Volume 3, Chapter 60 Boston calls for the Solemn League and Covenant
The Four Coercive Acts and the Quebec Act, soon to be called by the colonists the Intolerable
Acts, struck the Americans with the force of a thunderclap. The savage repression of
Boston was to the American colonies the hurling down of the gauntlet. The embattled colonists
sharpened and increasingly unified by the years of struggle for liberty against Great
Britain, hastened to accept that challenge.
The shocking news of the Boston Port Act, the first coercive act, reached Boston on
May 11, 1774. It was immediately clear that the fate of Boston and of the entire American
and Resistance Movement, of which Boston was the leader, now hinged on the all-important
question, would the other American towns and colonies come to the aid of Boston in this
great crisis?
On hearing the news, the Boston town meeting and neighboring committees of correspondents
met to decide their course.
The frightened conservatives attacked the Tea Party as being mob violence and urged
or submission by paying for the tea.
The radicals, however, firmly declared that they would see Boston burned before paying
a farthing to the East India Company.
The May 13th Boston town meeting, led by Sam Adams, resolved to appeal to other Americans
for united action against Great Britain.
It urged a joint American boycott, not only of all imports from Great Britain, but of
exports as well, until the Port Act was repealed.
The Boston Committee of Correspondence was instructed to inform the other colonies.
The same day, May 13, the committee joined other committees of eight neighboring towns
to urge upon all other colonies the total boycott of trade with Britain.
The radical Boston engraver and courier Paul Revere was then sent to the critical ports
of New York and Philadelphia with Boston's appeal. Boston urgently impressed upon its
correspondence that it was the first line of defense of the liberty of all Americans
and that it was being singled out for punishment simply because it had long been the vanguard
of that Defense. First to respond and rally to Boston's support with the other towns
of Massachusetts, including even the towns of Salem and Marblehead, which presumably
would have benefited by the closing of Boston and the shifting of the side of government
and customs officials. Liberal donations of food and money soon poured into suffering
Boston from towns and provinces as far away as South Carolina. When the Black Day of June
When dawned and the Port Act went into effect, angry demonstrations took place throughout
the colonies. In Philadelphia, church bells tolled and shops closed. In New York, effigies
of Lord North, Hutchinson and the Devil were paraded through the streets and burned. In
Connecticut, the Port Act was publicly burned and executed. Newport, which had had its differences
with Boston in the past pledged its aid to the Bostonians who have so nobly stood as
a barrier against slavery. This unification was indeed spurred by the fact that the other
leading ports knew they had treated the British tea as roughly, if not nearly as dramatically,
as had Boston. As the fateful day of June 1, 1774 drew nearer, the conservatives of
Boston made a last-ditch attempt to reverse the tide, but the town meeting of May 30 resolved
not to consume any British manufacturers and to boycott any violators. As Hutchinson prepared
to leave office, however, 124 Boston conservatives signed a petition praising the administration
of Hutchinson, and another welcoming General Gage, and promised to pay their share of the
damage for the destroyed East India Tea. About a quarter of the signers were merchants, many
of them wealthy. The Boston merchants had been persuaded by the Committee of Correspondence
to agree to a total boycott of Britain, provided that merchants of other American colonies
would agree to join.
In early June, the radicals were dismayed to find merchants of other towns refusing
to agree, and the conservative merchants of Boston then hastened to abdicate their agreement.
The eminent liberal Congregational Minister, the Reverend Charles Chauncey of Boston, angrily
denounced the defecting merchants.
So many of them are so mercenary as to find within themselves a readiness to become slaves
themselves, as well as to be accessory to the slavery of others, if they imagine they
may by this means serve their own private, separate interest.
Sam Adams and the Radicals had learned better during the Townsend struggles than to rely
on merchants to boycott for principle. Now the whole body of consumers was to engage
in the Boycott. Counter-attacking, the Boston Committee of Correspondents adopted on June
5 the Solemn League and a Covenant, drawn up by Dr. Joseph Warren and other radicals.
The Solemn League urged all Americans to sign a pledge to boycott immediately all trade
with Great Britain, and to bar all purchases and all consumption of British products after
October 1. It also pledged in turn to boycott forever any American who refused to sign such
a covenant. Dependence on the merchants was bypassed for reliance on the voluntary actions
of the masses of the people. Conservative Boston merchants counterattacked vigorously
and tried to challenge the committee. The Boston town meeting endorsed the Solemn League
The meeting overwhelmingly defeated a motion of censure and voted approval of the actions of its Committee of Correspondence.
In contrast, Governor Gage ordered magistrates to arrest any persons circulating the traitorous covenant.
Defying this proclamation, nearly every single person in the House of Representatives,
The age-ordered magistrates to arrest any persons circulating the traitorous covenant.
Defying this proclamation, nearly every Bostonian signed the pledge.
The Massachusetts towns were quick to rally to the Solemn League and Covenant.
The town of Worcester, in fact, strengthened the Covenant by advancing the date of non-importation
from October 1 to August 1.
The Covenant was adopted by fourteen other Massachusetts towns, among them Gloucester,
Braintree and Shrewsbury.
Towns outside the province announced their support, Portsmouth, New Hampshire being one.
Furthermore, special county conventions in Massachusetts endorsed the total boycott,
including those of Berkshire, Suffolk, Plymouth and Bristol.
Meanwhile, other towns were responding to Boston's boycott appeal of May 13.
The town meeting of Providence, Rhode Island on May 17 introduced an important and creative
new proposal, a Congress of Representatives from all the colonies, to conduct and unite
the American boycott and resistance.
In addition, Providence expressed willingness to enter into a joint boycott, as did Newport
and New Haven.
The real problem was the reaction of Philadelphia and New York to Boston's plea, hence the importance
of Paul Revere speeding the transmission of Boston's circular letter to those cities.
New York's radicals in control of its committees of correspondence were as eager as Boston's
to join the boycott and pledge their support, but the radicals in New York faced far stronger
were conservative opposition in that oligarchy-ridden province, and they sadly lacked a revolutionary
leader with the brilliance and dedication of Sam Adams.
The Radicals had called a series of meetings of merchants and mechanics on May 13.
At the meeting, a committee of 25 was set up that included conservatives, but was dominated
by the old committee of the Sons of Liberty.
At a public meeting of merchants on May 16, however, radical leaders Isaac Sears and Alexander
MacDougall saw to their dismay a successful vote to oust the existing committee of correspondents
and to replace it with a new and larger committee that had enough conservatives to put it under
right-wing control.
Fully half the merchants on the new committee had been zealous in breaking the non-importation
Agreement in 1770, and twenty of the fifty-one members were later to choose the Tory side
in the revolution.
On May 19, a public mass meeting of the inhabitants of the city and county met to act on the nominations
made at the merchants' meeting of three days before.
The conservative merchants demonstrated their dominance by making their leader and chairman
President of the New Committee of Correspondence, Isaac Lowe, Chairman of the Meeting.
Aside from agreeing to add one radical to the committee, the Conservatives swept the
meeting, whereupon Governor Codwalder Colden was moved to write exultantly to the Earl
of Dartmouth that the New Committee of 51 was made up of some of the wisest and most
prudent citizens of New York.
The decision of how to reply to Boston's appeal was now in the hands of New York's conservatives,
who decided to use Providence's call for a general congress meant to implement the boycott
as a tactic for delaying any effective action.
The new Committee of 51 therefore answered Boston on May 23 that all action should be
be postponed until an inter-provincial congress could be held.
Boston vainly replied by urging immediately non-intercourse with Britain rather than wait
many months for a congress.
But New York was adamant.
It was such responses as New York's that drove the Boston radicals to endorse the Solemn
League and Covenant by which the masses could impose a total boycott over the heads of recalcitrant
Merchants John C. Miller is completely in error when
he asserts at length that the New York and Philadelphia conservatives were here reacting
against the Solemn League and Covenant.
For these meetings, calling for postponement until a Congress should open, took place several
weeks before the Covenant was drawn up.
In truth, the Covenant was a reaction against the conservative decisions in New York and
Philadelphia.
The Committee of 51 tried to prod new committees of correspondence from the New York towns
into being, but the few that did appear in Suffolk County, Orange County, and Cumberland
County urged the radical Boston program of immediate boycott.
To counteract the conservative coup, the radicals held their own meeting, denounced the Port
Act, urged an immediate non-importation agreement, and named their own Committee of Correspondence.
The Sons of Liberty also countered the Committee of 51 by creating a new Committee of Mechanics
to operate as a center of radical pressure.
A similar conservative victory had occurred at the same time in the other major port of
of Philadelphia. The strong group of conservatives wished to confine American protest to a
timorous petition of grievances to Great Britain. On the other hand, the radicals, led by the
Philadelphia iron manufacturer and distiller Charles Thompson, wished to heed Boston's
appeal. When Paul Revere brought Boston's letter, the radical leaders, Thompson, already
are known as the Sam Adams of Philadelphia, and the young Quaker Thomas Mifflin called a public meeting for the next day, May 20, and tried desperately to enlist the great John Dickinson in their cause.
But it often happens to pioneers in a revolutionary movement that the movement's dynamic advance leaves them behind in a kind of crabbed cul-de-sac.
Such had recently been happening to Dickinson, who caviled at the Boston Teak Party and at
the bold, resistant movement required by current conditions. At the meeting of May 20, Thomas
and Mifflin urged an immediate declaration making common cause with Boston. Instead,
Dickinson and Joseph Reed gained the day with an unhappy bit of stalling, pleading with
the governor for a special session of the assembly to petition for redress of grievances.
Furthermore, the committee of correspondents selected by the meeting to answer Boston was
also dominated by the conservative forces. In its letter to Boston of May 21, the Philadelphia
committee showed itself even more conservative than New York. It had the bad taste to denounce
It pressed Massachusetts to compensate the East India Company. It called for varying the boycott plan by reserving it for a last resort, and it urged that a general congress be strictly confined to petitioning the Crown.
The letter was drawn up by the highly conservative and Tory Anglican minister, Dr. William Smith, head of the College of Philadelphia.
This response also contributed to Boston's adoption of the Solemn League and Covenant.
The only recourse left to the Pennsylvania radicals was to exploit the governor's rejection
of the petition for a special session of the assembly.
When the expected rejection was announced, radicals forced a new committee of correspondents
This Artisan Pressure Forced the Old Committee to Call a General Mass Meeting of Philadelphia City and County for an Enlarged Committee on June 18, But the Conservatives Moved Skillfully Behind the Scenes to Control the Mass Meeting in Advance. The Caucus Selected a New Committee Comprising the Old Committee to Call a General Mass Meeting of Philadelphia City and County for an Enlarged Committee on June 18,
Committee, and 27 representatives of religious sects in the city.
The proposed committee was strongly under the control of the conservatives, who cleverly
chose the eminent John Dickinson to be chairman, and thus to serve as front man for their designs.
The meeting proved easily amenable to manipulation by the conservative religious caucus.
The hand-picked Committee of 43 was selected, and an inter-colonial congress proposed to
petition for redress of grievances. No mention was made of Boston's appeal for a boycott
of Great Britain. During the next three weeks, most counties in Pennsylvania created committees
of correspondence and obediently adopted the Philadelphia Resolution for an intra-provincial
Thus, Boston's appeal for immediate and total non-intercourse with Britain had been shunted
aside by the victorious conservative forces of New York and Philadelphia, who instead
took up and perverted Providence's proposal for a General Congress.
The conservatives had two aims in mind, to delay any action for the many months time
and to limit the Congress to a peaceful and innocuous petition of Great Britain and to
keep it from such radical measures as a total boycott.
The desperate response of the Boston radicals was the solemn league and covenant, calling
for a general public boycott of Britain to override the merchants and the local governments.
But while many towns of Massachusetts approved the Covenant, other towns of the province,
including Marblehead, Salem, Charlestown and Springfield, decided to wait for the Congress,
as did most of the towns in Connecticut.
It was swiftly evident to the Boston leaders that the Covenant could not be pushed through
The Boston Radicals were unyielding in matters of principle, but they were eminently adaptable
and realistic in matters of tactics. And so they quickly cut their losses and decided
to join the movement for an inter-colonial congress. The official call for the congress
Accordingly came from the Massachusetts Assembly on June 17. The Continental Congress was
to meet at Philadelphia on September 5. The great struggles within the American Revolutionary
Movement were now to be waged for the soul of the Continental Congress.
Meanwhile, the pressing emergency was the shutdown of the port of Boston by the nearby
by British Fleet, generous donations of food and supplies from all the colonies kept the
Bostonians from acutely suffering from the British blockade. The passage of the later
coercive acts helped to radicalize American opinion still further and the Boston Committee
of Correspondence urged civil disobedience against the invalid abrogation of the Massachusetts
and the innovation of a royally appointed council.
The new councillors found themselves beset by American mobs and by social ostracism.
And they were soon forced to flee to Boston in the arms of General Gage.
The judges and sheriffs newly appointed by Gage also soon joined their Tory colleagues.
In addition, the general threat to the liberty of the other colonies from the coercive acts
A series of acts appeared to be reinforced by the Quebec Act, which also seemed to raise the old specter of potpourri.