WEBVTT NOTE 52. The Uneasy Lull, 1770-1772 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.520 Volume 3, Part 7, Prelude to Revolution, 1770-1775 2 00:00:08.520 --> 00:00:16.720 Volume 3, Chapter 52, The Uneasy Lull, 1770-1772 3 00:00:16.720 --> 00:00:22.520 While North Carolina was going through bloody internal conflict, the rest of the colonies 4 00:00:22.520 --> 00:00:28.560 had settled into uneasy stability with regard to Great Britain. 5 00:00:28.560 --> 00:00:34.220 The lull came with the repeal of the Townsend duties and the collapse of non-importation 6 00:00:34.220 --> 00:00:41.220 in late 1770, but Boston and Massachusetts still served as the focal point of trouble 7 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:48.720 and dispute. Massachusetts continued feeling restive over talk in England of such drastic 8 00:00:48.720 --> 00:00:55.480 changes as substituting a royally appointed council for an elected one and abolishing 9 00:00:55.480 --> 00:01:01.240 in the Massachusetts town meeting. The stationing of British instead of provincial troops at 10 00:01:01.240 --> 00:01:06.840 Castle William, coupled with the British Navy and Boston Harbor, was seen as a harbinger 11 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:13.600 of such an unwanted change. Another feared change was that the British themselves would 12 00:01:13.600 --> 00:01:20.720 pay the salaries of American officials, thereby putting the latter beyond the control of colonial 13 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:28.720 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. 14 00:01:28.720 --> 00:01:34.720 Hutchinson was of course jubilant over this development and over the stationing of the military in the harbor, 15 00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:42.720 but Sam Adams perceived that the governor was now independent of popular check or control. 16 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:58.000 There is no question that the grip of the radical liberals on the people of Massachusetts declined 17 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:05.560 considerably during this lull, this period of sullen silence, as Adams put it, and Adams 18 00:02:05.560 --> 00:02:11.760 could not succeed in rousing the people against the Hutchinson salary, but despite hints of 19 00:02:11.760 --> 00:02:18.760 of Defection by John Hancock and others, the Liberal Party held together in the 1771 elections, 20 00:02:18.760 --> 00:02:24.880 and the House strongly denounced the Hutchinson salary payment. The Tories, of course, tried 21 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:31.080 their best to exploit this period of quiescence by splitting and weakening the Liberals. The 22 00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:36.120 opposition to Britain, they thundered, was trying to lead the colonists into a state 23 00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:43.120 of Anarchy, Under the Name of Liberty. The grand old colony of the Puritans, the Tories 24 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:51.120 warned, was now permitting itself to be misled by such virulent opposers of our holy religion 25 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:59.240 as Dr. Thomas Young and William Molino, leading rationalists and deists. Sam Adams, a devout 26 00:02:59.240 --> 00:03:05.520 But a congregationalist and an advocate of old Puritan virtues could not be baited for 27 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:13.120 his supposed atheism. Unassailable on this charge, he sprang to the defense of Dr. Young. 28 00:03:13.120 --> 00:03:19.840 Young, Adams reminded his readers, was an unwearied asserter of the rights of his countrymen, 29 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:26.080 a man who should be judged rather by his political than by his religious views. Of course, the 30 00:03:26.080 --> 00:03:32.960 The man most hated by the Tories was Sam Adams, and Hutchinson charged that the incendiary 31 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:38.440 Adams wishes the destruction of every friend to government in America. 32 00:03:38.440 --> 00:03:44.400 The crowning effort by Hutchinson and the Tories to crush the radicals during the Lull 33 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:50.160 period took place in the Massachusetts elections in 1772. 34 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:56.040 A concerted effort to defeat Sam Adams failed, but it did succeed in reducing his vote to 35 00:03:56.040 --> 00:04:26.040 Thomas Cushing and John Hancock 36 00:04:26.040 --> 00:04:56.040 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. 37 00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:33.040 When the federal movement was being forced into partial retreat, the seeds of the next great advance were being sown. 38 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:37.040 It soon became clear that the British were laying plans. 39 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:42.040 Following the wedge in the door achieved by their payment of Hutchinson's salary, 40 00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:50.040 the British would proceed to the far more serious step of paying the Massachusetts judges' salaries as well. 41 00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:56.600 In short, Great Britain claimed the right not merely to tax the people of Massachusetts 42 00:05:56.600 --> 00:06:02.720 without their consent, but also to make judges independent of the colonists by means of the 43 00:06:02.720 --> 00:06:06.280 very taxes extracted from them. 44 00:06:06.280 --> 00:06:11.640 This move by the Crown was also a reward for the judges' tenderness toward the British 45 00:06:11.640 --> 00:06:15.040 troops in the Boston Massacre cases. 46 00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:20.440 The British move was particularly unpopular because Hutchinson had filled the principal 47 00:06:20.440 --> 00:06:28.600 post of the Massachusetts Judiciary with his own Tory-minded relatives, Lins, Cottons, 48 00:06:28.600 --> 00:06:35.740 and Olivers. With Hancock and Adams now reconciled, the Boston town meeting promptly denounced 49 00:06:35.740 --> 00:06:42.920 this plan. The issue next went to the Massachusetts Assembly, which affirmed that such a proposal 50 00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:50.440 Infringed the Constitutional Rights of the Assembly, and at the end of June 1772 passed 51 00:06:50.440 --> 00:06:59.440 this resolution by a vote of 85 to 19. Typically, Hutchinson dissolved to the general court. 52 00:06:59.440 --> 00:07:05.120 Although Massachusetts found itself in a period of troubled quiet, the resentment against 53 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:11.840 West Britain remained alive in that other radical colony, South Carolina. 54 00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:20.520 A long continuing dispute arose over the appropriation by the House at the end of 1769 of a gift 55 00:07:20.520 --> 00:07:26.680 of 1,500 pounds sterling to the English radical leader John Wilkes. 56 00:07:26.680 --> 00:07:32.360 The enraged Crown ordered the Governor of South Carolina to veto any further revenue 57 00:07:32.360 --> 00:07:55.800 In short, the House was ordered to agree to stripping itself of its vital power over all 58 00:07:55.800 --> 00:07:58.440 appropriations in the colony. 59 00:07:58.440 --> 00:08:05.680 This, the House, led by Thomas Lynch, Christopher Gadsden and John Rutledge, flatly refused 60 00:08:05.680 --> 00:08:07.240 to do. 61 00:08:07.240 --> 00:08:12.360 This impasse with the Crown, and with the royally appointed Governor and Council pitted 62 00:08:12.360 --> 00:08:18.680 against the House, continued beyond the end of the Townsend Act crisis. 63 00:08:18.680 --> 00:08:23.920 The South Carolina House steadfastly refused to pass any revenue bill complying with the 64 00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:31.560 Royal Instructions, that is, any bill inconsistent with the proper rights of the people. 65 00:08:31.560 --> 00:08:37.460 So radicalized was the South Carolina oligarchy by this bitter struggle that even a cautious 66 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:44.560 trimmer like Henry Lawrence wrote at the end of 1771, that he would rather have no tax 67 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:51.740 bill for seven years, and even forfeit his whole estate, then surrender, for the issue 68 00:08:51.740 --> 00:09:11.660 Lord Hillsborough, typically, was determined to grant no concession to South Carolina, and 69 00:09:11.660 --> 00:09:18.260 the South Carolina House was repeatedly dissolved, notwithstanding, the South Carolina House 70 00:09:18.260 --> 00:09:24.520 would not yield. The latter's resistance, in fact, was stiffened by a vote of confidence 71 00:09:24.520 --> 00:09:28.640 by the electorate in the spring 1772 elections.