Volume 3, Chapter 64, The Continental Association
As the Congress ended, the colonists hastened to ratify the results at provincial congresses,
which were extralegal revolutionary bodies whose composition was very much like the official assemblies.
Localities throughout the colonies created committees of inspection, observation, or public safety
to oversee and enforce the association agreement. In Massachusetts, General Gage's refusal
to permit the assembly to meet brought about the institution of a provincial congress,
which endorsed the congress's measures in early December. Weeks earlier, Marblehead
and Newbury Port had taken the lead in forming local committees of inspection. The Boston
In a recent town meeting selected a committee of 63, including Cushing, Hancock, Sam Adams,
Paul Revere and Henry Bass, to enforce the association.
In Massachusetts, few towns needed to establish new commissions of inspection, as they would
simply continue committees already chosen to enforce the now-superceded Solemn League
and Covenant.
Only the town of Marshfield refused to agree to the association. New Hampshire's Provincial
Congress unanimously endorsed the association in late January, and many towns appointed
local committees. In Rhode Island and Connecticut, there was no need for special congresses since
the official assemblies were uniquely free from British control. Hence the assemblies
The committees themselves ratified the boycott. In Connecticut, resistance to the association centered in the small Anglican elements of many small towns in Fairfield County, Ridgefield, Newtown, and Reading among them.
New Jersey, on the other hand, had little trouble in ratifying and setting up local committees.
The provincial assembly itself approved the Congress's proceedings at the end of January.
The situation in Pennsylvania, in contrast, was highly delicate, but soon proved successful.
The Radicals realized that to enforce the association, the conservative Committee of 43 and the Philadelphia
politics that it dominated had to be bypassed.
On November 14, the Radicals held their own mass meeting and decided to hold elections
by Ballot, with the city and county of Philadelphia each electing its own committee. In the election,
the radical committee slate won an overwhelming victory in the city. As a result, the new
committee of 66 was far more radical than the old Philadelphia committee of 43. The
counties also chose committees of inspection to enforce the association. Finally, the Pennsylvania
Maryland Assembly itself ratified the Continental Association and then set up a Provincial Congress
that endorsed the Continental Congress in late January. As for Delaware, its assembly
unanimously endorsed the Congress, but Anglican Sussex County refused to select a Committee
of Inspection. Maryland was the first of the southern colonies to act. Many of its counties
Virginia chose committees of inspection in a provincial convention unanimously endorsed the Congress in early December.
Virginia, too, acted quickly in forming committees. Its provincial convention endorsed the Congress's proceedings at the end of March.
North Carolina also began early, its enforcement committees, particularly at Wilmington and the Tidewater counties, being established in early December.
December. However, North Carolina's Provincial Convention did not endorse the Congress until
the following April. In South Carolina, the battle for ratification and enforcement of the
Association was led by the Liberal General Committee of Charleston. Radical liberals, led by Gadsden in
the South Carolina Gazette, urged ratification without the galling and discriminatory exemption
for Rice Exports, while from the right, the indigo planters wanted to include South Carolina's
other staple in the exemption.
At the South Carolina Provincial Congress in mid-January, the magnificent Gadsden argued
against special privilege for rice, while John Rutledge pleaded hardship and dependence
of the colony on the export of rice to Britain.
Furthermore, to purchase the support of the indigo interest, the General Committee had
suggested that privileged rice growers compensate the indigo planters by buying a certain proportion
of the latter crop.
The indigo subsidy was defended by the Rutledge's, William Henry Drayton and even Thomas Lynch.
While Gadsden cuttingly asked why only the indigo growers and not other people in the
Province should benefit from the Rice Exemption. Finally, the compensation was extended to
other agricultural commodities. South Carolina's Provincial Congress set up an unusually systematic
set of local enforcement committees. In every parish and district, members of the Congress
composed a majority of the committee, and future vacancies were to be filled in elections
by the Inhabitants.
Two colonies failed to gratify the association, New York and Georgia.
Many of New York's conservative intellectuals, such as the Anglican ministers Samuel Seabury
and Thomas Chandler, removed themselves in disgust from the association movement, openly
denouncing it and being branded as Tories in return.
With the bulk of conservatives determined to stay within the popular movement in New
York and thereby to guide and emasculate it, the conservative committee of 51, however,
was forced to dissolve and yield to the clamor of the radical committee of mechanics for
a public election of a new committee.
At a public meeting on November 22, the newly elected committee of 60 was dominated by the
Radicals, including Isaac Sears and Alexander MacDougall. However, the landlord-run rural
counties remained apathetic to the revolutionary movement, and only Suffolk, Ulster and Albany
counties endorsed the association. In Suffolk, particularly, the several towns hastened to
appoint enforcement committees. Radicals attempted to form committees of inspection in Queens
and try on counties but with little success. Thus, when committees in Jamaica and Newtown
Queens were appointed, the committees were speedily repudiated by many of their citizens.
In upcountry Dutchess County, a Tory association openly combated the boycott and the majority
of freeholders swore to obey the constituted laws of the land and to enforce obedience
to the Rightful Authority of King and Parliament. A majority of Jamaica freeholders signed a
Loyalist oath, and Oyster Bay was largely Tory. A public meeting of freeholders of Albany
County pledged loyalty to established government, and a loyalty poll was constructed in Ulster
County. The radicals made a determined effort to get the New York Assembly to ratify the
Association, but failed by one vote. Notwithstanding, the Radical Committee of 60 proved sufficient
in controlling the course of the trade in New York City. In Georgia, conditions in late
1774 were more favorable for ratification. The looming Indian War had faded, and Rice
had received its exemption from the Continental Congress. But now many of the radical leaders
in Georgia began to lose their nerve. The Savannah and the assembly radicals proposed
to endorse the association only if more time were granted for launching non-importation
and non-exportation. Only the pure radicals of St. John's Parish, led by Dr. Lyman Hall,
adopted the association without deviation on December 1. A provincial congress met in
in Georgia on January 18. Only five of the 12 parishes sent delegates, and these represented
only small minorities of their parishes. The Congress then, lacking self-confidence, decided
to submit its extra-legal decisions to the official Georgia Assembly. The Congress proceeded
to ratify the association, but with modifications, postponing non-importation to March 15 and
Non-Exportation to December 1, 1775 Governor Wright dissolved the assembly before
it could ratify, but the Congress tried to redeem itself by publishing its decisions.
It did not, however, go so far as to ratify, undeluded, the actual measures of the Continental
Congress. Local committees in every province began immediately to enforce non-importation
after December 1 and Non-Consumption the following March.
In addition to boycotting and ostracizing violators, the same methods were used against
persons of known Tory leanings.
While historians have remarked on the paradox of a libertarian movement using coercive measures
against dissidents, the remarkable thing is the degree of libertarian means that this
This movement used, in pursuit of its ends, never before in history had so much reliance
been placed on such non-violent methods of mass struggle as the boycott, and on such
libertarian and non-violent means of enforcing the boycott as secondary boycotts, social
ostracism, blacklist and public obloquy.
This unprecedented constancy of libertarian ends and means, especially for a revolutionary
mass movement of such size and scope, was marred only around the edges by such minor
excesses as the use of the tarpot, the rail and the feathers. The whole association movement
of 1774-75 is a remarkable testament to the strength of libertarian ideals permeating
in the Revolutionary Era. One of the earliest examples of organized, voluntary boycott took
place in Worcester, Massachusetts in early November when over 40 blacksmiths of the county
pledged to refuse to sell their services to all who violated the association in any way.
They also resolved to do no further work for specified persons and families with Tory leanings,
particularly Timothy Ruggles and others who had been trying to form a Tory association
supported by Governor Gage and pledged each other mutual aid against a popular threat
to their lives or liberties or properties. Further pressure on the Ruggles group came
from the Massachusetts Provincial Congress on December 9, which recommended to the local
committees of correspondence a widespread public notice to such associations and any
Many people signing them that their names be published to the world, their persons treated
with that neglect, and their memories transmitted to posterity with that ignominy which such
unnatural conduct must deserve. Under this pressure, the Ruggles Group found that it
was virtually devoid of signers. Only in the incorrigible Tory town of Marshfield did a
A sizable number gathered to sign a loyalist association, and even they had to send a hurried
call to British troops for protection.
There was little trouble about endorsing non-importation in Massachusetts.
Non-consumption presented a more difficult enforcement problem.
The Newbury Port Inspection Committee solved the matter by requiring shopkeepers to produce
A certificate from a Committee of Inspection attesting that the goods were not sold in violation of the association.
Tea, a product hitherto in great demand in the colonies, was the biggest non-consumption problem.
Typical of Committee vigilance was the crackdown on Thomas Lilley of Marblehead for buying tea for his own consumption.
Lely was pressured into publicly burning the English tea and publicly recanting his errors.
A particular problem was the itinerant peddlers who sold East India tea in the country towns.
A certificate here would not be practicable.
Hence the Provincial Congress in mid-February urged abstinence from all trading with peddlers.
Even before the meeting of the Continental Congress, radical editors had begun publicly
blacklisting Massachusetts supporters of the intolerable acts and traitors accepting jobs
in the gage regime.
The Norwich packet of Connecticut on October 13 blasted the Reverend Samuel Peters, a Tory
Anglican Minister as the most unnatural monster and detestable parasite to this country.
In response, the Petersham town meeting branded 14 Tories incorrigible enemies of America
for being opposed to the Continental Congress and the Association.
The Marblehead town meeting decided to boycott a half-dozen of its citizens as abettors of
of tyranny and parasites of their country. Sometimes, of course, there were excesses,
as when mob coercion forced Dr. Abraham Alden of Bidford and John Taylor of Shrewsbury to
confess their errors. In New Hampshire, non-importation was energetically enforced in the port of
Portsmouth by the Committee of 45. The main trouble was in the country towns where peddlers
This violated non-importation and non-consumption regulations.
As a solution, the towns of Exeter, Kingston, Newmarket and Brentwood imposed a prohibition
upon peddling.
The Provincial Convention in late January endorsed the prohibition and extended it to
the province, urging all citizens to maintain the boycott by abandoning the use of tea.
Rhode Island enforced the association very well. One excess in that province went beyond
voluntary market means, the requirement by the town of Providence that all traders show
certificates of compliance with the association. Connecticut did little direct importing of
its own, therefore its problem was largely that of enforcing non-consumption. The vigilant
and committees of inspection conducted their own private trials of people accused of violating
the association. These trials were almost always fair and impartial. They required full
proof of violations according to the laws of evidence and invited the defendant to appear
voluntarily. This procedure began in Hartford County in late January and soon spread to
The Committee of the Town of Norwich also adopted the idea of requiring dealers under pain of boycott to certify that their goods were not acquired in violation of the association.
One problem that plagued Connecticut and many other colonies was introduced by the Continental Congress's demand that merchants and traders not take advantage of scarcity and that they hold the prices of boycotted goods to the previous year's levels.
This absurd attempt at voluntary price fixing betrayed a monumental ignorance of how the market price system operates.
When goods become scarce, as under non-importation agreements, the free market price rises to
account for the greater scarcity.
Putting the matter into such pseudo-moralistic terms as taking unfair advantage of the scarcity
completely ignores the rationing function of the price system.
If prices do not rise to reflect increased scarcity, then the goods will soon disappear
and not be available at all to those clamoring to buy. Consumers as well as producers are
gravely injured by this form of price control. In Connecticut, in late January, a joint meeting
of committees of inspection of Hartford County attempted to impose fixed retail prices on
New York was the great feeder port for New Jersey and Connecticut, hence its importance for enforcing non-importation. Fortunately, the radicals on the Committee of Sixty soon took over the commercial affairs of the city, and the Committee rigorously enforced the boycott. Great mobs prevented several English ships from landing. Happily, while enforcing non-importation,
When the enforcement of the boycott was rigorous, the committee showed instinctive economic sense by not insisting on prices remaining the same as the supposedly God-given prices of the previous year.
In this way, the committee did not aggravate the substantial amount of Tory sentiment in New York, while allowing effective imposition of the boycott.
Furthermore, the rigorous enforcement of non-importation upon the city made unimportant the fact that
non-consumption could not begin to be enforced outside the city, and Albany, Ulster and Suffolk
counties, the only areas where local inspection committees were available.
Probably most of the infractions, again, occurred in the area of tea consumption, like the Ruggles
Association in Massachusetts, Tory organizations did not get very far in New York. A group
of Tories in ultra-conservative and landlord-ridden duchess in Westchester Counties attempted
to form such associations, but did not succeed. The association was also well enforced in
New Jersey, where there were few ports. The Elizabethtown Committee cooperated with their
Woodbridge Township in Gloucester County also enforced the boycott wholeheartedly, and a tea party was held by New Jersey Indians when East Indian Tea almost landed secretly at Greenwich, in Cumberland County, and in February the Committees of Observation of Elizabeth Town in Woodbridge decided on a complete boycott of trade with the Tories' citizenry of Staten Island.
Tea drinking, a favorite pastime of Americans, again proved the most difficult part of the
association to enforce. When Silas Newcomb of Cumberland County announced rather rashly
that he proposed to drink tea, all dealings were broken off with him by the Cumberland
Committee and in two months he abjectly recanted. Philadelphia, filled with conservative Quaker
For merchants was the big problem area for the American rebels. Here was the weak link
that threatened to collapse the entire boycott movement. In the late 17th century, the Quaker
creed of nonviolence had been radically individualist and anti-statist. But during the 18th century,
Pennsylvania Quakers had become increasingly conservative, statist and even warlike.
Quaker nonviolence was now largely a thinly veiled camouflage for highly conservative,
quasi-Tory views.
The official Quaker Committee of Sufferings in Pennsylvania and New Jersey kept up a steady
drumfire of agitation against the association and other anti-British measures.
Which agitation, despite its nonviolence, was supposedly in violation of Quaker religious
views?
A Quaker meeting for Pennsylvania and New Jersey in late January was quite explicitly
Tory.
It denounced every usurpation of power and authority in opposition to the laws and government
and all combinations, insurrections, conspiracies and illegal assemblages.
The official Quakers were not able to silence their pro-association brethren.
Despite these problems, the Philadelphia Committee of 66 did an excellent job of enforcing non-importation.
The committee divided its membership into six districts, and one member from each district
was delegated each morning to inspect all incoming vessels. This enforcement, as in
New York, was greatly facilitated by a sensible laxity in fixing import prices. Despite the
de jure pronunciamentos, for example, dry goods prices had increased by 25 to 100% by
by March 1775. Delaware, a small and agricultural, rather than commercial province, was scarcely
a center for non-importation struggles and had little trouble in enforcing the boycott.
The southern colonies had particular problems in enforcing the boycott, especially where
the merchants were Scots or factors of Scottish firms. Scottish zeal for the American cause
was less than ardent, but with the planters heavily in debt to these merchants in the normal
course of trade, the southerners had a powerful political weapon against the Tories, a threat
to suspend the judicial collection of debts. Maryland faced the problem of a score of navigable
rivers where imports could enter the province, but keen vigilance by committees of radicals
Lawyers at the commercial centers of Baltimore and Annapolis ensured effective enforcement
of the association. In December, a provincial convention resolved that all lawyers should
refuse to prosecute any suits, especially collections of debt, for those who violated
the boycott. In enforcing non-consumption, tea was again the main problem. Sometimes
A bit of violence was added, as in the case of the stubborn tea dealer, John Parks. Parks
was boycotted by the Committee for Upper Frederick County, and to the boycott was added the breaking
of his doors and windows by a mob. Unfortunately, the rigors of enforcement here extended to
price fixing as well, and the local and provincial committees tried, canute-like, to hold back
The Opposition of Scottish Merchants in Factors was particularly strong in Virginia. That
colony led in closing down collections of debts as a means of putting further pressure
Many historians have charged that the court closings, and indeed much of the revolutionary
The measure was a means of putting pressure on Britain to repeal the intolerable acts, just as similar pressure had been used against the Stamp Act a decade before.
This is indicated by the fact that when some grasping planter debtors urged a boycott of
merchants not just for violating the association, but also for failing to extend credit, this
attempt was immediately slapped down by the leadership.
Indeed, Peyton Randolph, who had presided at the Continental Congress, sternly reminded
And even for strictly political purposes against Britain, a good many of the more moderate of the Virginia leaders opposed the temporary non-payment of debts as unjust. These included George Washington, Robert Beverly, Peyton Randolph, and Edmund Pendleton. Backing
The most radical non-payment were the more radical George Mason, Patrick Henry, Landon Carter, and Richard Henry Lee.
Both sides of the dispute, of course, were led by large tobacco planters.
The Virginia rebels made enforcement of the boycott much more difficult than it had to be.
In the first place, they frenziedly tried to prevent any price increases,
and the committees arrogantly insisted on inspecting the day books and invoices of the merchants to make sure that prices were not increasing.
Indeed, price-fixing committees were actively harassing merchants in many Virginia counties.
The other unnecessary task taken up by the radicals was the decision to require every individual citizen to sign the Continental Association.
Association. This went beyond all the other colonies and forced the radicals to boycott
not only violators of the association but also any of those who were not enthusiastic
enough to endorse it. All this considerably multiplied the roster of supposed delinquents
and those harassed by the popular forces. As in the other colonies, open Tories were
were, of course, held up to public obloquy. As elsewhere, the difficult article of consumption
to boycott was tea. This was the product requiring enforcement. Tea parties were held at the
port of Yorktown to reinforce the boycott. North Carolina, as so often happened, largely
followed the example of neighboring Virginia. Here the body of suspect Scottish merchants
was compactly gathered at Wilmington. The merchants agreed to obey the boycott, but
understandably balked at price fixing. The implacable committees persisted in carefully
supervising prices, and committees in Pitt and Rowan Counties and in Wilmington presumed
to fix maximum prices for salt, dry goods, rum and gunpowder.
The Wilmington Committee also followed the aggressive Virginia lead of insisting that
every individual sign the association. When eleven Scottish merchants refused to sign,
they were boycotted. Eight recanted and signed. The most striking example of tormenting a
non-signer was the case of Thomas McKnight of Currituck County, in the extreme northeastern
A member of the Provincial Convention in April, McKnight, announced that he would abide by the Association, but would not endorse it.
A struggle now raged at the Convention on whether to harass him further.
The majority favored accepting McKnight's course.
But the fanatical minority threatened to withdraw from and split the Convention, and thus forced through a boycott of the candid McKnight.
Night.
To put pressure on British merchants, the North Carolina liberals, again following Virginia,
refused to allow the courts to operate, thus suspending collections of debts.
There was little trouble, furthermore, in enforcing the non-consumption agreement.
As could be expected, the radicals were active and zealous in South Carolina.
Charleston's radical-oriented General Committee led the enforcement and advanced beyond the
Continental Association by establishing its own Association for Non-Consumption of Tea
to begin on November 1. At committee direction, the schoolboys of Charleston collected all
the tea in the city and burned it publicly on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5. Merchants of
Charleson were induced by the committee to dump their English-imported tea into the river.
Non-importation was enforced with great efficiency and zeal. Sometimes, as in the McKnight case,
enforcement degenerated into petty absurdities. Consider, for example, the case of Robert
Smith, who returned from London to Charleston, bringing with him his furniture and two horses.
Immediately, the ultra-radicals led by Christopher Gadsden denounced this act as an import in violation of the association.
After the General Committee had narrowly approved Smith's action, Gadsden and 250 radicals urged reconsideration.
But led by Lynch and the Rutledge's, the General Committee continued to endorse Smith, but by one vote only.
As elsewhere in the South, action was taken against collection of debt by British or Tory creditors.
South Carolina's provincial congress in January decided that any judicial processes for debt had to be approved by local committees of observation.
The absence of anti-creditor animus per se is seen in the instruction to the local committees to permit prosecution for debt
for Debt, whenever debtors were trying to evade their obligations permanently or to
defraud their creditors.
Georgia did not join in the non-importation agreement until March, and even then there
was no effective enforcement in that royal, bureaucrat-ridden colony.
The colonies were then faced with the problem of boycotting this loan holdout of the thirteen
in American Colonies. Accordingly, on February 8, the Charleston General Committee decreed
a boycott of trade with all citizens of Georgia. The radical enclave of St. John's Parish
hastened to send delegates to Charleston urging exemption for themselves, and the perplexed
General Assembly agreed to turn the case over to the next meeting of the Continental Congress.
In the meanwhile, however, the boycott of Georgia persisted and the poor citizens of
St. John's were forced against their principles to engage in limited trade with the Tory merchants
of Savannah. Quebec had also been invited to join the association. The English merchants
of Quebec were willing to join, but the overwhelming French majority was understandably loath to
to join with either wing of its hated oppressors, and the English merchants understandably feared
that they would simply lose their trade to their French rivals.
Quebec therefore did not join the association.
By mid-April, the Philadelphia Committee began the colonial boycotts of the non-signing colonies
– Georgia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.
The task of checking and certifying the good faith of merchants within the several colonies
was not unduly difficult.
Local committees in the seaports performed the major tasks.
But how could the genuineness of goods and merchants be assured in the coastal trade
when the merchants of two remote colonies traded with each other?
Early in the association movement, a Salem merchant trading with Virginia hit on a happy
is the only device that served also to cement and expand the scope of the network of revolutionary
popular institutions in America.
The merchant asked the Salem Committee of Correspondence to issue him a certificate
vouching for his devotion to the cause of American liberty.
The Boston Committee of Correspondence enthusiastically welcomed the idea and the plan, spearheaded
by Providence and the Virginia Counties was soon adopted in the other provinces.