TEN YEARS OF AGITATION, 1765-1774 189 day of the session), Henry having started home, the fifth resolution - the most important of the five - was expunged from the record. But meantime the whole seven had been published to the world; and these resolutions “rang the alarm bell for the continent.” The sixth and seventh resolutions (never really adopted) asserted that the colonists were "not bound to yield obedience" to any law that so imposed taxation upon them from without, and denounced any one who should defend such taxation as an "enemy of his majesty's colony." These were the clauses that sanctioned forcible resistance. The fifth resolution declared that every attempt to vest power to tax the colonists in "any persons whatsoever" except the colonial Assemblies "has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom." It was in the debate upon this resolution that Henry startled the House by his famous warning from history. "Tarquin and Caesar," cried his thrilling voice, "had each his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third" -here he was interrupted by cries of Treason! Treason! from the Speaker and royalist members; but "rising to a loftier attitude," with flashing eye, the orator continued, "may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." The Stamp of 1765 On the day that Henry moved his resolutions, the Massachusetts Assembly invited the legislatures of the other colonies to send "committees" to a general meeting at New York in October. At first the sug- Act gestion was ignored; but in August and September Congress (as public feeling mounted under the stimulus of the Virginia resolutions), colony after colony named delegates, and the Stamp Act Congress duly assembled. Fervently protesting loyalty to the crown, that meeting drew up a noble Declaration of Rights and a group of admirable addresses to king and parliament. It did not directly suggest forcible opposition; but it helped, mightily, to crystallize public opinion, and to give dignity to the agitation against the law. Better still, it prophesied united action. Christopher Gadsden, delegate from South Carolina, exclaimed "There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on this continent; but all of us, Americans." Violent resistance Meanwhile, payment of debts to British creditors was generally suspended,' and local "associations" pledged themselves to import no British goods until the Act should be repealed. Sometimes these early to the law, Non-Importation Agreements directly threatened violence. At a Westmoreland County meeting at Leedstown (Virginia) on February 27, 1766, the following resolutions were unanimously adopted: and the boycott We, who subscribe this paper, have associated, and do bind ourselves to each other, to God, and to our country, by the firmest ties that religion and virtue can frame, most sacredly and punctually to stand by, and with our lives and fortunes, to support, maintain, and defend each other in the observance and execution of these following articles. Thirdly. As the Stamp Act does absolutely direct the property of the people to be taken from them without their consent expressed by their representatives, and as in many cases it deprives the British American subject of his right to trial by jury; we do determine, at every hazard, and, paying no regard to danger or to death, we will exert every faculty, to prevent the execution of the said Stamp Act in any instance whatsoever within this Colony. And every abandoned wretch, who shall be so lost to virtue and public good, as wickedly to contribute to the introduction or fixture of the Stamp Act in this Colony, by using stampt paper, or by any other means, we will, with the utmost expedition, convince all such profligates that immediate danger shall attend their prostitute purpose. Sixthly. If any attempt shall be made on the liberty or property of any associator for any action or thing to be done in consequence of this engagement, we do most solemnly bind ourselves 1 This method of coercing English public opinion was renewed in the later period of this struggle. In 1774 George Washington wrote to a friend in England: "As to withholding our remittances [payments of debts], that is a point on which I own I have my doubts on several accounts, but principally on that of justice." TEN YEARS OF AGITATION, 1765-1774 191 by the sacred engagements above entered into, at the utmost risk of our lives and fortunes, to restore such associate to his liberty, and to protect him in the enjoyment of his property. This bold and "seditious" language was drawn up by Richard Henry Lee, and among the 115 signers were six Lees and a Washington. But more commonly "Sons of the violent resistance was taken care of by secret Liberty" societies known as Sons of Liberty, which terrorized the stamp distributors and compelled hesitating merchants to obey the non-importation agreements. In various places, supporters of the law were brutally handled. A Boston mob sacked the house of Thomas Hutchinson; and Andrew Oliver, stamp distributor for Massachusetts, standing under the "Liberty Tree" (on which he had been hanged in effigy shortly before), was forced, in the presence of two thousand people, to swear to a solemn "recantation and detestation" of his office Pro Patria The first Man that either distributes or makes use of Stampt Paper, let him take care of his House, Person, & Effech. Vox Populi ; We dare A HANDBILL CIRCULATED BY THE NEW YORK before a justice of the peace. When the day came for the law to go into effect every stamp distributor on the continent had been "persuaded" into resigning, and no stamps were to be had. After a short period of hesitation, the courts opened as usual in most of the colonies, newspapers resumed publication, and all forms of business ignored the law. In England the ministry had changed, and the new government was amazed at the uproar in the colonies. It was deluged, too, with petitions for repeal from Repeal of English merchants, who already felt the loss of the Stamp American trade; and, after one of the greatest of Act parliamentary debates, the Stamp Act was repealed (March 17, 1766). No serious attempt had been made to enforce it, and no demand was made for the punishment of the rioters. The English government did ask the colonial assemblies to compensate citizens who had suffered in the riots; but even this request was attended to very imperfectly. Within a few months the English ministry was changed once more. Pitt (now in the Lords) was the head of the new government: and, excepting for Charles Townshend, A REDUCED FACSIMILE, from Scharf and Wescott's History of Philadelphia. The skull and crossbones take the place of the stamp required by law. This paper resumed publication in one week without stamps. all its members were "friends of America." But ill-health soon forced Pitt to give up the active management of affairs, and the brilliant but unscrupulous Townshend, backed by the King, seized the leadership and turned promptly to schemes of American taxation. The Town In May, 1767, Townshend secured the enactment of tariffs on glass, red and white lead, paper, painters' colors, and tea imported into the colonies. In the shend Acts, Stamp Act discussions, some Americans had objected to the stamp duties as an internal tax. Now Townshend cynically professed his readiness to give 1767 TEN YEARS OF AGITATION, 1765–1774 193 them the external taxation they preferred. This tone was bad enough to a sensitive people flushed with recent victory; and two other features made the bill unendurable: (1) Trials for attempts to evade the law were to take place before admiralty courts without juries; and (2) the revenue was appropriated to the payment of colonial governors and judges, so as to give the crown complete control over such officers. Thus this law began a wholly new phase of the struggle with England. In the Stamp Act period the honest purpose of the English Government had been to protect the colonies, not to oppress them. But the Townshend law was a wanton attempt to demonstrate supremacy, with no pretense of protecting America. "From this time," says Lecky, "the conduct of the government toward America is little more than a series of deplorable blunders." Townshend died that same summer; but, for three years, his successor, Lord North, maintained his policy. Meantime the American continent seethed once more And Lord with pamphlets, addresses, and non-importation North agreements. Assemblies denounced the law; royal governors, under strict instructions, ordered them to rescind, received defiant answers, and replied with messages of dissolution. Then, in the absence of means for legal action, the colonists turned again to illegal violence. Mobs openly landed goods that had paid no tax, and sometimes tarred and feathered the customs officials. . To check such resistance to law, parliament, in 1769, added to its offenses by providing that a colonist, accused of treason, might be carried to England for trial, The Virginia of 1769 in flat defiance of the ancient English princi- Assembly's ple of trial by a jury of the neighborhood. This Resolutions threat roused Virginia again. Virginia was still the most important colony. It had been less affected by the Townshend regulations than the commercial colonies had been; and the ministry had been particularly gentle toward it, hoping to draw it away from the rest of America. But now the Assembly unanimously adopted resolutions denouncing both the Townshend law and this recent attack |