Volume 3, Chapter 43. Rhode Island joins non-importation.
One by one, the other colonies joined in the boycott movement. The grand jury and then
all the freeholders of New Castle County and Delaware followed Philadelphia's lead at the
end of August 1769. In New Jersey, the Assembly, in mid-October, passed a vote of thanks to
The vote of thanks to the noble conduct of the merchants and traders of New Jersey, New
York and Pennsylvania for stopping the importing of British goods. Mass meetings in Essex County
and at New Brunswick pledged non-importation and a boycott of all non-signers and violators.
Connecticut merchants heeded the appeals of their fellow merchants from the large port
The merchants in New Haven agreed in mid-July 1769 to purchase no British goods except for certain commodities excluded in the Boston and New York agreements. Violators were to be boycotted as enemies of their country. Merchants at Groton in New London followed suit in August. The farm-dominated Connecticut House in mid-October gave its enthusiastic approval of the non-import agreements.
The boycott was joined by the towns of Weathersfield and Norwich at the end of the year. Merchants
and some other citizens from all over Connecticut met in late February 1770 and drew up a uniform
agreement for the entire colony. Violators were to be boycotted whether they were individual
merchants or entire provinces.
Two continuing recalcitrants were Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Of these, Rhode Island,
a leading mercantile center, was by far the more important. Rhode Island's merchants
took the golden opportunity to reap trade while their fellows were renouncing profits
in behalf of principal. Thus, Rhode Island imports of British goods grew during 1769,
Newport merchants, however, were far more stubborn. Severe pressure descended upon Newport from the other colonies. The Philadelphia Merchants Committee threatened to sever commercial relations. Boston shut off all trade agreements.
of All Trade with Newport, and Charleston was preparing to enter the fray. Even a non-importation
agreement drawn up by Newport merchants at the end of October 1769 proved unsatisfactorily
lax and Philadelphia and New York merchants proceeded to boycott Newport. Finally, in
In late January 1770, New Porters surrendered and agreed to a strong non-importation agreement.
By no means all Rhode Islanders, it should be noted, lagged behind in the resistance
movement. As early as September 1767, an article in the Providence Gazette spoke eloquently
of the Natural Rights of Mankind, declaring it a self-evident truth that all were by nature
equal in rights. The obligation to obey man-made laws rested on the consent of men. Therefore,
it concluded, Parliament not only had no right to tax unrepresented Americans, it had no
have no right to regulate them either. Leader of these logical advances in libertarian thought
in Rhode Island was Silas Downer, a lawyer and a leader of the Sons of Liberty of Providence.
In a speech to the Sons at the Providence Liberty Tree in July 1768, Downer, while
admitting allegiance to George III, denied the right of Parliament to make any laws whatsoever
and so ever to bind us. He went on to apply this principle, denouncing royal post office
charges in America as a tax and therefore illegal. Moreover, Downer attacked the British
laws of trade and manufacturing as violations of the natural rights of men. At least one
Rhode Island writer trenchantly called for extending the libertarian doctrine to one
One group often neglected by the Americans, Negro slaves. If the cry for liberty is sincere,
why is not the principle extended to the Negro slaves at home, the writer challenged. The
only way to prevent enslavement from abroad, he declared, was to end that hellish practice
of enslaving another part of the human species, for Negroes were surely sons of liberty too.
New Hampshire's failure to join the resistance had a simpler and far different cause. An
agricultural province lacking a large trading town, this small royal colony was a virtual
fife under the thumb of the Wentworth family. As merchants, landowners and top executive
officials in the province, this family, uniting formidable political and economic power, was
able to dominate the affairs of New Hampshire for decades.
At the apex of this cozy pyramid was Sir John Wentworth, the royal governor and the surveyor
of the King's Woods for all the colonies.
Wentworth astutely named numerous new towns and counties in New Hampshire after his friends
at the British court, for example, Rockingham, Grafton and Hillsborough counties, and founded
Created in 1770, a new college that he named after his friend, the Earl of Dartmouth. Also
in 1770, eight of the nine members of the appointed council of New Hampshire, as well
as a judge and a clerk of the Superior Court, were members of Governor Wentworth's family.
In this situation, no non-import association could be formed in New Hampshire.