Chapter 9:
The Day-Star of the American Union,
April-July 1765

THIS is the moment when the power of the British oligarchy, under the revolution of 1688, was at its culminating point. The ministry esteemed the supreme power of parliament established firmly and forever. The colonists could not export the chief products of their industry—neither sugar, nor tobacco, nor cotton, nor indigo, nor ginger; nor fustic, nor other dyeing woods; nor molasses, nor rice, with some exceptions; nor beaver, nor peltry of any kind; nor copper ore, nor pitch, nor tar, nor turpentine, nor masts, nor yards, nor bowsprits, nor coffee, nor pimento, nor cocoanuts, nor whale-fins, nor raw silk, nor hides, nor skins, nor pot and pearl ashes—to any place but Great Britain, not even to Ireland. No foreign ship might enter a colonial harbor. Salt might be imported from any place into New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Quebec; wines might be imported from the Madeiras and the Azores, but were to pay a duty in American ports for the British exchequer; and victuals, horses, and servants might be brought from Ireland. In all other respects, Great Britain was not only the sole market for the products of America, but the only storehouse for its supplies.

Lest the colonists should multiply their flocks of sheep and weave their own cloth, they might not use a ship, nor a boat, nor a carriage, nor even a pack-horse, to carry wool, or any manufacture of which wool forms a part, across the line of one province to another. They could not land wool from the nearest islands, nor ferry it across a river, nor even ship it to England. A British sailor, finding himself in want of clothes in their harbors, might not buy there more than forty shillings’ worth of woollens.

Where was there a house in the colonies that did not possess and cherish the English Bible? And yet to print that Bible in British America would have been a piracy; and the Bible, though printed in German and in a native savage dialect, was never printed there in English till the land became free.

That the country, which was the home of the beaver, might not manufacture its own hats, no man in the plantations could be a hatter or a journeyman at that trade unless he had served an apprenticeship of seven years. No hatter might employ a negro or more than two apprentices. No American hat might be sent from one plantation to another, or be loaded upon any horse, cart, or carriage for conveyance.

America abounded in iron ores of the best quality, as well as in wood and coal; slitting-mills, steel furnaces, and plating forges, to work with a tilt hammer, were prohibited in the colonies as "nuisances."

While free labor was debarred of its natural rights, the slave-trade was encouraged with unrelenting eagerness; and in the year that had just expired, from Liverpool alone seventy-nine ships had borne from Africa to the West Indies and the continent more than fifteen thousand three hundred negroes, two thirds as many as the first colonists of Massachusetts.

And now, in addition to colonial restrictions and the burdens attached to them, the British parliament had enacted a new system of taxes on America for the relief of the British exchequer. A duty was to be collected on foreign sugar, molasses, indigo, coffee, Madeira wine, imported directly into any of the plantations in America; also a duty on Portuguese and Spanish wines, on eastern silks, on eastern calicoes, on foreign linen cloth, on French lawn, though imported directly from Great Britain; on British colonial coffee shipped from one plantation to another. Nor was henceforward any part of the old subsidy to be drawn back on the export of foreign goods of Europe or the East Indies, and on the export of white calicoes and muslins a still higher duty was to be exacted and retained. And stamp duties were to be paid throughout all the British American colonies on and after the first day of the coming November.

These laws were to be enforced, not by the regular authorities only, but by naval and military officers, irresponsible to the civil power in the colonies. The penalties and forfeitures for breach of the revenue laws were to be decided in courts of vice-admiralty, without the interposition of a jury, by a single judge, who had no support whatever but from his share in the profits of his own condemnations.

But, if the British parliament can tax America, it may tax Ireland and India, and hold the wealth of the East and of the West at the service of its own oligarchy. As the relation of the government to its outlying dominions would become one of power and not of right, it could not but employ its accumulated resources to make itself the master of the ocean and the oppressor of mankind. "This system, if it is suffered to prevail," said Oxenbridge Thacher, of Boston, "will extinguish the flame of liberty all over the world."

Massachusetts had been led to rely on the inviolability of English freedom and on the equity of parliament; and, when the blow fell, "the people looked upon their liberties as gone." "Tears," said Otis," relieve me a moment;" and, repelling the imputation "that the continent of America was about to become insurgent," "it is the duty of all," he added, "humbly and silently to acquiesce in all the decisions of the supreme legislature. Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of the colonists will never once entertain a thought but of submission to our sovereign, and to the authority of parliament in all possible contingencies." "They undoubtedly have the right to levy internal taxes on the colonies." "From my soul, I detest and abhor the thought of making a question of jurisdiction."

Hutchinson was only "waiting to know what more parliament would do toward raising the sums which the colonies were to pay," and which as yet were not half provided for. As chief justice, he charged "the jurors and people" of the several counties to obey. Nor did the result seem doubtful. There could be no danger but from union; and "no two colonies," said he, "think alike; there is no uniformity of measures; the bundle of sticks thus separated will be easily broken." "The stamp act," he assured the ministry, five weeks after the news of its passage, "is received among us with as much decency as could be expected; it leaves no room for evasion, and will execute itself."

In Boston, at the annual election of representatives in May, men called to mind the noble sentiments which had been interwoven into the remonstrances of New York, and were imbittered at the thought that their legislature had been cajoled by Hutchinson into forbearing to claim exemption from taxation as a right. While the patriots censured the acquiescence of Otis, as a surrender of their liberties, the friends of government jeered at him as a Massaniello and a madman. In the gloom that was thickening around him, he repelled merited reproaches like one who could find no consolation. But the town of Boston never ceased to cherish the most genial of its patriots so long as he retained enough of the light of reason to be sensible of its support.

At first the planters of Virginia foreboded universal ruin from the stamp act; but soon they resolved that the act should recoil on England: articles of luxury of English manufacture were banished; and threadbare coats came into fashion. A large provincial debt enforced the policy of thrift. The legislature of Virginia was then assembled, and the electors of Louisa county had just filled a vacancy in their representation by making choice of Patrick Henry, though he had resided among them scarcely a year. Devoted to their interest, he never flattered the people, and was never forsaken by them. As he took his place, not yet acquainted with the forms of business in the house or with its members, he saw the time for the enforcement of the stamp-tax drawing near, while all the other colonies, through timid hesitation or the want of opportunity, remained silent; and cautious loyalty hushed the experienced statesmen of his own. Many of the assembly had made the approaching close of the session an excuse for returning home; but Patrick Henry, a burgess of but a few days, unadvised and unassisted, in an auspicious moment, of which the recollection cheered him to his latest day, came forward in the committee of the whole house; and while Thomas Jefferson, a young collegian, from the mountain frontier, stood outside of the closed hall, eager to catch the first tidings of resistance, and George Washington, there is no cause to doubt, was in his place as a member, he maintained by resolutions that the inhabitants of Virginia inherited from the first adventurers and settlers of that dominion equal franchises with the people of Great Britain; that royal charters had declared this equality; that taxation by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, was the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom and of the constitution; that the people of that most ancient colony had uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their own laws respecting their internal polity and taxation; that this right had never been forfeited, nor given up, and had been constantly recognised by the king and people of Great Britain.

It followed from these resolutions, and Patrick Henry so expressed it in a fifth supplementary one, that the general assembly of the whole colony have the sole right and power to lay taxes on the inhabitants of the colony, and that any attempt to vest such power in any other persons whatever tended to destroy British as well as American freedom. It was still further set forth, yet not by Henry, in two resolutions, which, though they were not officially produced, equally embodied the mind of the younger part of the assembly, that the inhabitants of Virginia were not bound to yield obedience to any law designed to impose taxation upon them other than the laws of their own general assembly; and that any one who should, either by speaking or writing, maintain the contrary, should be deemed an enemy to the colony.

A stormy debate arose, and many threats were uttered. Robinson, the speaker, already a defaulter, Peyton Randolph, the king’s attorney, and the frank, honest, and independent George Wythe, a lover of classic learning, accustomed to guide the house by his strong understanding and single-minded integrity, exerted all their powers to moderate the tone of "the hot and virulent resolutions;" while John Randolph, the best lawyer in the colony, "singly" resisted the whole proceeding. But, on the other side, George Johnston, of Fairfax, reasoned with solidity and firmness; and Henry flamed with impassioned zeal. Lifted beyond himself, "Tarquin," he cried "and Caesar, had each his Brutus; Charles I, his Cromwell; and George III"—" Treason!" shouted the speaker; "treason! treason!" was echoed round the house; while Henry, fixing his eye on the first who interrupted him, continued without faltering, "may profit by their example!"

Swayed by his words, the committee of the whole showed its good-will to the spirit of all the resolutions enumerated, but the five offered by Patrick Henry were alone reported to the house; and on Thursday, the thirtieth of May, having been adopted by small majorities, the fifth by a vote of twenty to nineteen, they became a part of the public record. "I would have given five hundred guineas for a single vote," exclaimed the attorney-general aloud as he came out past Jefferson. But Henry "carried all the young members with him." That night, thinking his work done, he rode home; but the next day, in his absence, an attempt was made to strike all the resolutions off the journals, and the fifth, but only the fifth, was blotted out. The lieutenant-governor, though he did not believe new elections would fall on what he esteemed cool, reasonable men, dissolved the assembly; but the four resolutions which remained on the journals, and the two others on which no vote had been taken, were published in the newspapers throughout America as the avowed sentiment of the Old Dominion.

This is the "way the fire began." "Virginia rang the alarum bell for the continent."

At the opening of the legislature of Massachusetts, Oliver, who had been appointed stamp distributor, was, on the joint ballot of both branches, re-elected councillor by a majority of but three out of about one hundred and twenty votes. More than half the representatives voted against him.

On the day on which the resolves of Virginia were adopted, and just as the speech of Barre acquainted all the people that within parliament itself they had been hailed as the "Sons of Liberty," a message from Governor Bernard informed the new legislature of Massachusetts that "the general settlement of the American provinces, though it might necessarily produce some regulations disagreeable from their novelty, had been long ago proposed, and would now be prosecuted to its utmost completion; that submission to the decrees of the supreme legislature, to which all other powers in the British empire were subordinate, was the duty and the interest of the colonies; that this supreme legislature, the parliament of Great Britain, was happily the sanctuary of liberty and justice; and that the prince who presided over it realized the idea of a patriot king."

Contrary to usage, the house made no reply; but, on the sixth of June, James Otis advised the calling of an American congress, which should consist of committees from each of the thirteen colonies, to be appointed respectively by the delegates of the people, without regard to the other branches of the legislature. Such an assembly had never existed; and the purpose of deliberating upon the acts of parliament was equally novel. The tories sneered at the proposal as visionary and impracticable; but the representatives of Massachusetts shared the creative instinct of Otis. Assuring unanimity by even refusing to consider the question of their exclusive right to originate measures of internal taxation, they sent letters to every assembly on the continent, proposing that committees of the several assemblies should meet at New York, on the first Tuesday of the following October, "to consult together" and "consider of a united representation to implore relief." They elected Otis and two others of their own members for their delegates.

At the same time, the province increased its strength by perseverance in appropriating annually fifty thousand pounds toward discharging its debt; and so good was its credit, and so affluent its people, that the interest on the remaining debt was reduced from six to five per cent by a public subscription among themselves.

Before the proceedings in Virginia and Massachusetts were known in New York, where the reprint of the stamp act was hawked about the streets as the "folly of England and the ruin of America," a freeman of that town, discussing the policy of Grenville, and the arguments on which it rested, demonstrated that they were leading alike to the reform of the British parliament and the independence of America.

"It is not the tax," said he, "it is the unconstitutional manner of imposing it, that is the great subject of uneasiness to the colonies. The minister admitted in parliament that they had in the fullest sense the right to be taxed only by their own consent, given by their representatives; and grounds his pretence of the right to tax them entirely upon this, that they are virtually represented in parliament.

"It is said that they are in the same situation as the inhabitants of Leeds, Halifax, Birmingham, Manchester, and several other corporate towns; and that the right of electing does not comprehend above one tenth part of the people of England.

"And in this land of liberty, for so it WAS our glory to call it, are there really men so insensible to shame as before the awful tribunal of reason to mention the hardships which some places in England are obliged to bear without redress, as precedents for imposing still greater hardships and wrongs upon America?

"It has long been the complaint of the most judicious in England, as the greatest misfortune to the nation, that its people are so unequally represented. Time and change of circumstances have occasioned defects in the rules or forms of choosing representatives for parliament. Some large towns send none to represent them, while several insignificant places, of only a few indigent persons, whose chief support is the sale of their votes, send many members. Seats are purchased with the nation’s money; and a corrupt administration, by bribing others with places and pensions, can command a majority in the house of commons that will pass what laws they please. These evils are too notorious to escape general observation, and too atrocious to be palliated. Why are not these crying grievances redressed? Only because they afford the greatest opportunities for bribery and corruption.

"The fundamental principle of the English constitution is reason and natural right. It has within itself the principle of self-preservation, correction, and improvement. That there are towns, corporations, and bodies of people in England in similar circumstances as the colonies, shows that some of the people in England, as well as those in America, are injured and oppressed, but shows no sort of right for the oppression. Those places ought to join with the Americans in remonstrances to obtain redress of grievances.

"Our adherence to the English constitution is on account of its real excellence. It is not the mere name of English rights that can satisfy us. It is the reality that we claim as our inheritance, and would defend with our lives.

"The great fundamental principles of a government should be common to all its parts and members, else the whole will be endangered. If, then, the interest of the mother country and her colonies cannot be made to coincide, if the same constitution may not take place in both, if the welfare of the mother country necessarily requires of the colonies a sacrifice of their right of making their own laws and disposing of their own property by representatives of their own choosing, then the connection between them ought to cease; and sooner or later it must inevitably cease.

"There never can be a disposition in the colonies to break off their connection with the mother country so long as they are permitted to have the full enjoyment of those rights to which the English constitution entitles them. They desire no more; nor can they be satisfied with less."

These words embodied the sober judgment of New York. They were caught up by the impatient colonies, were reprinted in nearly all their newspapers, were approved of by their most learned and judicious statesmen, and even formed part of the instructions of South Carolina to its agent in England.

Thus revolution proceeded. Virginia marshalled resistance, Massachusetts entreated union, New York pointed to independence.

The summons for the congress had gone forth from Massachusetts when the resolves of Virginia were published to the world. "They have spoken treason," said the royalists. "Is it treason," retorted others, "for the deputies of the people to assert their rights, or to give them away?" "Oh! those Virginians," cried Oxenbridge Thacher, from his death-bed, where, overplied by public exertions, he was wasting away with a hectic, "those Virginians are men; they are noble spirits. I long to speak in court against tyranny words that shall be read after my death." "Why," said one of his friends, "are not our rights and liberties as boldly asserted by every government in America as by Virginia?" "Behold," cried another, "a whole continent awakened, alarmed, restless, and disaffected." Everywhere, from north to south, through the press, in letters, or as they met in private for counsel or in groups in the street, the "Sons of Liberty " told their griefs to one another, and planned retaliation or redress.

"No good reason can be given," observed the more calm among them, "why the colonies should not modestly and soberly inquire what right the parliament of Great Britain has to tax them." "We were not sent out to be slaves," they continued, citing the example of ancient Greece and the words of Thucydides; "we are the equals of those who remained behind. Americans hold equal rights with those in Britain, not as conceded privileges, but inherent and indefeasible." "We have the rights of Englishmen," was the common voice, "and as such we are to be ruled by laws of our own making, and tried by men of our own condition."

"If we are Englishmen," said one, "on what footing is our property?" "The great Mr. Locke," said another, "lays it down that no man has a right to that which another may take from him;" and a third, proud of his respect for the law, sheltered himself under the words of the far-famed Coke: "The lord may tax his villein, high or low; but it is against the franchises of the land for freemen to be taxed but by their own consent in parliament." "If the people in America are to be taxed by the representatives of the people in England, their malady," said Hopkins, of Rhode Island, "is an increasing evil, that must always grow greater by time." "When the parliament once begins," such was the discourse at Boston, "there is no drawing a line." "And it is only the first step," repeated the New York owners of large estates; "a land-tax for all America will be thought of next."

"It is plain," said even the calmest, "Englishmen do not regard Americans as brothers, and equals, but as subordinates, bound to submit to oppression at their pleasure." "A bill was even prepared," thus men warned each other against new dangers, "that authorized quartering British soldiers upon American private families." "And is not our property seized," they further exclaimed, "by men who cry, ’give, give,’ and never say, ’enough,’ and thrown into a prerogative court to be forfeited without a jury?"

"There is not silver enough in the colonies to pay for the stamps," computed patriot financiers, "and the trade by which we could get more is prohibited." "And yet," declared the merchants of New York, "we have a natural right to every freedom of trade of the English." "To tax us, and bind our commerce and restrain manufactures," reasoned even the most patient, "is to bid us make brick without straw." "The northern colonies will be absolutely restricted from using any articles of clothing of their own fabric," predicted one colony to another. And men laughed as they added: "Catching a mouse within his majesty’s colonies with a trap of our own making will be deemed, in the ministerial cant, an infamous, atrocious, and nefarious crime." "A colonist," murmured a Boston man, who had dipped into Grenville’s pamphlet, "cannot make a horseshoe or a hobnail but some ironmonger of Britain shall bawl that he is robbed by the ’American republican.’" "They are even stupid enough," it was said in Rhode Island, "to judge it criminal for us to become our own manufacturers."

"We will eat no lamb," promised the multitude, seeking to retaliate; "we will wear no mourning at funerals." "We will none of us import British goods," said the traders in the towns. The inhabitants of North Carolina set up looms for weaving their own clothes, and South Carolina was ready to follow the example. "The people," wrote Lieutenant-Governor Sharpe, of Maryland, "will go on upon manufactures." "We will have homespun markets of linens and woollens," passed from mouth to mouth, till it found its way across the Atlantic, and alarmed the king in council; "the ladies of the first fortune shall set the example of wearing homespun." "It will be accounted a virtue in them to wear a garment of their own spinning." "A little attention to manufactures will make us ample amends for the distresses of the present day, and render us a great, rich, and happy people."

When the churchmen of New York preached loyalty to the king as the Lord’s anointed, "The people," retorted William Livingston, "are the Lord’s anointed. Though named ’mob’ and ’rabble,’ the people are the darling of Providence." Was the Bible quoted as demanding deference to all in authority? "This," it was insisted, "is to add dulness to impiety;" for "tyranny is no government." From the pulpit, Mayhew, of Boston, taught: "The gospel promises liberty and permits resistance."

And then patriots would become maddened with remembering that "some high or low American had had a hand in procuring every grievance." "England," it was said, "is deceived and deluded by place-men and office-seekers." "Yes," exclaimed the multitude, "it all comes of the horse-leeches." When "the friends to government" sought to hush opposition by terror of parliament, the answer was: "You are cowards, you are parricides."

"Power is a sad thing," wrote the Presbyterians of Philadelphia: "our mother should remember we are children, and not slaves." "When all Israel saw that the king hearkened not unto them," responded the Calvinists of the North, "the people answered the king, saying: ’What portion have we in David? what inheritance in the son of Jesse? To your tents, O Israel! Now see to thine own house, David!’" "Who cares," reasoned the more hardy, "whether George or Louis is the sovereign, if both are alike?" "The beast of burden," continued others, "asks not whose pack it carries." "I would bear allegiance to King George," said one who called himself a lover of truth, "but not be a slave to his British subjects."

"But the members of parliament," argued the royalists, "are men of wisdom and integrity, and incapable of dealing unjustly." "One who is bound to obey the will of another," retorted Hopkins, "is as really a slave, though he may have a good master, as if he had a bad one; and this is stronger in politic bodies than in natural ones."

"It is an insult on the most common understanding," thought James Habersham, of Georgia, and every American from Savannah to Maine, "to talk of our being virtually represented in parliament." "It is an insult on common sense to say it," repeated the Presbyterian ministers of the middle states. "Are persons chosen for the representatives of London and Bristol in like manner chosen to be the representatives of Philadelphia or Boston? Have two men chosen to represent a poor English borough that has sold its votes to the highest bidder any pretence to say that they represent Virginia or Pennsylvania? And have four hundred such fellows a right to take our liberties?"

But it was argued again and again: "Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield, like America, return no members." "Why," rejoined Otis, and his answer won applause in England, "why ring everlasting changes to the colonists on them? If they are not represented, they ought to be." "Every man of a sound mind," he continued, "should have his vote." "Ah, but," replied the royalists, holding Otis to his repeated concessions, "you own that parliament is the supreme legislature; will you question its jurisdiction?" And his answer was on the lips of all patriots, learned and unlearned: "Lord Coke declares that it is against Magna Charta and against the franchises of the land for freemen to be taxed but by their own consent."

Thus opinion was echoed from mind to mind, as the sun’s rays beam from many clouds, all differing in tints, but every one taking its hue from the same fire. In the midst of the gloom, light broke forth from the excitement of a whole people. Associations were formed in Virginia, as well as in New England, to resist the stamp act by all lawful means. Hope began to rise that American rights and liberties might safely be trusted "to the watchfulness of a united continent."

The insolence of the royal officers provoked to insulated acts of resistance. The people of Rhode island, angry with the commander of a ship-of-war who had boarded their vessels and impressed their seamen, seized his boat, and burned it on Newport common. Men of New England, "of a superior sort," had obtained of the government of New Hampshire a warrant for land down the western slope of the Green Mountains, on a branch of the Hoosic, twenty miles east of the Hudson river. They formed already a community of sixty-seven families, in as many houses, with an ordained minister, their own municipal officers, three several public schools, their meeting-house among the primeval forests of beech and maple; in a word, they enjoyed the flourishing state which springs from rural industry, intelligence, and piety. They called their village Bennington. The royal officers at New York disposed anew of that town, as well as of others near it, so that the king was known to the settlers near the Green Mountains chiefly by his agents, who had knowingly sold his lands twice over. In this way Bennington was made a battle-ground for independence.

But there was no present relief for America unless union could be perfected. Union was the hope of Otis—union that "should knit and work into the very blood and bones of the original system every region, as fast as settled." Yet how comprehensive and how daring the idea! The traditions of the board of trade branded it as "mutinous." Massachusetts had proceeded timidly, naming for its delegates to the proposed congress the patriot Otis, with two others who were "friends to government."

Virginia was ready to convince the world that her people were firm and unanimous in the cause of liberty, but its newly elected assembly was not suffered by Fauquier to come together. New Jersey received the circular letter of Massachusetts on the twentieth of June, the last day of the session of its legislature. The speaker, a friend to the British government, at first inclined to urge sending delegates to the proposed congress; but, on some "advice" from the governor, changed his mind, and the house, in the hurry preceding the adjournment, rather from uncertainty than the want of good-will, unanimously declined the invitation. The assembly of New Hampshire seemed to approve, but did not adopt it. "Nothing will be done in consequence of this intended congress," wrote Bernard, in July; and he seized the opportunity to press "more and more" upon the government at home "the necessity of taking into their hands the appointment of the American civil list," as well as changing the council of the province. Even the liberal governor of Maryland reported "that the resentment of the colonists would probably die out; and that, in spite of the violent outcries of the lawyers, the stamp act would be carried into execution."

But, far away toward the lands of the sun, the assembly of South Carolina was in session; and, on the twenty-fifth of July, debated the circular from Massachusetts. Many objections were made to the legality, the expediency, and most of all to the efficiency of the proposed measure; and many eloquent words were uttered, especially by the youthful John Rutledge, when the subject, on the deliberate resolve of a small majority, was referred to a committee, of which Christopher Gadsden was the chairman. He was a man of deep and clear convictions; thoroughly sincere; of an unbending will and a sturdy, impetuous integrity, which drove those about him, like a mountain torrent dashing on an over-shot wheel, though sometimes clogging with back-water from its own violence. He possessed not only that courage which defies danger, but that persistence which neither peril nor imprisonment nor the threat of death can shake. Full of religious faith, and at the same time inquisitive and tolerant, methodical, yet lavish of his fortune for public ends, he had in his nature nothing vacillating or low, and knew not how to hesitate or feign. After two legislatures had held back, South Carolina, by "his achievement," pronounced for union. "Our state," he used to say, "was the first, though at the extreme end, and one of the weakest, as well internally as externally, to listen to the call of our northern brethren in their distresses. Massachusetts sounded the trumpet, but to Carolina is it owing that it was attended to. Had it not been for South Carolina, no congress would then have happened. She was all alive, and felt at every pore." And when we count up those who, above others, contributed to the great result of union, we are to name the inspired "madman," James Otis, and the unwavering lover of his country, Christopher Gadsden.

Otis now seemed to himself to hear the prophetic song of the "Sibyls" chanting the spring-time of a "new empire."