LORD NORTH'S BILL FAVORING THE EXPORTATION OF TEAS--SHIPS FREIGHTED WITH
TEA TO THE COLONIES--SENT BACK FROM SOME OF THE PORTS--TEA DESTROYED AT
BOSTON--PASSAGE OF THE BOSTON PORT BILL--SESSION OF THE HOUSE OF
BURGESSES--SPLENDID OPENING--BURST OF INDIGNATION AT THE PORT BILL--HOUSE
DISSOLVED--RESOLUTIONS AT THE RALEIGH TAVERN--PROJECT OF A GENERAL
CONGRESS--WASHINGTON AND LORD DUNMORE--THE PORT BILL GOES INTO
EFFECT--GENERAL GAGE AT BOSTON--LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
The general covenant throughout the colonies against the use of taxed tea,
had operated disastrously against the interests of the East India Company,
and produced an immense accumulation of the proscribed article in their
warehouses. To remedy this, Lord North brought in a bill (1773), by which
the company were allowed to export their teas from England to any part
whatever, without paying export duty. This, by enabling them to offer their
teas at a low price in the colonies would, he supposed, tempt the Americans
to purchase large quantities, thus relieving the company, and at the same
time benefiting the revenue by the impost duty. Confiding in the wisdom of
this policy, the company disgorged their warehouses, freighted several
ships with tea, and sent them to various parts of the colonies. This
brought matters to a crisis. One sentiment, one determination, pervaded the
whole continent. Taxation was to receive its definitive blow. Whoever
submitted to it was an enemy to his country. From New York and Philadelphia
the ships were sent back, unladen, to London. In Charleston the tea was
unloaded, and stored away in cellars and other places, where it perished.
At Boston the action was still more decisive. The ships anchored in the
harbor. Some small parcels of tea were brought on shore, but the sale of
them was prohibited. The captains of the ships, seeing the desperate state
of the case, would have made sail back for England, but they could not
obtain the consent of the consignees, a clearance at the custom-house, or a
passport from the governor to clear the fort. It was evident, the tea was
to be forced upon the people of Boston, and the principle of taxation
established.
To settle the matter completely, and prove that, on a point of principle,
they were not to be trifled with, a number of the inhabitants, disguised as
Indians, boarded the ships in the night (18th December), broke open all the
chests of tea, and emptied the contents into the sea. This was no rash and
intemperate proceeding of a mob, but the well-considered, though resolute
act of sober, respectable citizens, men of reflection, but determination.
The whole was done calmly, and in perfect order; after which the actors in
the scene dispersed without tumult, and returned quietly to their homes.
The general opposition of the colonies to the principle of taxation had
given great annoyance to government, but this individual act concentrated
all its wrath upon Boston. A bill was forthwith passed in Parliament
(commonly called the Boston port bill), by which all lading and unlading of
goods, wares, and merchandise, were to cease in that town and harbor, on
and after the 4th of June, and the officers of the customs to be
transferred to Salem.
Another law, passed soon after, altered the charter of the province,
decreeing that all counsellors, judges, and magistrates, should be
appointed by the crown, and hold office during the royal pleasure.
This was followed by a third, intended for the suppression of riots; and
providing that any person indicted for murder, or other capital offence,
committed in aiding the magistracy, might be sent by the governor to some
other colony, or to Great Britain, for trial.
Such was the bolt of Parliamentary wrath fulminated against the devoted
town of Boston. Before it fell there was a session in May, of the Virginia
House of Burgesses. The social position of Lord Dunmore had been
strengthened in the province by the arrival of his lady, and a numerous
family of sons and daughters. The old Virginia aristocracy had vied with
each other in hospitable attentions to the family. A court circle had
sprung up. Regulations had been drawn up by a herald, and published
officially, determining the rank and precedence of civil and military
officers, and their wives. The aristocracy of the Ancient Dominion was
furbishing up its former splendor. Carriages and four rolled into the
streets of Williamsburg, with horses handsomely caparisoned, bringing the
wealthy planters and their families to the seat of government.
Washington arrived in Williamsburg on the 16th, and dined with the governor
on the day of his arrival, having a distinguished position in the court
circle, and being still on terms of intimacy with his lordship. The House
of Burgesses was opened in form, and one of its first measures was an
address of congratulation to the governor, on the arrival of his lady. It
was followed up by an agreement among the members to give her ladyship a
splendid ball, on the 27th of the month.
All things were going on smoothly and smilingly, when a letter, received
through the corresponding committee, brought intelligence of the vindictive
measure of Parliament, by which the port of Boston was to be closed on the
approaching 1st of June.
The letter was read in the House of Burgesses, and produced a general burst
of indignation. All other business was thrown aside, and this became the
sole subject of discussion. A protest against this and other recent acts of
Parliament was entered upon the journal of the House, and a resolution was
adopted, on the 24th of May, setting apart the 1st of June as a day of
fasting, prayer, and humiliation; in which the divine interposition was to
be implored, to avert the heavy calamity threatening destruction to their
rights, and all the evils of civil war; and to give the people one heart
and one mind in firmly opposing every injury to American liberties.
On the following morning, while the Burgesses were engaged in animated
debate, they were summoned to attend Lord Dunmore in the council chamber,
where he made them the following laconic speech: "Mr. Speaker, and
Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses: I have in my hand a paper, published
by order of your House, conceived in such terms, as reflect highly upon his
majesty, and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for
me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."
As on a former occasion, the Assembly, though dissolved, was not dispersed.
The members adjourned to the long room of the old Raleigh tavern, and
passed resolutions, denouncing the Boston port bill as a most dangerous
attempt to destroy the constitutional liberty and rights of all North
America; recommending their countrymen to desist from the use, not merely
of tea, but of all kinds of East Indian commodities: pronouncing an attack
on one of the colonies, to enforce arbitrary taxes, an attack on all; and
ordering the committee of correspondence to communicate with the other
corresponding committees, on the expediency of appointing deputies from the
several colonies of British America, to meet annually in GENERAL CONGRESS,
at such place as might be deemed expedient, to deliberate on such measures
as the united interests of the colonies might require.
This was the first recommendation of a General Congress by any public
assembly, though it had been previously proposed in town meetings at New
York and Boston. A resolution to the same effect was passed in the Assembly
of Massachusetts before it was aware of the proceedings of the Virginia
Legislature. The measure recommended met with prompt and general
concurrence throughout the colonies, and the fifth day of September next
ensuing was fixed upon for the meeting of the first Congress, which was to
be held at Philadelphia.
Notwithstanding Lord Dunmore's abrupt dissolution of the House of
Burgesses, the members still continued on courteous terms with him, and the
ball which they had decreed early in the session in honor of Lady Dunmore,
was celebrated on the 27th with unwavering gallantry.
As to Washington, widely as he differed from Lord Dunmore on important
points of policy, his intimacy with him remained uninterrupted. By
memorandums in his diary it appears that he dined and passed the evening at
his lordship's on the 25th, the very day of the meeting at the Raleigh
tavern. That he rode out with him to his farm, and breakfasted there with
him on the 26th, and on the evening of the 27th attended the ball given to
her ladyship. Such was the well-bred decorum that seemed to quiet the
turbulence of popular excitement, without checking the full and firm
expression of popular opinion.
On the 29th, two days after the ball, letters arrived from Boston giving
the proceedings of a town meeting, recommending that a general league
should be formed throughout the colonies suspending all trade with Great
Britain. But twenty-five members of the late House of Burgesses, including
Washington, were at that time remaining in Williamsburg. They held a
meeting on the following day, at which Peyton Randolph presided as
moderator. After some discussion it was determined to issue a printed
circular, bearing their signatures, and calling a meeting of all the
members of the late House of Burgesses, on the 1st of August, to take into
consideration this measure of a general league. The circular recommended
them, also, to collect, in the mean time, the sense of their respective
counties.
Washington was still at Williamsburg on the 1st of June, the day when the
port bill was to be enforced at Boston. It was ushered in by the tolling of
bells, and observed by all true patriots as a day of fasting and
humiliation. Washington notes in his diary that he fasted rigidly, and
attended the services appointed in the church. Still his friendly
intercourse with the Dunmore family was continued during the remainder of
his sojourn in Williamsburg, where he was detained by business until the
20th, when he set out on his return to Mount Vernon.
In the mean time the Boston port bill had been carried into effect. On the
1st of June the harbor of Boston was closed at noon, and all business
ceased. The two other parliamentary acts altering the charter of
Massachusetts were to be enforced. No public meetings, excepting the annual
town meetings in March and May, were to be held without permission of the
governor.
General Thomas Gage had recently been appointed to the military command of
Massachusetts, and the carrying out of these offensive acts. He was the
same officer who, as lieutenant-colonel, had led the advance guard on the
field of Braddock's defeat. Fortune had since gone well with him. Rising in
the service, he had been governor of Montreal, and had succeeded Amherst in
the command of the British forces on this continent. He was linked to the
country also by domestic ties, having married into one of the most
respectable families of New Jersey. In the various situations in which he
had hitherto been placed he had won esteem, and rendered himself popular.
Not much was expected from him in his present post by those who knew him
well. William Smith, the historian, speaking of him to Adams, "Gage," said
he, "was a good-natured, peaceable, sociable man while here (in New York),
but altogether unfit for a governor of Massachusetts. He will lose all the
character he has acquired as a man, a gentleman, and a general, and dwindle
down into a mere scribbling governor--a mere Bernard or Hutchinson."
With all Gage's experience in America, he had formed a most erroneous
opinion of the character of the people. "The Americans," said he to the
king, "will be lions only as long as the English are lambs;" and he
engaged, with five regiments, to keep Boston quiet!
The manner in which his attempts to enforce the recent acts of Parliament
were resented, showed how egregiously he was in error. At the suggestion of
the Assembly, a paper was circulated through the province by the committee
of correspondence, entitled "a solemn league and covenant," the subscribers
to which bound themselves to break off all intercourse with Great Britain
from the 1st of August, until the colony should be restored to the
enjoyment of its chartered rights; and to renounce all dealings with those
who should refuse to enter into this compact.
The very title of league and covenant had an ominous sound, and startled
General Gage. He issued a proclamation, denouncing it as illegal and
traitorous. Furthermore, he encamped a force of infantry and artillery on
Boston Common, as if prepared to enact the lion. An alarm spread through
the adjacent country. "Boston is to be blockaded! Boston is to be reduced
to obedience by force or famine!" The spirit of the yeomanry was aroused.
They sent in word to the inhabitants promising to come to their aid if
necessary; and urging them to stand fast to the faith. Affairs were coming
to a crisis. It was predicted that the new acts of Parliament would bring
on "a most important and decisive trial."
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