Volume 3, Part 7, Prelude to Revolution, 1770-1775
Volume 3, Chapter 52, The Uneasy Lull, 1770-1772
While North Carolina was going through bloody internal conflict, the rest of the colonies
had settled into uneasy stability with regard to Great Britain.
The lull came with the repeal of the Townsend duties and the collapse of non-importation
in late 1770, but Boston and Massachusetts still served as the focal point of trouble
and dispute. Massachusetts continued feeling restive over talk in England of such drastic
changes as substituting a royally appointed council for an elected one and abolishing
in the Massachusetts town meeting. The stationing of British instead of provincial troops at
Castle William, coupled with the British Navy and Boston Harbor, was seen as a harbinger
of such an unwanted change. Another feared change was that the British themselves would
pay the salaries of American officials, thereby putting the latter beyond the control of colonial
The first step in this crucial change was the decision of Britain in early 1771 to pay the full salary of Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts.
Hutchinson was of course jubilant over this development and over the stationing of the military in the harbor,
but Sam Adams perceived that the governor was now independent of popular check or control.
There is no question that the grip of the radical liberals on the people of Massachusetts declined
considerably during this lull, this period of sullen silence, as Adams put it, and Adams
could not succeed in rousing the people against the Hutchinson salary, but despite hints of
of Defection by John Hancock and others, the Liberal Party held together in the 1771 elections,
and the House strongly denounced the Hutchinson salary payment. The Tories, of course, tried
their best to exploit this period of quiescence by splitting and weakening the Liberals. The
opposition to Britain, they thundered, was trying to lead the colonists into a state
of Anarchy, Under the Name of Liberty. The grand old colony of the Puritans, the Tories
warned, was now permitting itself to be misled by such virulent opposers of our holy religion
as Dr. Thomas Young and William Molino, leading rationalists and deists. Sam Adams, a devout
But a congregationalist and an advocate of old Puritan virtues could not be baited for
his supposed atheism. Unassailable on this charge, he sprang to the defense of Dr. Young.
Young, Adams reminded his readers, was an unwearied asserter of the rights of his countrymen,
a man who should be judged rather by his political than by his religious views. Of course, the
The man most hated by the Tories was Sam Adams, and Hutchinson charged that the incendiary
Adams wishes the destruction of every friend to government in America.
The crowning effort by Hutchinson and the Tories to crush the radicals during the Lull
period took place in the Massachusetts elections in 1772.
A concerted effort to defeat Sam Adams failed, but it did succeed in reducing his vote to
Thomas Cushing and John Hancock
A disheartened Dr. Thomas Young left Massachusetts for North Carolina, and another of Sam Adams' leading followers, Dr. Benjamin Church, secretly sold out his colleagues and attacked his own Whig writings in the Tory press, and Sam Adams was rebuffed by such other American leaders as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania when he urged them to help him keep alive the spirit of opposition to British rule.
When the federal movement was being forced into partial retreat, the seeds of the next great advance were being sown.
It soon became clear that the British were laying plans.
Following the wedge in the door achieved by their payment of Hutchinson's salary,
the British would proceed to the far more serious step of paying the Massachusetts judges' salaries as well.
In short, Great Britain claimed the right not merely to tax the people of Massachusetts
without their consent, but also to make judges independent of the colonists by means of the
very taxes extracted from them.
This move by the Crown was also a reward for the judges' tenderness toward the British
troops in the Boston Massacre cases.
The British move was particularly unpopular because Hutchinson had filled the principal
post of the Massachusetts Judiciary with his own Tory-minded relatives, Lins, Cottons,
and Olivers. With Hancock and Adams now reconciled, the Boston town meeting promptly denounced
this plan. The issue next went to the Massachusetts Assembly, which affirmed that such a proposal
Infringed the Constitutional Rights of the Assembly, and at the end of June 1772 passed
this resolution by a vote of 85 to 19. Typically, Hutchinson dissolved to the general court.
Although Massachusetts found itself in a period of troubled quiet, the resentment against
West Britain remained alive in that other radical colony, South Carolina.
A long continuing dispute arose over the appropriation by the House at the end of 1769 of a gift
of 1,500 pounds sterling to the English radical leader John Wilkes.
The enraged Crown ordered the Governor of South Carolina to veto any further revenue
In short, the House was ordered to agree to stripping itself of its vital power over all
appropriations in the colony.
This, the House, led by Thomas Lynch, Christopher Gadsden and John Rutledge, flatly refused
to do.
This impasse with the Crown, and with the royally appointed Governor and Council pitted
against the House, continued beyond the end of the Townsend Act crisis.
The South Carolina House steadfastly refused to pass any revenue bill complying with the
Royal Instructions, that is, any bill inconsistent with the proper rights of the people.
So radicalized was the South Carolina oligarchy by this bitter struggle that even a cautious
trimmer like Henry Lawrence wrote at the end of 1771, that he would rather have no tax
bill for seven years, and even forfeit his whole estate, then surrender, for the issue
Lord Hillsborough, typically, was determined to grant no concession to South Carolina, and
the South Carolina House was repeatedly dissolved, notwithstanding, the South Carolina House
would not yield. The latter's resistance, in fact, was stiffened by a vote of confidence
by the electorate in the spring 1772 elections.