John Hancock Sees a Chance to Do a Favor for Thomas Longman

My ears perked up at this announcement from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts:

The Colonial Society is publishing the Papers of John Hancock—which remarkably have never been published! Editor Jeffrey Griffith has been scouring archives and libraries to find copies of Hancock’s letters, and not only will the Colonial Society publish fully annotated editions of Hancock's letters, and make them available on our web-site, Jeffrey Griffith has created this collection of transcriptions, identifying each library which holds the originals.

For example, here’s a letter that the London publisher Thomas Longman sent to Hancock in July 1769:

Mr John Mein of Boston (Bookseller) is Indebted to me a very considerable sum of Money, the greatest part of which has been due near three Years, which upon my remonstrating to Him He has several times promised to make such Remittances as wld be satisfactory, but this He has yet neglected to do, nor now even so much as writes to me by way of appology.

I should therefore be greatly obliged to you if you could recommend a proper Person to me to whom it would be safe to send a power of Attorney & to Act for me in the most adviseable manner in this unfortunate affair. I know your time and attention is at present much taken up in Public Affairs, but as the recovery of this Debt is of great consequence to me, hope you will not deny my request but favour me with your answer by the first opportunity

At the time, Mein was using his Boston Chronicle to shame the Boston Whigs for bringing in goods they’d promised to boycott because of the Townshend duties. While merchants offered different excuses for their shipments (e.g., I didn’t import glass, I imported medicines in glass bottles), that coverage weakened support for non-importation and made Boston look bad to other American ports.

When Hancock received this letter asking who could be a local agent for the Longmans, sue Mein, and seize his property, he must have at least figuratively rubbed his hands in pleasure. He proceeded to do just that, using legal means to shut down the Boston Chronicle while other merchants physically chased Mein out of town.

William Jasper and the Resistance

First in Boston 1775 postings and then in this article for the Journal of the American Revolution (also printed in this volume), I posited that Dr. Joseph Warren’s crucial informant on the night of 18 Apr 1775 was a British-born cutler named William Jasper.

I also laid out that argument in this talk for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in April.

In collecting information about William Jasper, I looked for ties between him and the Boston activists. Of course, he couldn’t appear too close to Dr. Warren’s network in 1774–75 or else he wouldn’t have made a good spy. But I kept hoping for some documented link between Jasper and Boston’s resistance movement.

This summer I stumbled back into this page of signatures on a non-importation agreement from October 1767, protesting the new Townshend duties. It’s at Harvard’s Houghton Library.

And there’s William Jasper’s signature. He pledged to join this boycott several months before his June 1768 marriage to Ann Newman, previously the earliest sign I’ve found that he’d moved from New York to Boston.

What’s more, William Jasper’s signature appears right after John Pulling’s, and on the same sheet as Paul Revere. Those men were probably all in the same neighborhood, or even at the same neighborhood meeting. This sheet thus includes the signatures of three men involved in spreading the alarm on the night of 18 Apr 1775.

“He will do every Thing any Man can do towards a full Supply”

Philip Mortimer was not from an old New England family and he was Anglican, two traits that might have made him more likely to support the Crown in the pre-war political conflict.

Instead, Mortimer served on the Middletown, Connecticut, committee of correspondence. On 6 Mar 1775, the Connecticut Courant announced that he and George Philips would oversee the public sale of molasses and coffee brought in from Jamaica “agreeable to the 10th Article of said Association.”

That part of the Continental Congress’s boycott agreement said that goods landed between 1 Dec 1774 and 1 Feb 1775 could “be sold under the direction of the committee” covering that region, with “the profit, if any, to be applied towards relieving and employing such poor inhabitants of the town of Boston, as are immediate sufferers by the Boston port-bill.”

Mortimer was also a selectman for the first two years of the war and a justice of the peace.

In 1781, French troops on their way to Yorktown camped on Mortimer’s land in Middletown, according to an article by Allen Forbes for the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The young merchant who married Mortimer’s niece Ann Catharine Carnall, George Starr, was even more active in supporting the American cause. In 1778 Starr, who had the militia rank of captain, became a deputy commissary of hides for the Continental Army. On 26 October Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons wrote to the commander-in-chief from Middletown:

I find Capt. George Starr of this Town is appointed by the Board of War to take Charge of the Leather belonging to the Continent, purchase Shoes, Cartouch Bozes & other Military Accoutrements, by the inclosd Order you will find the Board have impowerd him to contract for those Articles in Exchange for raw Hides; I am fully Satisfied he will do all that any Man can do in that Department;

he informs me he Shall be able to send on about Twelve Hundred pair of Shoes within four Weeks about Seven Hundred of which are now On Hand & will be forwarded as soon as he can procure Buckles for about 300 or 400 Cartouch Bozes which are made and with the Shoes will compleat A Load for One Waggon; he Says he will take every Measure in his Power to procure a large Quantity of Shoes & thinks tis probable he Shall be able to furnish about 1000 or 1500 Pair a Month if the Leather can now be had in exchange for Hides as he is a Man very assiduous in his Business I have no Doubt he will do every Thing any Man can do towards a full Supply—

As to Caps he Says tis impossible to make an Estimate of the Quantity of Leather on Hand suitable for that Business which is not fit for Shoes or to be Usd for Accoutrements or in the Quarter Master’s Department as ’tis not in whole Sides, but part of most of the Leather in working is found unsuitable for other Business which will well Answer for this.

Starr did that job for three years. Even after stepping down he sent George Washington two pairs of boots for his personal use in 1783, though the general was unsatisfied.

TOMORROW: The new postwar order.

(The photo above shows Samuel Holden Parsons’s house in Middletown, now gone, from Damien Cregeau’s article “Top Ten Demolished Houses of Revolutionary War-Era Connecticut” for the Journal of the American Revolution.)

“Admiral Renegado, came to anchor in Port Despair”

At the start of February 1770, the big news in Boston was the non-importation movement, and particularly the weekly demonstrations by schoolboys in support of it.

That is to say, every Thursday when the schools let out early, gangs of boys would converge on the shop of someone who hadn’t signed the non-importation agreement, set up a picket line, and shout insults at that shopkeeper and his or her customers. If the kids were feeling feisty, they’d throw snowballs and mud as well.

The Boston Chronicle, which opposed the movement, responded on 1 February with a fictional advertisement:

Intended speedily to be acted,
By a Company of young Tragedians,
A TRAGEDY
(Not acted here these seventy-eight years,)
called the
W I T C H E S,
With many Alterations and Improvements.

(The full item is quoted back here.)

That slammed the Whigs’ boycott, tweaked the town’s ban on theater, and poked at the sore spot of the Salem witchcraft trials all in one. It was masterful trolling before that term was invented.

Four days later, the Boston Chronicle fictionalized another common newspaper item with this start:

S H I P   N E W S.
January 25, 1770.
Last Tuesday Evening the “Well disposed” [i.e., Whiggish] fleet, under the command of ADMIRAL RENEGADO, came to anchor in Port Despair, having left their stations that morning in great confusion on the appearance of an English VICE ADMIRAL, with the British STANDARD flying at the mast head.

This was commentary on how William Molineux led a crowd to confront Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s two importer sons at his house—an action that even Josiah Quincy, Jr., had warned could be treated as treason—and how that action had fizzled out.

Exactly one month after the second article, the Boston Massacre occurred. To defuse tensions in the streets, Hutchinson decided to have the 29th and then the 14th Regiments moved to Castle William.

As a result, in the following months there was no governmental force in the streets of Boston strong enough to deter the Whigs and their supporters. Crowds tarred and feathered Customs officer Owen Richards in May and threatened Scottish merchant Patrick McMaster with the same punishment in June.

In that atmosphere, I suspect, the printing staff of the Boston Chronicle didn’t feel safe publishing another item lampooning and lambasting the local Whigs. Somebody in that shop—or perhaps more than one somebody—composed a long article that built on three items the paper had already run:

• Caricatures of prominent Whigs like “Tommy Trifle” and “Johnny Dupe” from October 1769’s “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed.”
• The fake theatrical announcement.
• The name “Admiral Renegado.”

Instead of publishing that piece in their own newspaper, however, they sent it to Anthony Henry in Halifax. Obviously, disguised gossip about Bostonians had less meaning for readers in Nova Scotia. But after he ran the piece on 8 May, it could filter back to its targets without sparking a riot. Not that any Boston printer dared to reprint it.

The October 1769 “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed” is always attributed to John Mein, publisher of the Boston Chronicle. He left a written key confirming the targets, so he was obviously involved in the production. But someone at the Boston Chronicle must have carried on in the same mode after Mein was driven away the next month. That person most likely wrote the piece published in Halifax.

TOMORROW: The most likely author.

“A Tragi-comic Farce, Called the present Times!”

Page 7 of the 8 May 1770 issue of Anthony Henry’s Nova Scotia Chronicle was nearly entirely taken up with what looks like an extraordinarily detailed advertisement for a play.

It began:

Just ready for the PRESS,
A Tragi-comic Farce,
Called the present Times! Some of the Characters in high Life, some in low. It is proposed to be acted by a Set of Comedians shortly expected; at a new Theatre in the enchanted Castle, at the Palace of the Sons of Liberty. Those who subscribe for Six Copies, will have the Seventh gratis; each stitched and bound, with a Variety of elegant Cuts, done by a masterly Hand! As there are already 5000 subscribed for, those who hereafter may be desirous to be out of that Number are requested to direct their Letters, (Post paid) to Don Joseph Azevedo at the Pontac Coffee House, HALIFAX, where Subscriptions are taken in.

The one mention of this newspaper item that I’ve found in books appears to treat it as authentic evidence of theater in Canada. But its real nature is revealed by the paragraphs that follow.

The Characters chiefly attempted are as follows.

William the Knave, introducing the Spinning Wheels, &c., &c. with a Bill of Taxation in his Hand (in order to support Home Manufactures) of Six Pence L[egal] M[oney] per Head on the whole P[rovince] of M[assachusetts] B[a]y; a great Procurer of Affidavits.

Thomas Trifle, Esq; Leading a drunking Man with a Glass of New-England Rum in his Hand, as a Cordial Specifick against all Disorders, lately chosen a great Officer for Indian Affairs.

Simple John, Lieut. Mandarin, demanding Audience of the Heads of the Junto, exclaiming against his Brother Commissioners of the Tribute Money to be collected—Treating the Rabble with good Chear in Hopes of reigning once more alone.

Back in October 1769 the Boston printer and bookstore owner John Mein had printed “Outlines of the characters of…the Well-Disposed” in his Boston Chronicle, lampooning leaders of the non-importation movement in highly personal terms.

That article used “William the Knave” as its label for William Molineux, an insult repeated in the 12 Feb 1770 Boston Chronicle. “Spinning Wheels” and public money “to support Home Manufactures” were allusions to Molineux’s publicly-funded scheme to employ women to make cloth in Boston. The merchant had also been busy helping to promulgate the depositions about the Boston Massacre.

The same “Outlines” article called Thomas Cushing, chairman of the merchants’ committee for non-importation and speaker of the Massachusetts House, “Tommy Trifle, Esq.”

“Simple John” must mean John Temple, the one Customs Commissioner to side with Boston’s merchants against the rest.

One of the few characters presented in a positive light was “John Plain Dealer, a Bookseller flying the Country.” A later entry mentions “Lieut. Col. Thomas Shears, his Valour is well known by his formal Attack on John Plain Dealer…”

Soon after that “Outlines” article appeared, a group of Boston merchants threatened Mein in the street. When the printer pulled out a pistol, Thomas Marshall, a tailor and militia officer not involved in the initial confrontation, swung at him with a shovel. Mein went into hiding and soon fled Boston.

“John Plain Dealer” obviously meant John Mein himself, and “Lieut. Col. Thomas Shears” meant Thomas Marshall.

This whole page in the Nova-Scotia Chronicle was a continuation of an argument that had started in Boston more than half a year before.

TOMORROW: More characters.

The Triumph of the Suffolk Resolves

Aside from rhetoric, the Suffolk County resolutions of 9 Sept 1774 differ from the Middlesex County resolutions of 31 August in some significant ways.

The Suffolk convention included the Quebec Act among its complaints:

the late act of parliament for establishing the Roman Catholic religion and the French laws in that extensive country, now called Canada, is dangerous in an extreme degree to the Protestant religion and to the civil rights and liberties of all America.

In Philadelphia Samuel Adams was taking steps to dispel his image as a religious zealot, but it was still quite acceptable to be anti-Catholic. Indeed, fighting “popery” was an element of British patriotism.

New grievances arose in just the few days between the two conventions. The Suffolk Resolves complained about how “it has been recommended to take away all commissions from the officers of the militia”—a suggestion from William Brattle that became public on 1 September. Also about “the fortifications begun and now carrying on upon Boston Neck”—Gen. Thomas Gage’s response to the militia mobilization on 2 September.

The Middlesex convention urged people not to cooperate with the court system under the Massachusetts Government Act. The Suffolk convention went further to endorse non-consumption of goods from Britain, as the Solemn League and Covenant promoted:

That until our rights are fully restored to us, we will, to the utmost of our power, and we recommend the same to the other counties, to withhold all commercial intercourse with Great-Britain, Ireland, and the West-Indies, and abstain from the consumption of British merchandise and manufactures, and especially of East-Indies, and piece goods, with such additions, alterations, and exceptions only, as the General Congress of the colonies may agree to.

Probably the most important difference between the Suffolk Resolves and the output of all the other Massachusetts county conventions, before and after, was the connection with that “General Congress,” or First Continental Congress.

The Massachusetts delegates to the Congress presented the Middlesex Resolves to the Congress on 14 September. The Congress’s bare-bones record says simply that they “were read.”

Dr. Joseph Warren, the man who drafted the Suffolk resolutions, had Paul Revere carry a copy to the Massachusetts delegates in Philadelphia. Revere left Boston on 11 September and arrived on the 16th, also bringing more solid news about the state of the province after the “Powder Alarm.”

On 17 September, the Congress heard the Suffolk Resolves and then unanimously voted to endorse them. Rumors of British military action had alarmed delegates the week before. They could have criticized the Massachusetts Patriots for overreacting and heightening the tension further. But instead in this resolution they praised the province’s “firm and temperate conduct.”

The Congress had the entire text of the Suffolk Resolves and the Suffolk convention’s message to Gov. Gage entered into its records, and had secretary Charles Thomson send the text to the Pennsylvania Packet to the reprinted.

John Adams called the 17th “one of the happiest Days of my Life.” Thomas Cushing wrote home to Dr. Warren:

They highly applaud the wise, temperate and spirited Conduct of our People. . . . These Resolves will, we trust, support and comfort our Friends, and confound our Enemies.

Warren in turn had that letter printed in the 26 September Boston Gazette. The message was clear: This Congress was adopting Massachusetts’s cause.

“Hostilitys have commenced at Cambridge”?

Here’s another primary source on the “Powder Alarm” of 1774 that I’ve quoted before, but only eight years ago.

These are two entries from the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westboro.

Parkman really didn’t like conflict, so he hung back from political actions his parishioners and even his sons advocated. I recently traced his losing battle to keep people in town from committing to the Solemn League and Covenant boycott; that comes up here, too.

Naturally, Parkman was most uncomfortable with the idea of his farmworker, neighbors, son, and others marching off to confront the redcoats.

But the real story of these entries is how much misinformation and confusion the people of central Massachusetts were dealing with. The false rumor that the regulars had killed people in Cambridge on 1 September ended up reaching Westboro first as a false rumor that there was shooting on 2 September and “Some [victims] at least may be of Westborough.” That wasn’t completely refuted until the next day.

1774 September 2 (Friday). This morning was ushered in with Alarms from every Quarter, to get ready and run down to Boston or Cambridge. The Contents Magazine of Powder at Winter Hill had been carryed off — namely [550?] Barrells; by Treachery; etc. This is told as the Chief Affair.

72 of our Neighbours marched from Gales (tis said) by break of Day; and others are continuely going. My young man [Asa Ware] goes armed, with them.

About 5 p.m. Grafton Company, nigh 80, under Capt. Golding, march by us.

N.B. Squire [Francis] Whipple here. Says he is ready to sign [the Solemn League and Covenant] etc.

It is a Day of peculiar Anxiety and Distress! Such as we have not had — Will the Lord graciously look upon us; and grant us Deliverance — for we would hope and trust in His Name! We send for Mrs. Spring and her two Children to be here with us, while her husband is gone with the People. Breck [the minister’s son] returned from Lancaster.

At Eve we have most sorrowful News that Hostilitys have commenced at Cambridge, and that Six of our people are killed; that probably Some at least may be of Westborough. Joshua Chamberlin stood next (as it is related) to one that was slain. We have many Vague accounts and indeed are left in uncertaintys about Every Thing that has occurred.

Sutton soldiers — about 250, pass along by us — but after midnight are returning by reason of a Contrary Report. Mr. Zech. Hicks stops here. Breck is employed in the night to cast Bulletts. A Watch at the Meeting House to guard the Town stock etc. Some Towns, we hear, have lost much of theirs, as Dedham, Wrentham etc.

Westboro was using its meetinghouse as its militia armory, as Lexington would do in April 1775.

1774 September 3 (Saturday). Capt. Benjamin Fay came here between 2 and 3 o’Clock in the morn in much Concern and knew not what to do. After Light and through most of the forenoon, vague uncertain Reports. Sutton men that had gone to Deacon Wood, came back to go down the Road again.

My son Breck with provisions, Bread, Meat, etc., Coats, Blanket etc., for it was rainy, rides down towards Cambridge to relieve Asa Ware, Mr. Spring, and others who were unprovided.

About noon the Sutton Companys come back again and go home, Rev. [Ebenezer] Chaplin among them. So do the Grafton men.

Mr. Abraham Temple relates to me, that he, having been as far as to Cambridge and himself Seen many of the Transactions, that there were no Regulars there, no Artillery, no body Slain — but that Lt. Gov. [Thomas] Oliver, Messrs. [Samuel] Danforth, Joseph Lee, Col. [David] Phips (the high Sheriff) had resigned and promised that they would not act as Counsellors — that Mr. Samuel Winthrop computed there were about 7000 of the Country people had gathered into Cambridge on this Occasion — that it was probable, as he (Mr. Temple) conceived, that the Troubles would subside.

N.B. When the Sun run low, Our Company returned (consisting of Horse and Foot about 150). With them were my Son and my young man — all without any Evil Occurrance. To God be Praise and Glory! I Suppose Capt. [Jonathan] Maynard and those who were with him are returned also.

It’s also notable that the Sutton minister Ebenezer Chaplin accompanied men on this militia alarm. He was much more politically active than Parkman, chosen for the 1779 convention to write a constitution for Massachusetts and the 1788 convention to consider the new U.S. Constitition.

Chaplin also seems to have been a volatile man. In 1775 Isaiah Thomas declined to run some of his essays in the Massachusetts Spy, and the minister responded by preaching that the printer was an atheist and a Tory.

In 1791, the Rev. Mr. Chaplin locked up his daughter when she wanted to marry a popular young man. She died. The parish (which eventually became Millbury) dismissed Chaplin from their pulpit. Quite a change from seventeen years earlier, when they went off to possible war together.

“Humourously call’d the Little Pope”

Here’s one more detail from the merchant John Andrews’s 22 July 1774 letter about how over a hundred Boston merchants came to sign one of two protests against the Boston committee of correspondence.

Andrews wrote that the shorter, milder protest that he signed was “humourously call’d the Little Pope.”

That’s a Pope Night reference! Joshua Coffin’s 1845 Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury stated:

In the day time, companies of little boys might be seen, in various parts of the town, with their little popes, dressed up in the most grotesque and fantastic manner, which they carried about, some on boards, and some on little carriages, for their own and others’ amusement.

Pierre Eugène du Simitière drew a Boston boy with such a “little pope” on a board in 1767. It’s a miniature version of one of the big wagons rolled around on the night of 5 November with (from left) a horned devil holding a lantern, the papal effigy, and a big lantern.

The milder protest was thus like a miniature effigy carried by little boys while the larger, broader protest was like a full Pope Night wagon. That might not reflect well on Andrews and his cohort, but he had enough of a sense of humor to share the joke. 

“To sell according to the tenor of the Covenant”?

John Andrews’s 22 July 1774 letter to his relative in Philadelphia offers an inside look at why he and some other merchants who generally supported the Whigs ended up signing protests against the Boston committee of correspondence.

According to Andrews, he had “countermanded my orders [from Britain] by the first opportunity after the Port Bill arriv’d, and of consequence acquiesced with a non-importation agreement when propos’d about three or four weeks after.”

But then Andrews heard that merchants in Newport, New York, Philadelphia, and points south hadn’t agreed to such an agreement. He figured that boycott wouldn’t take hold, and he’d lose money if he continued to abstain. So he “embrac’d the first opportunity and re-ordered about one fourth part of such goods as I thought would be most in demand.”

But a month or so later, Andrews saw rural towns signing onto the Solemn League and Covenant, a non-consumption agreement—people were promising not to buy those goods he had ordered. That’s why he felt the covenant “has serv’d rather to create dissentions among ourselves than to answer any valuable purpose.” It would cost him money!

Likewise, Andrews wrote, the merchant Samuel Elliot (shown above in later life) was

expecting a large quantity of goods which, should they arrive, he can’t possibly qualify himself to sell according to the tenor of the Covenant, having countermanded ’em no other ways than to have ’em shipped, provided your place, with New York. Rhode Island, &c., should have their goods as usual: and from the determination of those places, he has all the reason in the world to expect them.

Elliot had committed to non-importation only if the merchants in other ports did the same, and he’d told his contacts in Britain to keep shipping him goods if they didn’t. Therefore, he was now expecting to receive lots of stuff that more and more folks in New England were swearing not to buy.

Andrews reported that at the 27 June town meeting in Old South

Eliot display’d his eloquence in a long speech upon the subject, deliver’d in so masterly a stile and manner as to gain ye. plaudits of perhaps the largest assembly ever conven’d here, by an almost universal clap: wherein he deliver’d his sentiments with that freedom and manliness peculiar only to himself.

However, the formal vote at that town meeting was shaped by another set of gentlemen: those who had signed the complimentary addresses to departing governor Thomas Hutchinson and incoming governor Thomas Gage. They were upset by “hearing the letters read that were sent to your place [Philadelphia] and New York (the latter in particular) in regard to that part of their conduct.” Resenting that criticism, those merchants and professional men demanded a vote “to censure and dismiss ye. Committee.” And they lost big.

Andrews said he had expected a motion “to suspend ye. Covenant till ye. [Continental] Congress should meet.” He insisted, “We don’t mean to oppose any general measure that maybe adopted by the Congress, but are well dispos’d in the cause of Freedom as any of our opponents, and would equally oppose and detest Tyranny exerciz’d either in England or America.”

Likewise, some towns considering the Solemn League and Covenant decided to take no action until seeing what the Congress would do, or added clauses reserving the leeway to adjust the terms based on that Congress’s recommendations. But that didn’t make merchants like Elliot and Andrews any happier.

TOMORROW: One last detail.

“An oath, certified by a magistrate to be by them taken”

Earlier this summer, I spent a few days discussing Albert Matthews’s 1915 analysis of two forms of the Solemn League and Covenant, and then laying out how I came to the opposite conclusion about which text came from Boston and which from Worcester.

Part of Matthews’s argument was that one of the texts was “more drastic.” But the main pledge of both texts is:

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.

In that regard, the two versions were equally strict.

One text had this additional promise:

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.

That left the month of September to buy and use goods from Britain imported before 31 August. But nobody seems to have complained about that clause, or the lack of it.

Instead, the sticking point for some opponents was language that appeared in the other text (language which I believe was added to the Boston draft by Worcester’s committee of correspondence, and then endorsed by Boston and adopted by other towns):

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, or will not produce an oath, certified by a magistrate to be by them taken to the following purpose: viz.

I —————— of —————— in the county of —————— 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 newspaper letter I quoted yesterday specifically complained about “The multiplication of Oaths.” Bringing sworn oaths into this boycott was a step too far for that writer (even though people who signed any form of the covenant didn’t need to swear separate oaths).

In a devout society like colonial New England, sworn oaths carried more weight than other sorts of public promises. Bringing up an oath therefore made this text stronger, thus more radical than the other.

The letter writer seems to have expected people to break their strict non-importation promises, offering excuses or seeking exceptions as many Boston merchants had done in 1769–70. Having people swear to strictly adhere to this boycott wouldn’t make them any more careful about its terms, that writer suggested—it would simply give them an incentive to “disregard” an oath. The letter concluded:

…Society cannot exist when Oaths shall cease to be religiously observed. When that dreadful Event happens among any People, their Lives, Liberties and Properties cannot be safe.

Evidently, society depends on us being able to shade the truth in front of our neighbors without worrying about the hereafter.

(The engraving above is “Woman Swearing a Child to a grave Citizen” by William Hogarth, courtesy of the New York Public Library.)

“May not great Heats and Animosities from hence be justly feared?”

In addition to the two protests against the Solemn League and Covenant boycott that I’ve quoted over the past two days, three Boston newspapers also published a letter laying out the argument against it at more length.

That letter is written in the first person singular: “I beg Leave to lay before them the following Facts and Observations…”

However, in a 22 July private letter, John Andrews, a signatory of the milder protest, wrote that “our reasons for a dissent are given [in that essay] in a more explicit manner than in the protest.”

So even if this letter had a singular voice, and may have come from a single hand, a larger community of merchants felt it spoke for them.

That letter was sent to the printers of the Boston Evening-Post, Boston Post-Boy, and Boston News-Letter addressed to “Messirs. Fleets,” “Messieurs MILLS and HICKS,” and “Messi’rs PRINTERS,” respectively. Editors still like a sign of individual attention.

(Management of the News-Letter was in flux that summer. On 9 June Margaret Draper announced that she was continuing her late husband Richard’s partnership with John Boyle. But on 11 August she announced that she was taking over the newspaper herself.)

The letter ran through the terms of the Solemn League and Covenant, emphasizing the hardships and how signers were supposed to shun anyone who didn’t sign and continued to import goods from Britain. Then it argued:

Whoever attends to these Terms of the Covenant, wholly proscribing the Goods expected in the Fall and all those upon hand, unless an Oath is taken, must be greatly concerned lest from the Non-exception of Articles of necessity the people should be drawn into a dangerous Snare, and Perjury in many Cases fatally ensue. The multiplication of Oaths (tending to introduce a disregard of them) has been always carefully avoided by wise Legislators; it being well judged that Society cannot exist when Oaths shall cease to be religiously observed. When that dreadful Event happens among any People, their Lives, Liberties and Properties cannot be safe. . . .

It may also be observed, that if a Carpenter, a Taylor, or a Shoemaker shall refuse to sign, he is to be considered as a contumacious Importer.--Or should they sign the Covenant, they cannot serve those in the Way of their Occupation who shall not---What distress must this occasion at a Season when little or no Employ is to be procured among us without these Restrictions? . . . May not great Heats and Animosities from hence be justly feared?

Upon the whole, as I think this Covenant not adapted to procure that Relief we so greatly need, because I think it arbitrary and oppressive, subversive of our Rights and destructive of the Morals of the People, as also inconsistent with the true Spirit of Liberty and the Constitution, and not founded on the Principles of Honor and Honesty, I am led to offer these Observations to the Public, which appear to me to be founded on Reason.

Of course, the people promoting the boycott wanted it to be total. They wanted non-participants to be shunned. And one group, at least, wanted people to be bound to the movement by oath. That was the path to solidarity.

TOMORROW: The weight of an oath.

“A Committee exercising such extensive Powers as this”

In addition to the main protest against Boston’s committee of correspondence and Solemn League and Covenant boycott, quoted yesterday, there was also a shorter, milder protest signed by only eight merchants.

This was also dated 29 June 1774 and appeared in the same newspapers as the big one. In fact, the Boston Post-Boy printers ran it first, perhaps because it was easier to set in type.

That protest read:

WHEREAS at a Meeting of the Town of Boston, held at the Old-South Meeting-House on the 28th Instant, a Motion was made and seconded, That the Committee of Correspondence of said Town should be censured and dismissed, which being put to Vote passed in the Negative.

We the Subscribers, being Dissentients therefrom, do now enter our Protest, grounded on the following Reasons:

First, Because that notwithstanding we think that a Committee of Correspondence, constitutionally appointed, may at any Time be useful, provided it was under proper Restrictions, and that the Letters wrote by them previous to their being sent were duly considered and approbated by the Town; yet that a Committee exercising such extensive Powers as this has done, is of dangerous Tendency.

This Committee was appointed in November 1772, to state the Rights of the Colonists and of this Province in particular, with the Infringements and Violations thereof that have been, or from Time to Time may be made; and to publish the same to the World as the Sense of the Town; and likewise to request of the other Towns a free Communication of their Sentiments on this Subject; and to make Report of the same to this Town for their Approbation; and were not authorized to publish the same until it was approved, and the Letter accompanyed by the Town; and when this Business was done we apprehend the Committee was dissolved, or at furthest at the End of the Year; and as they have not been re-chosen, we are of Opinion they do not properly now subsist as a Committee.

Because the said Committee have lately, not only without the Knowledge and Approbation of the Town, but in a secret Manner, issued out to many Towns in the Province a Covenant for Non-Consumption of British Goods, accompanied by a Letter recommending the same, signed by their Clerk, which Covenant was of the highest Importance to the Town.

Because they have also, as a Committee of the Town, aspersed the Characters of many respectable Inhabitants of this Town, in Letters written by them to the Cities of New-York and Philadelphia.

Nothing less than a Sense of its being our Indispensable Duty, to defend the Characters of our Neighbours, when we think them injured, could have induced us to give this last Reason.——

We declare we have no private Pique against any one Gentleman of the Committee, but have an Esteem for some of them, and can readily do them Justice to say, that this Conduct is so far from being consonant to the Tenor of their Actions (as far as we have known them) in the common Occurrences of Life, that we were struck with the greatest Surprize at the Discovery.

The men who signed this protest were Edward Payne, Thomas Amory (shown above), John Amory, Samuel Elliot, Caleb Blanchard, Frederick William Geyer, John Andrews, and Samuel Bradstreet. Some were future Loyalists, others moderate Whigs. Payne was even a victim of the Boston Massacre.

This document notably didn’t criticize the Solemn League and Covenant itself, only how the committee had promulgated it without running it by a town meeting first.

In fact, on 30 May the town had instructed the committee to write a non-consumption agreement and communicate it to other Massachusetts towns. The committee members evidently felt they didn’t have to go back to another meeting for approval of the final text.

TOMORROW: Behind the protests.

“A solemn League and Covenant of a most dangerous Nature”

At the start of the month, I described the 28 June 1774 Boston town meeting that endorsed the committee of correspondence and the Solemn League and Covenant boycott it had promulgated.

Boston’s merchants, including men who usually supported the Whigs as well as those who leaned Loyalist, were far outvoted at that meeting. But they nonetheless lodged a protest.

Or actually two.

Those documents were dated 29 June. They appeared in the 4 July Boston Post-Boy, and three days later in the Boston News-Letter. Those newspapers had become the voice of the town’s Loyalists.

The 4 July Boston Evening-Post also published the protests, though trying to remain neutral. The Whig newspapers didn’t touch them.

The longer of those protests said:

WHEREAS at a Meeting of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of this Town, held at Faneuil-Hall, the 27th Instant [i.e., of this month], and from thence adjourned to the South Meeting-House, Copies of certain Circular Letters, wrote by the Committee of Correspondence, so called, for this Town, to the other Towns of this Province, and other Places on the Continent, and Answers thereto from the several Towns and Colonies were read, likewise a certain Circular Letter, accompanied with a solemn League and Covenant of a most dangerous Nature and Tendency, which hath been drawn up by the said Committee of Correspondence, Copies whereof have been by them clandestinely dispersed through the Province, without the Consent or Knowledge of the Town; and recommended to the People of the Country, to execute without Loss of Time, “least their Enemies should defeat its Purpose.”

These Points being fully spoke to, with Candour and Moderation, by Gentlemen of different Sentiments, it was at length motioned and seconded, That the Committee of Correspondence be censured by the Town, and dismissed from any further Service in that Capacity: after some Discussion on the Subject, and other Letters produced and read, the Question was put, and passed in the negative.

Wherefore we, the Dissentients, do now make this public and solemn Protest against the Doings of the said Committee, as such, against the solemn League and Covenant aforementioned, and against the Proceedings of the Town, so far as they have adopted the illegal Proceedings of the said Committee of Correspondence, for the following Reasons, viz.

I. Because with regard to the solemn League and Covenant aforementioned, we look on it to be a base, wicked, and illegal Measure, calculated to distress and ruin many Merchants, Shopkeepers, and others, in this Metropolis, and effect the whole commercial Interest of this Province; to put a Check at once to our Industry by stopping the Exportation of all the staple Articles of our Trade, such as Oil, Pot and Pearl-Ashes, Flax-Seed, Naval-Stores, Lumber of all Sorts, and likewise Cod Fish by way of Spain and Portugal, the proceeds of which go to Great-Britain as Remittance for Goods; also will put an End to a very valuable Branch of Trade to the Province, the Ship-Building; to create unhappy Divisions in Towns and in Families; to open a Door for the most wicked Perjuries, and to introduce almost every Species of Evil, that we have not yet felt, and cannot serve any good Purpose.

II. Because the Committee of Correspondence, in many of their Letters held forth Principles, which instead of extricating us from our Difficulties, serve in our Opinions still further to involve us, to which Principles we cannot accede.

III. Because the Committee of Correspondence, in some Letters that were read from them to New-York, Philadelphia, and other Places, particularly two to New-York, of the 28th and 30th of May, have falsely, maliciously and scandalously, vilified and abused the Characters of many of us, only for dissenting from them in Opinion, a Right which we shall claim, so long as we hold any Claim to Freedom or Liberty.

Both newspapers then printed three long columns of signatories—129 in all. They didn’t arrange those names in the same order, but provincial treasurer Harrison Gray (shown above) appeared in the top row in both papers, and he had also led the debate in the town meeting, so he’s taken to be this protest’s principal author.

It’s extremely rare to see so many men’s names attached to a document in the newspapers. Devoting that amount of space shows how much weight these men and their message carried for these printers. At the same time, 129 men was a decided minority in the town meeting. That test had already been run.

TOMORROW: The second protest.

“The Majority were four to One against them”

On 28 June 1774, the Boston town meeting witnessed “long Debates” about the committee of correspondence’s call for a non-consumption agreement, according to town clerk William Cooper’s record.

In his diary the merchant John Rowe confirmed, “The Debates very warm on both sides.” Unlike the previous day, alas, he didn’t record any of the speakers.

But the group urging a repudiation of the committee consisted mainly of major merchants, some with positions within the royal government. They worried that this boycott, on top of the Boston Port Bill, would doom the town’s economy.

The leaders of the Whigs, in reply, argued that standing up to Parliament’s Coercive Acts by not buying any more from Britain was their best way to force the repeal of those laws.

Eventually the meeting held a vote on the merchants’ motion to censure. Cooper recorded that “a great Majority” voted against repudiating the committee.

Rowe expressed disappointment, at least in his diary:

the Committee are wrong in the matter. The Merchants have taken up against them, they have in my Opinion exceeded their Power & the Motion was Put that they should be dismissed. the Gentlemen that made & supported this Motion could not Obtain their Vote, the Majority were four to One against them.

this affair will cause much evil one against the other. I wish for Peace in this Town I fear the Consequences.

The Whigs then sought to affirm the town’s support for the committee by offering their own motion:

That the Town bear open Testimony that they are abundantly satisfied of the upright Intentions, and much approve the honest Zeal of the Comittee of Correspondence & desire that they would persevere with their usual Activity & Firmness, continuing stedfast in the Way of well Doing

A “Vast” majority approved that.

After that, Samuel Adams returned to the chair, the committee on employing the poor said they were once again not ready to report, and the meeting adjourned until July.

That was the last attempt of the Boston Loyalists and/or merchants to curb the Whigs electorally, and they fell far short. Which wasn’t a surprise. The Whigs won every vote along the way, even on matters like which men would go ask if the gathering could move to the Old South Meeting-House.

The Boston town meeting would remain stalwart and implacably opposed to the royal administration until the war began.

COMING UP: Protests against the protest.

“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!”

“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.