Proclamation Line 1763

• Attempt to limit westward expansion until natives in newly acquired territory could be pacified and defense/control could be maintained/strengthened by 10,000 British troops stationed/assigned to defend it.

• Appalachian Mts. line of demarcation

• Colonists already living beyond Appalachians encouraged to come back (perceived threat)

Quartering/Billeting Act

• Required all colonial assembles to furnish food, supplies and salaries to soldiers station within their respective provincial boundaries.

– Not a direct tax; rather an order for colonial assemblies to, in effect, tax themselves; thus, this was regarded by colonists as a form of taxation w/o representation unless colonial assemblies had the right to refuse the order or to comply in so far as they pleased, e.g. New York Assembly

– NY Governor instructed to veto the New York Assembly’s every act until it fully complied with the act.

Stamp Act (1764)• Bill proposed by new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Grenville and

approved by Parliament (March, 1765);

– law went into effect November, 1765– Law designed to defray cost of maintaining troops– Almost anything formally written on or printed (lawsuits, diplomas, deeds

and wills, almanacs, advertisements, bills and bonds, customs papers, newspapers, marriage certificates) would have to be on special “stamped” paper shipped from British Central Stamp Office in London to agents in colonies who would dispense it only after tax was paid.

Stamp Act

• Even though official aim of the act to raise $, the sums it brought in were quite small

• To colonists, herein was the danger:

– Because the sums involved were quite small, “some persons…may be inclined to acquiesce under it.” (i.e. the smaller the taxes, the more dangerous they were b/c they would the more easily be found acceptable by the incautious

– This would establish a precedent by the tacit submission of the colonies; thus, if this attempt was successful, Parliament would pass other laws which would impose further taxes

Colonial response(s) to Stamp Act

• Requested with all due humility that Parliament repeal the tax

• Boycott (non-importation agreements)

• Intimidate stamp distributors by vandalizing their property or threatening them with mob violence, thus they would do nothing to execute the act (next slide)

• Civil disobedience (principle of nullification and non-compliance);

– do nothing that required the stamps

– Proceed without using required stamps

– Radical response: • Some saw it as an attempt to suppress

knowledge of what was happening by replacing duties and restraints on the press

• Some imagined that Grenville designed by this act to force the colonies into rebellion so he can use it as a pretext to crack down on them with severity and reduce them to servitude and dependency

• Sons of Liberty: “fight/resist”

“The Bostonians paying the exciseman, or tarring and feathering”(1774 British political cartoon)

Stamp Act Congress• Stamp Act Congress

– Originated in VA House of Burgesses, sparked by Patrick Henry, adopted a set of resolutions denouncing Parliamentary taxation (other colonial assemblies followed)

– At invitation of Massachusetts, 9 colonies sent delegates to a Congress in New York (October, 1765)

– Delegates joined together in a set of resolutions and petitions denying the Authority of Parliament to tax them.

– Though beyond Parliament’s power to tax; resolutions acknowledged colonists were not beyond Parliament’s power to legislate (colonists made the distinction)

• Even though theoretically, the colonists’ arguments implied they were wholly beyond Parliamentary control (i.e. the only thing binding Englishmen and colonists together was the fact they were subjects of the same king., few colonists were willing to raise this issue yet.

Patrick Henry opposes Stamp Act before VA House of Burgesses (May 29, 1765)

British response to colonial reaction(s) to Stamp Act

• anti-stamp act faction within Parliament:

Merchants/manufacturers (under pressure by boycott) pressured their representatives to rescind the act;

these individuals petitioned Parliament for relief from the negative affects of the act.

Other members in Parliament favored repeal because they believed the act was based on erroneous principle to begin with (that Parliament had the authority to tax the colonists: agreed with colonial view that taxation was not part of the Governing/legislative power)

Anti-Stamp Act factions led by William Pitt and the Marquis of Rockingham

In an attempt to win votes, Rockingham subjected members of Parliament to a speech delivered by

Ben Franklin (02-13-1766)

Franklin’s speech

– Franklin, as a matter of political expediency (to win votes/repeal the act)

•– Succeeded in conveying the false impression that

Americans were objecting to merely to internal taxes, taxes on trade (he made American demands seem moderate)

•– Indirect—external tax: imports coming into colonies are

taxed, but tax is part of purchase price (it’s added to the price of the good and is paid outside the colonies (purpose: to regulate commerce)

•– Direct—internal tax: imports coming into colonies are

taxed and the tax isn’t added to the price of the good; it’s added after the purchase, specifically as a tax (i.e. to raise $)

• In reality, the cololnists were opposed to all impositions/taxes equally b/c all taxes equally diminish the estates upon which they are charged (they didn’t differentiate between or among taxes)

• He also conveyed to the members the impression that Americans were:

• Oppressed by Stamp Act

• Most members of Parliament, having never bothered to have read colonial declarations/petitions, believed him.

The Townshend Duties

• After becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, on May 13, 1767 Charles Townshend revealed his painless way of getting $ out of America; saddled America with a full measure of external taxes (Townshend duties)

• Townshend also reorganized the customs service; duties would be collected in America under the supervision of a separate Board of Customs Commissioners located in Boston

• The duties provided more explicit evidence of a wide-ranging plot/conspiracy; because they had been passed despite all the violence of the colonists’ reaction to the Stamp Act

Colonial Response to Townshend Duties

• Non importation of British goods until duties were repealed • Refuted Townshend’s justification for imposing duties; quoted the resolves

of the Stamp Act Congress

“Here is no distinction made between internal and external taxes”

• Denied Parliament’s right to levy duties for the purpose of revenue

Townshend duties contd.• The measure enhanced the influence of

the customs administration, which had already come under suspicion, by reinforcing their significance/influence

• There had been, it was realized by the late 1760’s, a sudden expansion in the number of posts in the colonial government…

• Franklin explained:“generally strangers to the provinces they are sent to govern, have no estate, natural connection, or relation there to give them an affection for the country…they come only to make money as fast as they can; are sometimes men of vicious characters and broken fortunes, sent by a minister merely to get them out of the way”

Colonists’ attitude toward customs agents

• inferior officers

• “wretches…of such infamous characters”

• leeches (their salaries would be paid from the duties they were sent to collect)

• They were viewed as “a set of idle drones,” such “lazy, proud, worthless pensioners and placemen”

(2.) Since the crown and its Ministers had appointive Powers, they controlled

Who filled these new Positions; this power was

Used to enhance their influence over membersOf Parliament to increase

Their power at the expense Of Parliament

(3.) In order to gain influenceWith the crown and to win its

Favor (and thus to be Rewarded with these positions

Along with the salaries and pensionsThat went with them, members of

Parliament and other officials inGovernment had to demonstrate

Their loyalty to the crown.

(1.) The crown and its ministersUsed the offering of these

Posts and offices toDistract members of

Parliament while they Slowly began to increase their

Power and influence. Furthermore, Parliament was Being corrupted through its

Obsession with extravagance(i.e. all they seemed to care about

Was winning favor and being rewarded)

Colonists’ attitudes toward customs agents contd.

• The Birth of the Republic: 1763-1789 (p.37):

“It was not that the colonists objected to a more efficient enforcement of the Navigation Acts. In 1768, as we have seen, they were still ready to admit Parliament’s right to regulate their trade for the benefit of the mother country; and while they would scarcely welcome anyone who interfered with smuggling, they would not deny that England had a right to interfere. But the New Commission was not there simply to enforce the old Navigation Acts. It was there to collect the revenue which Townshend had promised Parliament from America. If the men chosen for this purpose had been saints, they would still have been unpopular in New England. Unfortunately the commissioners who descended on Boston in November 1767 bore no resemblance to saints. They were a rapacious band of bureaucrats who brought to their task an irrepressible greed and a vindictive malice that could not fail to aggravate the antagonism not only against themselves but also against the Parliament that sent them”

• it was in the best interest of those who had those pensions or who held those offices only at will of the crown to concur in all the crown’s measures

• These customs agents and officeholders were viewed as instruments of power, manipulated by the crown to serve its will

• Colonists believed they were parasitic officeholders,

thoroughly corrupted by their obligations to those who had appointed them; officeholders who would strive to “distinguish themselves by their zeal in defending and promoting measures which they knew beyond all question to be destructive to the just rights and true interests of their country.” Officeholders who sought to “serve the ambitious purposes of great men at home [i.e. the crown and the ministry].”

• A wise and prudent customs official would realize how crucial it was to please the powerful and how dangerous to provoke them—that compliance would obtain a favorable attention

The Usual method for tax collection• These collectors were susceptible to a more

lucrative kind of graft:

Violations of the Sugar Act were punishable by seizure of the offending vessel and cargo

Both would be sold and the proceeds divided into thirds:

1/3 to English treasury1/3 to colonial governor1/3 to customs officer responsible for

seizure

To an enterprising officer bent on amassing a fortune, the prospect of making as many seizures as possible was inviting

Perceived as a racket to colonists

Usual method used by tax collectors contd.

(1.) Follow lax procedure for a period

(2.) shift suddenly to a strict procedure

•(3.) seize all vessels that were following hitherto the policy allowed

Usual method used by tax collectors contd.

This practice involved little risk for the collection officers

the Sugar Act provided that they were to be free from any damage suits for mistaken seizure as long as they could show “probable cause”

Since these cases would be tried in Admiralty courts w/o juries, civil suits brought by colonial merchants were usually thrown out; besides, such suits were often very costly to the one bringing them

Furthermore, these officials were afforded protection by British troops stationed in America

These racketeers were hated by the colonists, merchants, traders

Changes to the judiciary (1760’s)• By the mid 1760’s, the independence

of the judiciary (crucial to the balance of the Constitution) was being threatened

– December 1761: Orders were sent out from the King in Council to all colonies permanently forbidding the issuance of judges’ commissions anywhere on any tenure but that of the pleasure of the crown

– Whereas life tenure was an effective check on executive power b/c it helped to ensure the independence of the judiciary, judicial tenure “at the will of the crown” would mean the bench would be occupied by men who depended upon the smiles of thecrown for their daily bread and the possibility of having an independent judiciary as an effective check upon executive power would be lost

– Furthermore, this condition was also perceived as a threat to liberty since the court existed in large part to define and protect the rights of Englishmen (including colonists)

Lords North (left) and Hillsborough

• September 1767: Townshend succeeded by Lord North as new Chancellor of the Exchequer

• January 1768: Crown created new office: Secretariat of State (for the colonies only); First Secretariat of State was Lord Hillsborough (ex offico president of Board of Trade)

– Both North and Hillsborough were committed to preserving the supremacy of Parliament and they were convinced that colonists were aimed at total independence

– This conviction motivated them in coming years and by acting on it they eventually made it come true

The situation in Boston (Massachusetts colonial seat of government)

(1.) February 1768: Massachusetts Assembly sent circular letter to other colonies denying Parliaments right to tax America

(open challenge to England).

(2.) Hillsborough’s ordered Massachusetts Assembly

to rescind letter& other colonial assemblies

to treat it “with the contempt It deserves” Rather, Massachusetts Assembly voted 92-17 to refuse to

rescind it & other colonial assemblies formally approved it.

(3.) Massachusetts governor instructed to dissolve assembly; assembly, defiant, contd. as a de facto assembly

Hillsborough determined to make an example in Boston;

he shipped 2 regiments of British regulars to Boston (Sept. 1768);

with 2 more regiments soon to follow.

Troops in Boston (1768)• The two regiments of regular infantry with artillery disembarked in Boston on October 1,

1768

• For many months the harassed Governor Bernard had sought some legal means or excuse for summoning military help in his vain efforts to maintain if not an effective administration then at least order in the face of Stamp Act riots, circular letters, tumultuous town meetings, and assaults on customs officials

• Colonists were perplexed; they felt threatened by the presence of British troopsNecessity?

They hadn’t been necessary up until now (before, the colonists fended for themselves)

The greatest threat (French in Canada) had been defeated

Some Americans thought England was sending the army to keep them quiet while extracting their liberties (to dampen the enthusiasm of would-be rebels)

Such armies, to the colonists, were merely gangs of restless mercenaries, responsible only to the whims of rulers who paid them, capable of destroying

all right, law, and liberty

The Presence of troops in Boston

The arrival of troops in Boston (October 1, 1768) increased rather than decreased the governor’s troubles:

To Bostonians, the presence of troops in a “peaceful” town had such portentous meaning that resistance instantly stiffened.

It wasn’t so much the physical threat of troops that affected the attitudes of the Bostonians; it was the bearing their arrival had on the likely tendency of events.

True, British regulars had been introduced into the colonies on a permanent basis at the end of the Seven Years’ War, but it had then been argued that troops were needed to police the newly acquired territories, and that they were not, in any case, to be regularly garrisoned in peaceful populous towns; no such defense could be made of the troops sent to Boston in 1768.

Andrew Eliot wrote from Boston to Thomas Hollis (September 1768)

• “To have a standing army! Good God! What can be worse to a people who have tasted the sweets of liberty! Things are come to an unhappy crisis; there will never be that harmony between Great Britain and her colonies that there hath been; all confidence is at an end; and the moment there is any blood shed all affection will cease”

• Eliot was convinced that if the English government “had not had their hands full at home they would have crushed the colonies”. As it was, England’s most recent actions tended only “to hasten that independency which at present the warmest among us deprecate….I fear for the nation,….”

• Eliot observed a year after the troops had first appeared: “they coolly woo away the soldiers and drag offending officers before the courts….things cannot long remain in the state they are now in; they are hastening to a crisis. What will be the event, God knows.”

Bostonians declared their opposition to the presence of troops at a town meeting(September 13, 1768)

• “The raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with the consent of Parliament, is against the law,” [It is] the indefeasible right of [British] subjects to be consulted and to give their free consent in person or by representatives of their own free election to the raising and keeping a standing army among them; and the inhabitants of this town, being free subjects, have the same right derived from nature and confirmed by the British constitution as well as the said royal charter; and therefore the raising or keeping a standing army without their consent in person or by representatives of their own free election would be an infringement of their natural, constitutional, and charter rights; and the employing such army for the enforcing of laws made without the consent of the people, in person or by their representatives would be a grievance.”

• September 22, 1768: To effect a united position throughout the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony, Bostonians called a convention; the delegates at the convention merely commended the actions already taken by the colonial assembly and restated their opposition to the presence of a standing army.

• Upon learning of the unauthorized Massachusetts convention, members of Parliament suggested/directed the king to make an inquisition at Boston for treason and suggested the trials be held before a special commission (violation of right to trial by jury); Parliament discovered a legal justification for violating this right in an act passed during the reign of Henry VIII (16 th century)

Colonial reaction to presence of British troops

• Fear and hatred became edged with contempt and Bostonians found many ways to harass the troops:

– Troops were prosecuted by city magistrates for every trifling offense– Troops met by people on the streets with contempt– Children pelted them with snowballs and other objects– Epithets (negative adjectives)

– Still, by restraining their anger insofar as offering no open affront demonstrations to the troops, Bostonians were able to win universal support/sympathy throughout the colonies while presenting English officials with a dilemma; the embarrassing calm and lack of lawlessness made it seemingly apparent the troops were not needed.

– Result: Summer 1769 the British home government ordered two of the four regiments in Boston back to Halifax; this decision led many Bostonians/colonists to conclude the remaining regiments weren’t in Boston to preserve law and order but to cow Bostonians into submission and to quell any potential resistance directed toward unpopular British actions/policies (such as the Townshend Acts).

The Boston Massacre• March 5, 1779: a boy who was hurling

insults was hit on the ear by a British soldier with the butt of his rifle. The boy screamed and a crowd assembled.

• The crowd grew when church bells rang a false fire alarm.

• The crowd harassed the British soldiers by hurling insults, ice chunks and other objects at them, daring them to fire.

• The crowd was under the false assumption the soldiers had no such authority to fire upon the crowd.

• One of the nine soldiers was knocked to the ground and eight of them fired into the crowd.

The Boston Massacre

• The casualties

17 year old boy named Maverick

A ropewalker named Sam Gray

A mulatto named Crispus Atticus (central figure)

A sailor named James Caldwell

An Irishman named Patrick Carr

Reactions to the “Massacre”• After the event, the troops withdrew from the city to Castle William in the

harbor.• Customs commissioners remained behind unabashed and unchastened.• Several Navy warships sent to America• Any doubts that the troops in Boston constituted a standing army and that it

was the purpose of a standing army to terrify a populace into compliance with tyrannical wills were silenced by that event

• Eliot to Hollis: “[the Boston Massacre] serves to show the impossibility of our living in peace with a standing army.”

• A famous pamphlet which narrated of the massacre was written by James Bowdoin and others for the Boston Town Meeting; the narrative stressed the deliberateness of the shooting and the clarity of the design that lay behind the lurid event.

• The acquittal of the indicted soldiers did not alter the conviction that the massacre was the logical work of a standing army; there was suspicion of judicial irregularities.

The Trial

• The eight soldiers (William Wemms, William M’Cauley, Matthew Killroy, Hugh Montgomery, James Hartegan, Hugh White, William Warren, and John Carroll) had difficulty securing counsel, but were told by Robert Auchmatz and Josiah Quincy, Jr. that they would take their case if John Adams would join.

Letter exchange between Josiah Quincy, Jr. and his father, Josiah Quincy

Braintree, March 22, 1770

My Dear Son,

I am under great affliction, at hearing the bitterest reproaches [criticisms] uttered against you, for having become an advocate [attorney] for those criminals who are charged with the murder of their fellow citizens. Good God! Is it possible? I will not believe it…

I must own [admit] to you, it has filled the bosom of your aged and infirm parent with anxiety and distress, lest it should not only prove true, but destructive of your reputation and interest and I repeat, I will not believe it, unless it be confirmed by your own mouth, or under your own hand.

Your anxious and distressed parent.

Josiah Quincy

Boston, March 26, 1770

Honoured Sir,

I have little leisure, and less inclination either to know, or to take notice, of those ignorant slanderers, who have dared to utter their “bitter reproaches” in your hearing against me, for having become an advocate for criminals charged with murder…

Let such be told, Sir, that these criminals charged with murder, are not yet legally proved guilty, and therefore, however criminal, are entitled by the laws of God and man, to all legal counsel and aid; that my duty as a lawyer strengthened the obligation…

I never harboured the expectation, nor any great desire, that all men should speak well of me…

There are honest men in all sects—I wish their approbation [praise]—there are wicked bigots in all parties,--I abhor [hate] them.

I am truly and affectionately, your son,

Josiah Quincy Jun.

The Trial• Adams was strongly opposed to British military presence in the city but he believed

the soldiers were entitled to counsel—he had a sense of fairness.

• Although Adams put his own public standing on the line, his own ties to the Sons of Liberty and other patriots through his cousin, Samuel Adams, probably gave him more freedom to represent the soldiers than if he had been a Tory sympathizer.

• The continued esteem in which Adams was held demonstrated by his election as Boston’s representative to the state legislature even after he accepted the case and during the time when Samuel Adams was using the massacre for continuing agitation of the patriot cause.

The Trial

• Total of 3 trials held:– One for Captain Thomas Preston who although unarmed had been in

charge of the soldiers and who was alleged by some to have given an order to fire.

– One for the eight soldiers who had fired into the crowd.

– One for Tory sympathizers alleged to have fired at the crowd from the windows of the Customs House.

– Samuel Quincy and Robert Treat Paine prosecuted the case brought on behalf of the king

– Knowing that passions needed some time to cool, Adams succeeded in postponing the first trial until October 25; after a 6 day trial, Preston was acquitted.

– The second trial (of the other 8 soldiers) set for November 27; it was a dramatic 10 day trial.

Adams’s role in the second trial

• He selected a jury of men outside Boston• He argued it was better for a guilty man to go

free than for an innocent one to be punished• He demonstrated the soldiers were justified in

trying to save their own lives in the face of multiple assaults from a mob

• He avoided testimony that would have identified individual mob ringleaders (like Samuel Adams)

The Verdict

• NOT GUILTY FOR SIX

• THE OTHER TWO WERE CONVICTED FOR MANSLAUGHTER

• After Adams requested that the two soldiers who were found guilty receive “the benefit of clergy” [a legal term for a reduced sentence] they were branded on their thumbs and released

The third trial (for the Tories)

• Followed the second trial by a week; was quickly over as the witnesses were discredited and the jury gave an acquittal without even adjourning for conference.

The acquittal of the indicted soldiers did not alter the conviction that the

massacre was the logical work of a standing army; there was suspicion of

judicial irregularities.

Boston Town Meeting to its Assembly Representatives (1770):

A series of occurrences, many recent events…afford great reason to believe that a deep laid and desperate plan of imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed, for the extinction of all civil liberty…The august and once revered fortress of English freedom—the admirable work of ages—the BRITISH CONSTITUTION seems fast tottering into fatal and inevitable ruin. The dreadful catastrophe threatens universal havoc, and presents an awful warning to hazard all if, peradventure, we in these distant confines of the earth may prevent being totally overwhelmed and buried under the ruins of our most established rights

Townshend Duties repealed

Boston Tea Party(December 16, 1773)

Boston Tea Party• Most dramatic and illegal of a series of actions throughout North American colonies to protest

British Tea Act of 1773

• Organized by Sons of Liberty

• 150 patriots (disguised as Native Americans) boarded 3 British ships anchored in Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea (90,000 lbs.) belonging to East India Company valued at £10,ooo into the water

• The event took 3 hours

Samuel Adams

Thomas Jefferson’s statement on the rights of colonists (1774)

De Facto House of Burgesses meets at Raleigh Tavern

First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia in 1774