boycott agreement came to be known as the Solemn League and Covenant, usurping that label from the earlier document.

On the day Cooper sent his circular letter, Cushing, Samuel Adams, and other elected politicians were in Salem for a session of the Massachusetts General Court. Perhaps Cushing’s caution and Adams’s savvy might have moderated the committee’s call for a boycott, or at least toned down the language. Or perhaps those leaders had signed off on the drafts before going to Salem.

In any event, some people thought the committee had gone too far.

TOMORROW: Complaints in and out of town.

“Many among us, who are for compromising matters”

John Andrews was another merchant who left a lively record of the discussions in Boston in spring 1774 as the business community grappled with the impending effects of the Boston Port Bill.

Andrews was more aligned with the Whigs than John Rowe, but still didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the radicals.

Andrews’s account appears in a series of letters to an in-law in Philadelphia, now in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. On 18 May he wrote in the most dire tone:

Imagine to yourself the horror painted in the faces of a string of slaves condemn’d by the Inquisition to perpetual drudgery at the oar! Such is the dejection imprinted on every countenance we meet in this once happy, but now totally ruin’d town.

Andrews urged his correspondent to sign on to “an entire stoppage of trade, both to England and the West Indies, throughout the continent.” Any alternative would be to “acknowledge the right of parliament to d—n us whenever they please.”

Later that day Andrews added the news that “we have had advice from Salem, Newbury, etc’a., that they will haul up all their vessels, and stop every trade, provided it becomes general through the continent.”

If accurate, that news must have after the day’s town meeting session, where a committee reported merely that the selectmen of Marblehead and Salem had sounded sympathetic and promised to call meetings in their towns, too.

Note how the promise from those smaller Massachusetts ports was contingent on all the other ports in North America signing on to a boycott as well. That’s often how collective action has to be organized: promising party A that party B is ready to act if party A will, and promising party B that party A is ready to act if party B will.

Yet Andrews also reported some Boston merchants calling for a different approach:

At the same time, we have many among us, who are for compromising matters, and put forward a subscription to pay for the Tea.

George Erving has declar’d this day. that if it should be promoted, he is ready to put down two thousand pounds sterling towards it, and will take it upon himself to wait on Governor [Thomas] Gage and know what his demands upon us are—which circumstance Jno. Amory mentioned at ye. town meeting this day, which was in general rejected, though he urged the matter much.

George Erving (1738–1806) and John Amory (1728-1803, shown above) were both Loyalists during the war. Amory ultimately returned to Massachusetts, and Erving’s son became a U.S. diplomat.

Though the Boston Tea Party had cost the East India Company over £9,000, five merchants pledging the amount Erving promised would have been enough to cover that sum. But the community “rejected” that idea.

At that point in late May 1774, Boston’s committee of correspondence may well have felt they had solid popular support for promoting a general boycott to protest the Port Bill. But when the committee drafted its “Solemn League and Covenant” and sent it to other towns and provinces, its members may have overplayed their hand.

TOMORROW: Going too far?

“Town Meeting. Nothing done but Harangue.”

As recounted yesterday, in May 1774 the Boston town meeting named merchant John Rowe to its committee to formulate responses to the Boston Port Bill.

Rowe attended committee meetings on 14 and 16 May. In his diary he noted who else came but nothing more.

In contrast, Rowe had a lot to say about what happened on 17 May:

This morning Genl. [Thomas] Gage Our New Governour landed from the Castle after having breakfasted with Admiral [John] Montague on board the Captain Man of Warr—he was saluted by the Castle & the Captain Man of Warr & Rec’d at the Long Wharf by Colo. [John] Hancock’s Company of Cadets.

The [militia] Regiment was under arms in King street. The Company of Grenadiers made a good appearance. Capt. [Adino] Paddock’s Company of Artillery & Colo. [David] Phipps Company of [horse] Guards were also under arms in King street.

He came to the Town House, had his Commission Read by the Secretary [Thomas Flucker] & took the Usual Oaths—from thence he was escorted to Faneuil Hall where a good Dinner by his Majesty’s Council. There were but very few Gentlemen of the Town asked to dine there.

That last remark was Rowe consoling himself that he wasn’t invited. But the next day Rowe got to write: “I waited on Genl. Gage this morning who Received me very Cordially.”

Rowe had already expressed hope that the new governor would soften the blow of the new law: “God Grant his Instructions be not severe as I think him to be a Very Good Man.”

Notably, on the same day Gage received Rowe, the merchant skipped the next session of the town meeting. “I was so Busy I could not attend.”

He never mentioned sitting down with the town committee again. We can see Rowe’s allegiance solidify by the end of the month.

• 24 May: “The Merchants met at the Town House on Business of Importance.”
• 30 May: “I paid the General a visit this morning. Town Meeting. Nothing done but Harangue.”
• 2 June: “I met the Gentlemen Merchts at the West Side of the Court House in Boston.”

TOMORROW: More merchants’ voices.

“Spent most part of the Day with the Town Committee”

The merchant John Rowe had an unusual perspective on the crisis of the Boston Port Bill.

On the one hand, he cared most about his business and trimmed his politics accordingly. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson suspected him of being behind all sorts of nefarious deals, but the local crowd considered him “a great Tory.”

I suspect Rowe also liked being liked, “trimming” to play to his current audience. During the big public meetings on the ships full of East India Company tea, he made an offhand remark about mixing tea with saltwater. That got him applause, and the crowd believed he’d come over to the radicals. Privately Rowe was upset, but he didn’t try to clarify his stance.

In those same months Rowe was spearheading a complex and costly effort to import and install Boston’s first street lamps. He seems to have long hoped to be elected to public office, and here he was visibly serving the public. How long could he keep that up?

On 10 May 1774, the same day Boston reelected its representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, the town received the first shocking news of the new law. Rowe went back to that day’s diary entry to add: “The Harmony Capt. Shayler arrived from London & brings the Severest Act ever was Penned against the Town of Boston.”

Three days later, with the news confirmed, Rowe lamented the “Late Act of Parliament for Blocking up the Harbour of Boston which is & will be a Great Evill.”

On that day, Boston called a sudden town meeting, ultimately choosing a committee to recommend what to do. The citizens put Rowe on that committee. In fact, he was the second man named, right after Samuel Adams.

This committee of eleven included gentlemen from various groups:

• radical Whigs: Dr. Joseph Warren, William Molineux, along with Adams.
• more centrist politicians: Thomas Cushing, William Phillips, Henderson Inches.
• lawyers: John Adams, Josiah Quincy, Jr.
• merchants: Thomas Boylston, Nathaniel Appleton, and Rowe.

There was, to be sure, some overlap in those groups, particularly the centrists and merchants.

To his credit, Rowe actually participated in the committee discussions. On 14 May he “Spent most part of the Day with the Town Committee at the Representatives Room” inside the Town House and then went back on 16 May. Boylston and Appleton didn’t attend either of those meetings, so Rowe was the merchants’ voice.

Not that the discussions was productive. On 18 May, the committee reported back to the town that they had received “several Proposals & plans” but hadn’t had time to digest them. The ongoing meeting pushed them to hurry and come up with solutions.

Rowe never recorded attending any more of those committee discussions. Instead, he began to pay more attention to other sources of authority in town. As I wrote back here, he declined an invitation to chair the town meeting, and expressed deep disagreement with it—privately, of course.

TOMORROW: Here comes the general.