Volume 3, Chapter 49, New York Breaks Non-Importation
The Americans were now confronted with a fateful choice.
Should they be courageous, cleaved to principle, and honor solemn pledges by continuing their
boycott of British imports until all the Townsend duties were removed, and perhaps the other
urging every colony to strengthen its resolve and to maintain the general boycott until
repeal of all the Townsend Acts, including the Customs Board and the Vice Admiralty Courts.
This general plea was repeated two months later.
Most of the colonies, however, lacked the iron determination of South Carolina and became
Being mired in indecision, first to break the united front of the colonies against imports
were the merchants of Albany, who on May 10 decided to confine their boycott, henceforth,
to tea alone. In a few weeks, learning that they were alone, the same merchants rescinded
The Next Attempted Breach came in Rhode Island a few days later, when the merchants of Newport and Providence ended their agreement and discharged their committees of inspection.
Nearly the last to join the movement, and even then pressured by inter-colonial boycotts,
Rhode Island's merchants were eager to resume trade and to ignore the larger principles
at stake.
Newport proved especially eager to resume full trade.
Rhode Island's action incensed the merchants and citizens of the other colonies, and these
Providence determined that if Rhode Island valued trade above all, its trade would suffer
more from rescinding the boycott than from maintaining it. Within a week, mass meetings
at Philadelphia and New York and a meeting of Boston merchants pledged an absolute boycott
against the merchants of Rhode Island. Providence quickly rescinded its action and joined the
boycott against the importers of Newport. Providence merchants were kept in line by
by its town meeting, which repeatedly voted, overwhelmingly, to continue the general boycott.
By the end of June, ports in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and the Carolinas,
as well as Chester, Wilmington, Newcastle and Baltimore, had enthusiastically joined
the boycott against Newport.
Sloops from Newport were turned back from ports from one end of the coast to the other.
Finally, under this pressure, Newport merchants on August 20 resumed non-importation and appointed
a Committee of Inspection. The boycotts by other colonies were rescinded, but many were
still reluctant to trade with Rhode Island and especially with Newport. Newport was the
center of mercantile defections in the colonies, and the blame devolved principally upon the
the leading Jewish merchants of that city. Jewish violators in Newport were apparently
more significant than were Tories. Of particular importance was Aaron Lopez, one of the wealthiest
merchants in the colonies. As a non-cooperator in the boycott, Lopez received lavish flavors
from the royal customs officials. His captains, for example, were exempted from swearing their
The first permanent break in non-importation came in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, another
latecomer to the boycott that needed colonial pressure.
When it became known that Portsmouth merchants were merrily importing British goods, Boston
and Merchants instituted a boycott in mid-June and were followed by Connecticut towns and
even unanimously by the inhabitants of neighboring little Rye, New Hampshire. But pressure proved
vain. A Boston radical visiting Portsmouth was driven out of town for fear of tar and
feathers. The Portsmouth town meeting voted overwhelmingly against a boycott.
Not Portsmouth, however, but the great port towns, especially Boston, New York and Philadelphia,
would be the decisive force for or against continuing the boycott movement.
In Boston, the reaction was never in much doubt.
The formidable Sam Adams saw clearly that the partial repeal was essentially a device
and he urged continuing non-importation until all British taxes were removed and the Customs Board and Admiralty Courts eliminated and even until the Sugar Act, the Declaratory Act and the other oppressive measures since the Seven Years War were removed.
The T-tax was rejected not only on principle, but also, as by far, the major revenue earner of all the Townsend duties.
The May elections in Boston returned nearly all of the radical leaders, and the Boston town meeting manfully denounced English attempts to destroy colonial liberty.
It scoffed at any asserted prerogative of the king to violate natural or constitutional rights, or to impose his will upon the fundamental laws of the land.
Some Boston merchants tried to abandon the boycott and restrict non-importation to tea only, but the town overwhelmingly refused to grant its approval.
Governor Hutchinson, under instructions from Lord Hillsborough, tried to split the resistance movement during May by shifting the Massachusetts legislature from radical Boston to Cambridge, but in this attempt he failed, as town after town voted to support the boycott and the patriotic merchants of Boston.
Hutchinson lamented that the resistance of the boycott was supported by the whole body of the people, as well as by the elected government officials.
Thus, in Marblehead, Robert Jameson, a teacher, lost all his pupils for refusing to abide by the boycott, and his house was threatened late at night by mobs calling out with a loud voice to kill that dog, Jameson, a governor's man and a bastard of liberty.
and Liberty. Hutchinson asked for a strengthened riot act to punish a mob that had tarred
and feathered a customs officer at Gloucester. The assembly told the governor that he had
better investigate the cause of the riots, grievances against oppression. Moreover, it
incisively pointed out that far worse than isolated, uncoordinated acts of violence was
As violence committed systematically and unpunished against the people by the standing army of
Great Britain, penetrating sharply beneath the righteous veil that the existence of a
state apparatus cast over its organized violence, the Massachusetts Assembly denounced the army
as a continuing unlawful body that committed continuing assaults and massacres.
To this flagrant subversion of royal and military supremacy, the governor replied by dissolving the general court.
While Boston posed no problem to the resistance movement, sharp struggles over how to react to the Townsend repeal were waged within the other two crucial cities, New York and Philadelphia.
In contrast to relatively democratic and liberal Massachusetts, both Philadelphia and New York were plagued by strong Tory factions.
The Philadelphia merchants also suffered from lack of uniformity in the non-importation agreements among the various colonies.
Thus, Maryland accepted imports of coarse woolens, and the Philadelphia agreement did not.
This permitted the Maryland merchants to appropriate the Philadelphia trade in woolens.
Of the nineteen members of the Enforcing Committee of Merchants of Philadelphia,
seven, headed by Chairman John Reynold, a Quaker, resigned and began to agitate for rescinding the boycott.
But the artisans and retail traders of Philadelphia insisted on continuing the boycott,
Boycott, backed by encouragement from the merchants of Boston and New York.
By the time of the June 5 general meeting of subscribers to non-importation, the pressure
on the merchants had succeeded in ending their disaffection.
In Boston, false news that the Philadelphia merchants had decided to abandon non-importation
led the Boston merchants to follow, but the Boston town meeting quickly forced the merchants
back into line, even before the falsity of the rumor was revealed.
One decisive factor in ending defection in Philadelphia was the letters by Benjamin Franklin
to his Tory allies urging continued all-out adherence to the boycott. This body blow to
In the first place, Franklin was very deeply involved in speculation in royal grants to
western lands, and his chief enemy was Lord Hillsborough.
The natural consequence of Hillsborough's enmity was to push Franklin into friendships
and association with the opposition, and into disenchantment with government policies in
in general. Furthermore, Franklin always knew on which side his bread was buttered, and
several colonial assemblies, Georgia, New Jersey, as well as Pennsylvania, had recently
appointed him as their London agent. Now, in 1770, the key agency post from Massachusetts
was vacant, and no Tory could hope to obtain this position. Franklin's call to Philadelphia
to Stand Fast drew him closer, in Philadelphia, to Charles Thompson, iron manufacturer, distiller,
and leader of the artisan's movement for non-importation, and away from Galloway's Tories. The Tory
Press in England, not without justice, assailed Franklin as Dr. Double Face and the Judas
and the Strenuous Objections of Sam Adams and the Bitter Attacks of the Boston Gazette.
However, Lee was chosen as alternate or substitute agent, and Adams kept up his correspondence with the libertarian Lee, an able and staunch advocate for the rights of America, rather than with Franklin.
Franklin was able to secure the appointment by splitting the liberal leadership and securing the support of the radical Congregational Minister, the Reverend Samuel Cooper.
To do this, he changed his old tune and flatly denied any legislative sovereignty of Parliament over the colonies, conceding allegiance only to the King.
Philadelphia then also stood fast. New York was still to speak.
When it did, this oligarchically dominated province sundered the united front of colonial resistance,
Whereas the radicals were in total control of Boston and Philadelphia was veering leftward,
the Battle of Golden Hill had intensified a growing conservative reaction among erstwhile
liberals symbolized in the persecution of radical leader Alexander McDougal, a reaction
sufficient to wreck radical influence in as oligarchically controlled a colony as New
York.
As early as March 1770, the growing reaction had become evident. The annual festivities
commemorating repeal of the Stamp Act had always been cordially celebrated by all the
liberal forces in the province led by the Sons of Liberty. The Sons suddenly found their
are claimed to lead the celebration challenged by a secessionist organization, the Friends
of Liberty and Trade, which organized its own. And so, while the sons toasted the imprisoned
McDougal in continuance of the boycott until total repeal, the Friends ignored the McDougal
issue and drank ambiguously to trade in navigation and a speedy removal of their embarrassments.
It must be noted that New York merchants felt aggrieved that New York had relatively the
best record of abiding by the non-importation agreement and had therefore suffered the greatest
loss of trade.
The list of friends included the leading merchants and property owners in New York, especially
the powerful Oliver Delancey, John Alsop, Isaac Lowe, Leonard Lispenard, James Beekman, Gabriel
Ludlow, and Peter Van Schaak. When news of Townsend repeal arrived, the New
York radicals were able to control matters by leading popular agitation. Tentative efforts
of Merchants to Abandon the Agreements were overruled. Recreant Boston merchant Nathaniel
Rogers, who had come to a presumably more hospitable New York, was hanged in effigy
and had to flee the province. A committee of the Suns informed Philadelphia merchants
that New York would stand fast. They were right so far. Furthermore, a general meeting
A meeting of New York inhabitants on May 30 voted by a large majority to preserve the boycott intact and to boycott any who dared to violate it.
Another mass meeting on June 5 confirmed this decision.
But the people of New York were one thing, the merchants another.
A committee of merchants headed by Isaac Lowe promptly rejected the popular resolutions and
called for an inter-colonial congress of merchants to meet at Norwalk, Connecticut on June 18
to adopt a uniform and clearly a far looser agreement.
The idea of the Norwalk Congress was promptly rejected by the merchants of the other colonies.
The Boston merchants unanimously rejected any idea of deviation from the agreement.
And the merchants of Essex County, New Jersey, would only consider meeting to strengthen
the boycott.
The Philadelphia merchants also stood firm.
Of all the American port towns, only Hartford agreed to send delegates.
With the Norwalk Congress necessarily abandoned, the New York merchants moved towards scuttling
the boycott by themselves.
They employed a cunning device.
Merchants went through New York City visiting each person individually and asking him whether
he would vote for continuing the boycott provided Philadelphia and Boston concurred or for removing
it on all commodities except tea.
The merchants triumphantly reported an overwhelming, popular vote of confidence, 1,180 in favor
The New York merchants then sent news of this vote to Boston and Philadelphia to win their agreement, but the other towns were singularly uninspired by a canvas that encouraged the maximum of implicit intimidation of the voters.
Even the Hartford merchants refused to alter the boycott.
The New York Radicals also pointed out that the poll was composed of only one-fourth of the eligible voters and excluded rural folk entirely.
Undaunted by their inability to persuade the merchants, let alone the populace, of any other town to betray the non-importation movement, the merchants of New York decided to do it themselves.
Although a public meeting called by the merchants overwhelmingly rejected the idea of another
poll of individuals, the merchants organized a second canvas on July 7, this time asking
whether people favored rescinding the boycott even though Philadelphia and Boston had refused.
The radicals, led by Isaac Sears and Alexander McDougal, organized a public meeting the same
The same day that voted unanimously to retain the boycott, that night two mobs clashed.
The radicals, parading with the inscription, liberty and no importation but in union with
the other colonies, were routed by a conservative mob armed with sticks led by Judge Elias Desprossis,
president-elect of the New York Chamber of Commerce.
Two days later, the merchants reported a popular victory in its highly irregular canvas. But
the less than 800 yes votes were a minority, as against abstentions among those polled.
But the committee of merchants was interested only in token face-saving, and that night
they hastened to announce their resolve to import every British good except tea. The mighty
Non-Importation Movement had been shattered on the rock of New York reaction.
From that point on, the radical leadership in the colonies fought a valiant but doomed
fight to preserve non-importation.
When the Committee of Merchants of New York gloatingly informed the other colonies of
their deed, angry reaction was quick to pour in from all sides.
In Philadelphia, a great mass meeting of the city and county on July 14 condemned New York's
action as a sordid and wanton defection from the common cause and announced a boycott against
New York. The meeting of Boston merchants voted unanimously to burn the New York letter
publicly. The Albany merchants blasted their New York City colleagues for unaccountable
In New Jersey, indignation was particularly rife. Students at Princeton College, including James Madison, publicly burned the letter in a funeral service for the betrayed cause. Mass meetings in the towns of Woodbridge and New Brunswick, and in Essex, Sussex, Burlington, and Somerset counties, voted to censure and boycott New York. An unfortunate fruit peddler in Woodbridge, hailing from New Jersey,
New York was dumped into a pond to cool as courage. In Connecticut, merchants and other
individuals of New Haven resolved to boycott New York. An all-Connecticut meeting at New
Haven on September 13, representing merchants and farmers from the great majority of towns
in the colony, resolved to boycott all British imports from New York. The southern colonies
These did not display as much zeal in denouncing New York's action, with the predictable
exception of Charleston. There, a mass meeting on August 22 unanimously voted to punish New
York's scandalous revolt from the common cause of freedom by an absolute boycott. This was
no idle talk. Sea captains from New York were in subsequent months forbidden trading rights
in Charleston's Port. In the southern colonies, reaction was much more diffuse, but Talbot
County, Maryland resolved to support an absolute boycott of New York, and the merchants and
inhabitants of Wilmington and Brunswick, North Carolina, unanimously reaffirmed the boycott.
Although, as author Schlesinger writes, the patriotic indignation of the other provinces
The Strain of New York's Merchants Obtaining Business that Could Go Elsewhere, was Too Much to Bear
In Philadelphia, the seven dissident merchants joined with seven others to demand a house-to-house poll in the Craft in New York Manor
When a committee of merchants, headed by Charles Thomson, refused, the dissident merchants managed to call a small public meeting of subscribers to the boycott on September 20 to gain a majority for rescinding the agreement.
Agreement. On the flimsy pretext of this majority, the dissident merchants resolved
to end the boycott except on tea and this despite a virtually unanimous advance vote
by a mass meeting of Philadelphia citizens to continue the boycott and a similar vote
of a Philadelphia grand jury. With New York and Philadelphia now fallen, could even mighty
Boston be Far Behind? In mid-September a huge mass meeting of a thousand merchants
and traders of Boston had urged on Philadelphia an inter-colonial Congress
of Merchants to strengthen the agreement. But the call came too late and
Philadelphia had irredeemably defected from the boycott. The bulk of Boston
merchants had long been restive under the boycott and now they had their chance.
On October 12, the Boston merchants unanimously voted to confine their boycott to tea.
The great non-importation movement, to all intents and purposes, was ended.
General Gage exalted that interest had thus triumphed over patriotism.
With the great ports brought low, the other colonies could put up no further resistance.
At a meeting of the General Committee of Maryland on October 25, the Baltimore merchants, led
by Jonathan Hudson, affirmed their absolute determination to end the boycott and duly
ignored the resolution of the meeting, which included assemblymen, counselors and planters,
as well as merchants to abide by the agreements and to boycott any Baltimore violators.
The merchants simply resumed all British imports except tea.
In Virginia, never enthused about the agreements, non-importation would be quietly repealed early
next July.
In North Carolina, it simply disappeared without a trace.
But South Carolina died hard. Radical sentiment dwindled, but was still strong. A general
meeting of subscribers met on December 13 to decide South Carolina's course. Even now,
though alone among the colonies, South Carolina's magnificent radical movement fought on. Thomas
Lynch, planter and eminent radical leader, traveled fifty miles to plead with all his
Sam Adams, for his part, denounced the defecting merchants who, like a spaniel, meanly cringed
and kissed the rod that whipped them.
Lynch was backed wholeheartedly by fellow leaders Christopher Gadsden and John McKenzie.
The radicals urged continuing the boycott coupled with open importation of the banned goods
from Holland, but their valiant effort was in vain, and even South Carolina surrendered.
Notwithstanding, the assembly considered boycotting the northern provinces in protest against
their betrayal, but finally abandoned the idea as punishing every northerner for the
The Sins of Some of Their Merchants Unstated was the realization that a one-colony
boycott would not be very effective. By the end of 1770, an uneasy stability had settled
upon the American colonies. A few things had been achieved. The bulk of the Townsend duties
These were now repealed, and the British troops were out of Boston. The non-importation movement
had helped in the former, although its impact in Britain had been greatly lessened by coincidentally
increased demands for British products on the continent, and violent rebellion in Boston
had accomplished the latter.
But the major towns and tax, on T, remained, as did the Customs Commissioners, who returned
to Boston in December, the Vice Admiralty Courts, and their new hierarchical powers,
and the previous Trade and Navigation Acts.
British troops remained at Castle William, and the Navy was now stationed in Boston Harbor,
Thus permitting Boston to remain as the potential center of future crisis.
Ominous rumblings of threats against Boston and against the Massachusetts Charter were
only temporarily dampened by the war crisis with Spain, as were intentions to make official
salaries in the colonies independent of their assemblies.
Peaceful resolution of the Spanish crisis in early 1771, by the way, further strengthened
and the hold of the Tory North Ministry by discrediting the war hysteria of Chatham and
Shelburne in opposition.
The experience of the Townsend Crisis imparted certain lessons to the radical leaders in
America.
In the first place, it was clear that revolutionary violence was a powerful weapon against the
of the British, where it could be employed as against stamp distributors, customs officers,
or British troops, it either accomplished its task of getting rid of the oppressive
officials or effectively mobilized mass support by raising popular indignation against the
violence of the British. In some cases it is true as in the Battle of Golden Hill, violent
Rebellion led to a victorious counter-revolutionary reaction, but these two consequences were
not contradictory.
In any case, violence radically polarized public opinion, and the question to be weighed
was which newly polarized side would be the stronger.
Since the revolutionary movement was a mass movement of the American people, in most cases
Such polarization could only help the radical cause.
Second, while voluntary boycott of British goods was certainly a vital weapon, it had
proved most effective when used in conjunction with violence, as in the stamp crisis.
When the boycott dragged on for several years, as in the Townsend crisis, inevitable strains
might lead to a breach in the agreement, and one important breach was bound to end the
movement.
Furthermore, it was realized that a boycott movement confined to merchants would be particularly
vulnerable to break up from within.