University of Virginia Library

CRISIS OF THE BOSTON PORT BILL

Succeeding this interesting episode of the sloop Gaspée,
the English ministry, despairing of accomplishing their purpose
by frowns and threats, determined to try to enforce the
revenue act by appealing to the cupidity of the colonies. They
persuaded Parliament to take off the duties imposed in England
on tea and allow the three pence collectible in America
only to stand, supposing that the Americans would not decline
to buy tea at the cheap price possible. After the proposal
became a law, the East India Company, having large supplies
stored in their warehouses in England, began to ship cargoes
of tea to Charleston, New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
Hutchinson says that the association against tea had been

so thoroughly abandoned in Boston, "even by some of the
great friends to liberty," that "the first news failed to arouse
any alarm, and the patriots were excited to action by friends in
England."[75]

Among those who were instrumental in this particular, Dr.
Arthur Lee again proved his usefulness. In a letter to Samuel
Adams, dated October 13, 1773, he informed him of the proposed
law, and dwelt at large upon its dangers. He declared
that the introductions of the tea ought to be opposed. "The
commodity may under this maneuver come cheaper to the consumer,
but whatever touches our liberties should under every
temptation be avoided. Besides, when once they have fixed
the trade upon us they will find ways enough to enhance the
price."

Doubtless Lee in giving this advice to Samuel Adams had
orderly action in view, and Adams was prominent in meetings
at Faneuil Hall to prevent the landing of the tea, but there is no
evidence of his advising a resort to violence.

But once more the influences at Boston to which I have
hitherto alluded made Massachusetts the occasion of the Revolutionary
movement. In Charleston, New York and Philadelphia,
the consignees, being without any support, declined
to receive the tea and resigned; but in Boston, where Thomas
Hutchinson had succeeded Francis Bernard as governor, the
Tory and military influences were so strong that the consignees—two
of whom were Hutchinson's sons, were tempted
to hold on. Then the mob materialized again, and on the night
of December 16, 1773, a band of men disguised as Indians
boarded the vessel, cut open the tea chests and threw the entire
cargo overboard, valued at £15,000.

It has never been ascertained who constituted this marauding
party, and it is impossible to suppose that any man of note
had any part in it, else concealment to this time would have
been improbable. Howard believes[76] that Samuel Adams was

in the secret and probably the instigator, but he does not think
that this lawless destruction of private property "can be
justly looked upon as an honor to his memory." But more
than that this disguise looks cowardly, and Adams, standing
by out of danger himself, and urging them on, appears even
more cowardly than the actors. The brutal outrage perpetrated
on Captain Smith in Norfolk during the Stamp Act had
at least the element of openness about it. The South Carolinians
in refusing to buy the tea shipped to Charleston till it
all rotted in the warehouses presented a more honorable and
patriotic aspect than the actors in the "Tea Party" in Boston.

But the English government hastened to put itself in the
wrong, though the action of the rioters was disavowed by
decent people in Boston. The provocation to extreme action
was undoubtedly great and no one at this time can blame England
for feeling indignant. But the remedy adopted went
far beyond the necessities of the case and evoked sympathy in
the other colonies. It did more, it emblazoned in history as
particularly worthy an act which on cool consideration has not
as good standing as lynching negroes in the South in our day
for unmentionable crimes.

The English government, stimulated by Governor Hutchinson,
breathed of nothing but threats of execution and transportation
beyond the seas, and Boston was made to suffer for
the deeds of irresponsible persons. Boston was condemned,
and Parliament passed bills to shut up the port and to abrogate
the charter of Massachusetts in some essential particulars.

Boston's remedy was found in an appeal put forward by
her town meeting to the people of the colonies to join her in a
total cessation of commerce with Great Britain. But the invitation
was received at first very coldly in the northern section
where New York and Philadelphia were in no hurry to
take action. Fortunately, "Warmer hearts," writes Bancroft,
"beat below Mason's and Dixon's line."

In April, 1774, arrived in Williamsburg Lady Dunmore
and her children, George, Lord Fincastle, the Honorables

Alexander and John Murray, and the Ladies Catherine,
Augusta and Susan Murray. They were welcomed with an
illumination of the city, and the three young noblemen were
put to school at the college. The late measure of Parliament
was as yet unknown in Virginia, and the feeling of loyalty still
predominated with all classes.

When the assembly met in May, 1774, Williamsburg presented
a scene of unwonted gaiety, and a court herald published
a code of etiquette for the regulation of the society of
the little metropolis. There were balls, dancing, assemblies,
theatricals, and a large concourse of people from the country.
George Washington arrived and dined with Lord Dunmore.

The scene, however, changed as soon as the news of the act
of Parliament with reference to the closing of the port of
Boston reached the city. Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson,
R. H. Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and three or four other gentlemen
of the Progressive Party drew up a resolution, which
they persuaded Robert Carter Nicholas of the conservative
element to offer, denouncing the action of the British government
and setting apart the first day of June on which the port
bill was to commence, for a day of fasting, humiliation and
prayer throughout the colony. These resolves were printed
in the Virginia Gazette of May 26, and on seeing them Lord
Dunmore ordered the house immediately that day to come
upstairs to the council chamber, where he addressed them in
the following language: "Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the
House of Burgesses, I have in my hand a paper published by
order of your house, conceived in such terms as to reflect
highly upon his majesty and the parliament of Great Britain,
which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are
dissolved accordingly."

The members, thereupon, left the capitol, and next day
(May 27) gathered in the Apollo Hall at the Raleigh Tavern,
and with Peyton Randolph, their late speaker in the chair,
completed the work which they had intended by voting that the
attack on Massachusetts was an attack on all the colonies, to be

opposed by the united wisdom of all, that a Congress should be
annually held, that as a punishment to the East India Company,
no East India commodity, hereafter, should be imported,
and that, if the unconstitutional principle of taxing the colonies
should be persisted in, commercial intercourse with
Great Britain should be altogether suspended.

Two days later, on May 29, letters from the North arriving
by way of Philadelphia and Annapolis, with information of the
desire of Boston for immediate non-intercourse, the twenty-five
members still remaining in town called a convention of the
people to meet on August 1.

By the proceedings thus described, Virginia maintained
herself at the front of the Revolutionary movement. It was
the glory of Virginia that she was not only the first colony in
America to identify herself with Boston, but the first to call a
Congress of the colonies. For although unknown to our
patriots in Williamsburg, the suggestion of a Congress was
made in advance during the same month of May by the committee
of correspondence in New York, and a town meeting in
Providence, these were mere local affairs without any general
authority.[77] The action at Williamsburg, on the other hand,
was that of an organized, legislative body, presided over by a
speaker, and presuming to declare officially for a whole colony.
The Virginia Burgesses took the lead in calling not only a
Congress, but an annual Congress of the colonies involving a
permanent union, first started by the institution of the inter-colonial
committees of correspondence. On June 3, Connecticut
adopted a call for Congress, but the action of Virginia was
decisive, and the assembly of Rhode Island followed her lead
on June 15, Massachusetts on June 17, Pennsylvania on July
22, till all had fallen in line. The colonies which had not acted
now appointed their committees of correspondence, and the
local committees, which had not crossed the border of Massachusetts,
now under the stimulating influence of Virginia's

action, spread from town to town and county to county,
through all the colonies.

The position of Virginia, as leader of the colonies, at this
critical juncture of their affairs, is abundantly attested by the
literature of the day. The Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence
wrote June 3, (1774): "All America look up to
Virginia to take the lead on the present occasion." The Delaware
committee wrote, May 26, that because of the "high
opinion of the zeal and firmness of those of your colony in the
common cause of America, we are persuaded that their resolutions,
at this important crisis, will have great weight here."
The Connecticut committee June 13, praised "the wise,
spirited, and seasonable proceedings of your truly patriotic
House of Burgesses, in early proposing a correspondence between
and union of the colonies and the manly, pious and
humane attention more lately manifested to the distresses of
the town of Boston." Perhaps stronger evidence still is to be
found in a letter dated July 6, 1774, to Governor Dunmore from
Lord Dartmouth, who had succeeded Lord Hillsborough as
Secretary of State in management of the colonies. Lord Dartmouth
wrote: "There was reason to hope from appearances
in the other colonies that the extravagant proposition of the
people of Boston would have been everywhere disregarded.
But it now may well be doubted whether the extraordinary
conduct of the Burgesses of Virginia, both before and after
their dissolution as a House, may not become (as it has already
become in other instances) an example to the other colonies."

On August 3, 1774, Dartmouth wrote again to Lord Dunmore:
"The proceedings of the Burgesses of Virginia do not
encourage me to hope for a speedy issue to the present discussion,
and we have seen too much of the prevalence of the example
they have set the other colonies, not to be greatly
alarmed at what may be the result of the unconstitutional
meeting (Congress) they are endeavoring to promote."

To Patrick Henry, who led the people in Virginia, George
Mason, whose ability to judge cannot be questioned, referred

George Mason

at this time, "as by far the most powerful speaker he had ever
heard," and "as the first man on the continent as well in
ability as public virtues."

In the interval between the dissolution of the General
Assembly and the meeting of the convention on August 1,
1774, the Freeholders of every county in Virginia held meetings
and adopted patriotic resolutions, pledging provisions for
Boston, asserting the rights of the colonies, and endorsing the
strictest non-intercourse with Great Britain. There were
some, indeed, who thought the policy of non-intercourse on
the one hand too tame as a means of resistance to government,
and on the other too harsh in its application to the Virginia
creditors in England, and wanted the ground to be taken at
once that no attention whatever should be paid to the tea act
or any other act of Parliament infringing on colonial rights.
The champion advocate of this policy was Thomson Mason, of
Stafford, brother of George Mason, who set out his views in
six able articles published in the Virginia Gazette, under the
title of "A British American."

The convention duly met, appointed a delegation to the
Congress, and adopted an extensive system of non-intercourse,
and all signed the paper except Thomson Mason, who refused
for the reasons stated above.

And yet nothing, indeed, could testify more for the elevated
principles of the Virginians than their action at this time. Not
only did they by non-intercourse voluntarily invite the hardships
of the Boston Port Bill to their own firesides, but the
policy thus adopted was more hurtful to their interests than
to the interests of the people of England, and far more than
to the interests of the four colonies of New England, as by
their home industries the latter was much less dependent on
the mother country, and their exports and imports did not
amount to half the exports and imports of Virginia and Maryland.[78]

Among the members of the convention was George Washington,
who united a great moral and intellectual power with
an imposing physical appearance. It is said of him that he was
a man of strong emotions kept in check by perfect self-control.
It is probable that his apprehension of his own natural vehemence
made him as a rule silent in deliberative bodies. History
tells of two occasions when his habitual self control gave way
and his emotions swept in a mighty tumult over every obstacle.
One was at Monmouth when he was provoked beyond endurance
at the pusillanimous conduct of General Charles Lee.
The other, it seems, was in this convention when the modest,
taciturn officer rose in the might of his strength and blazed in
the glory of oratory. Thomas Lynch, of South Carolina, told
John Adams that "Colonel Washington made the most eloquent
speech at the Virginia Convention that ever was made.
Said he, `I will raise one thousand men, subsist them at my
own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of
Boston.' "[79]

Mr. Jefferson, the young member for Albemarle, was the
draftsman of instructions for the delegates, which were
deemed too bold as a first measure. They assumed, though
with a spirit more decided, the extreme ground taken by Bland,
in 1766, that the colonies were independent in all respects of
Parliament, and summed up with trenchant pen that easily
gave him the first place among American writers the rights
and wrongs of the continent. Another set of instructions,
probably drawn by Mr. Henry, falling short of the position
adopted by Mr. Jefferson, was preferred, but Mr. Jefferson's
paper was "read generally by the members, and approved by
many, and by the convention printed in pamphlet form under
the title of `A Summary View of the Rights of British America.'
" This magnificent pamphlet passed through various

editions, both here and in England, and furnished to a large
extent, if not the topics, the phrases, of the American Revolution.
Indeed, it contained every idea of the Declaration of
Independence adopted two years later, except the explicit
statement of separation.

In the great Congress of the States, which assembled at
Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, Virginia shone resplendent
in the constellation which composed her delegation. The delegates
elected to Congress were Peyton Randolph, Speaker of
the House of Burgesses, and President of the Virginia Convention,
Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick
Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison and Edmund
Pendleton. Joseph Reed, president of the Pennsylvania convention
of 1775, has left this record of the prevailing impression:[80] "We are so taken up with the Congress that we hardly
think of talking of anything else. About fifty have come to
town and more are expected. There are some fine fellows come
from Virginia, but they are very high. The Bostonians are
mere milk-sops to them. We understand that they are the
capital men of the colony, both in fortune and understanding."

The pre-eminence of Virginia was promptly recognized by
the election of Peyton Randolph, chairman of her delegation
as president, and the appointment of his colleagues on all the
important committees. Patrick Henry made the great opening
speech, and he and Richard Henry Lee took the palm as
orators.[81] Richard Henry Lee drafted the memorial to the
"inhabitants of the British colonies," and Patrick Henry
drew up an address to the King, but its sentiments proving
too strong for the conciliatory attitude of Congress, a rather
tame substitute, prepared by John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania,
was preferred. Col. Washington did not write State

papers or speak in the open, but his influence among the members
must have been prodigious. When returned to his home,
Patrick Henry was asked by a neighbor who he thought was
the greatest man in Congress, and he answered: "Col. Washington,
who has no pretensions to eloquence, is a man of more
solid judgment and information than any man on that floor."
His speech in the convention proved, however, that Washington
could be an orator, when the occasion was great enough,
and he let himself out.

At this meeting, Congress in defining the attitude of America,
abandoned the Otis doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament
and placed itself squarely upon the Virginia platform.
An article drawn by John Adams claimed for the
colonies the exclusive power of Legislation "in all cases of
taxation and internal policy," but consented to the operation
of such acts of the British Parliament, as were bona fide restrained
to the regulation of trade. In strict conformity with
a petition of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1773,[82] the retrospect
of grievance was only carried back to 1763, and all
the acts of Parliament passed since that time were pronounced
inadmissible. To give effect to this attitude, they adopted, in
all essential particulars, the plan of non-intercourse proposed
by the Virginia convention and recommended the appointment
of a committee in every county, city and town in America to
carry it out.