61. Selecting Delegates to the First Continental Congress

From mid-June until the opening of the Congress, the major struggles were waged over the selection of delegates in the various colonies and the lining up of support for or opposition to a total boycott of trade with Great Britain. Massachusetts’ delegates were chosen by the Assembly on the day of the call, June 17, and in defiance of General Gage. Makeup of the delegates, including Sam Adams and John Adams, as well as the conservative Thomas Cushing, ensured Massachusetts’ leadership of the radical forces in the Congress.

In New York the radicals, now centered in the Committee of Mechanics, prepared to do battle over delegates with the conservative Committee of Fifty-one. At a meeting of the latter committee on July 4, the radicals’ proposal for a concurrent choice of delegates by the two committees was beaten by a two-to-one majority, and the Committee of Fifty-one thus gained the exclusive privilege of naming delegates. Nominated as delegates were four staunch conservatives: Isaac Low, James Duane, John Alsop, and the very young lawyer John Jay, as well as the middle-of-the-road merchant Philip Livingston. The embittered radicals struck back and called a meeting of their own on July 6, at which Boston was energetically supported and the forthcoming Congress urged to agree to nonimportation. The radical pressure forced a general mass meeting of July 7 to vote to poll all the taxpayers, freeholders, and freemen of New York City on the delegates, under joint supervision of the two rival committees. The radicals were to run leaders Alexander MacDougall and Leonard Lispenard against Alsop and Duane. But the Committee of Fifty-one immediately reneged on the agreement to hold a general election, and eleven radical members of the committee heatedly resigned the next day. Ignoring the radicals, the committee resolved on July 13 to keep the original slate of five, and instructed them not to call for a boycott. But the public meeting called by the committee for July 19 bitterly overruled the Committee of Fifty-one, created a new committee of ten radicals and five conservatives, and substituted two radicals, “unexceptionable friends of liberty,” for Livingston and Duane. But the Committee of Fifty-one again scorned a public meeting, this time one called by itself, and now pressed forward plans for a general election. The conservatives managed to defeat radical resolutions at a public meeting of July 25 and went ahead with a public election of delegates on July 28. In exchange for the rather feeble statement by the five candidates that a “faithfully observed” general nonimportation agreement seemed to be the most effective measure for the Congress to take, the radicals suddenly capitulated, and the five conservative choices were unanimously selected as delegates from the city and county of New York.

Of the thirteen other counties of New York province, six took no action at all in securing representation in the Congress, while four counties (Albany, Westchester, Dutchess, Ulster) gladly authorized the conservative city delegates to act for them. Only three counties proceeded to elect delegates of their own: Suffolk and Orange counties, where the towns had supported a boycott, and Kings County, where two liberal citizens selected one of their number to be the delegate from the entire county.

Thus, New York’s internecine struggle resulted in a largely conservative delegation. Pennsylvania’s problems, however, were rather different. The Committee of Forty-three, to be sure, was largely in conservative hands, under the middle-of-the-road chairmanship of John Dickinson. But in Pennsylvania, much farther right than these conservatives was the arch-Tory faction headed by the wily and powerful Speaker of the House Joseph Galloway. To Galloway, all popular resistance going beyond humble petitioning of Parliament was rank anarchy. Galloway similarly insisted that the delegates to the Congress be chosen by the legally constituted provincial Assembly; any other method would be popular and hence revolutionary—and not subject to the control of Joseph Galloway. To combat the Galloway threat and also to push its own extralegal case, the Committee of Forty-three decided on June 27 to call a convention of county committees to advise the Assembly on a choice of delegates. Such a convention, not subject to the undemocratic weighting of representation in behalf of the eastern counties, was bound to be more radical than the Assembly.

An extralegal and hence revolutionary provincial convention of county committees was called by the Committee of Forty-three for July 15. Press controversy raged, meanwhile, over the Boston boycott proposal, and a radical artisan-and-trader meeting in Philadelphia urging a boycott was ignored by the Committee of Forty-three. The Pennsylvania Convention, meeting on July 15–20 under the guidance of John Dickinson and the committee, labored mightily to bring forth a mouse. Boycott was urged as only a last resort after petitioning, but any boycott agreed upon by the Congress would receive full support. Pennsylvania delegates were instructed to ask for redress of the various American grievances, in return for which Americans would pay an annual revenue to the king and pay all damages to the East India Company. In response to this highly tame resolution the Galloway faction denounced the illegal convention as “setting up anarchy above order... THE BEGINNING OF REPUBLICANISM.” Galloway ignored the tortured pleas of the convention and selected delegates exclusively from the Assembly itself; but the liberals managed to add Dickinson to the list late in the proceedings of the Assembly.

In New England the radicals had little trouble in dominating the selection of delegates. In Connecticut, delegates were chosen by the Assembly’s committee of correspondence. In Rhode Island, they were chosen by the General Assembly. Looking forward to a “firm and inviolable union of all the colonies,” Rhode Island chose Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward, leaders of the two hostile political factions in the province, as its two delegates. But this gesture of unity was to be overshadowed by the apparent desire of Ward and Hopkins to disagree with each other on all vital matters. As to New Hampshire, when Governor Wentworth prevented the House from choosing delegates, the representatives called an extralegal convention of the towns to choose the delegates from that colony.

Back in the middle colonies, New Jersey’s Assembly, as well as meetings of eleven of the province’s thirteen counties, sturdily endorsed nonimportation and nonconsumption and “perhaps nonexportation.” Delegates to the Congress were chosen by provincial convention of county committees of correspondence, which recommended nonimportation and nonconsumption. In Delaware, mass meetings in the three counties selected representatives to a convention at New Castle, which chose delegates to the Congress.

In the South, the first province to react to the crisis in Boston was Maryland. The inhabitants of Annapolis met on May 25 and adopted an impeccably radical set of resolutions, pledging to join an association for immediate nonimportation and nonexportation with Great Britain. Any province not agreeing was in turn to be boycotted. The meeting further urged lawyers not to bring suits for recovery of debt due to Britain until the Port Act was repealed. Within a few weeks, eight of Maryland’s sixteen counties followed the lead of Annapolis, the bulk of them favoring a total boycott and half of them suspension of debt collections. On June 22, a provincewide convention of county committees of correspondence (chosen by the county meetings) met at Annapolis. Every county in the province was represented, with each county being allocated one vote. The convention urged the Congress to adopt boycott agreements and pledged to follow its lead.

Virginia was particularly exercised at the brutal treatment meted out to Boston. On hearing news of the Port Act, Richard Henry Lee was dissuaded only with difficulty from pressing for an immediate declaration in behalf of Boston. On May 24 the House of Burgesses, adopting an idea of the brilliant young lawyer and planter Thomas Jefferson, unanimously set aside the fateful first of June as a “day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer.” Governor Dunmore retaliated by dissolving the House, but the burgesses met as supposedly private citizens on the 27th and formed an association to boycott the use of tea, and suggested an annual general congress. This was a feeble resolution indeed. But when Boston’s circular letter arrived at the end of May, Peyton Randolph gathered the remaining burgesses together, and this rump, divided on tactics, called a meeting of burgesses for August 1 to decide Virginia’s course.

To guide this extralegal provincial convention, thirty-one counties of Virginia held public meetings to frame instructions and resolutions. Of the thirty-one, twenty counties declared for absolute boycott of Great Britain jointly with other provinces, while eight others advocated nonimportation only. Three Virginia counties (Accomack, Dinwiddie, Isle of Wight) were conservative enough to leave all matters up to the provincial convention. Eight counties wished to couple suspension of debt collection with nonexportation. Six of the counties took the occasion to denounce the importation of slaves from Africa and two (Fairfax and Hanover) actually condemned slavery itself as immoral.

The period of June and July was particularly appropriate for forming public opinion. In it two important contributions to the public debate advanced the American cause far beyond where even the radicals were officially prepared to go. Particularly important was a Virginia contribution by Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America. This widely circulated pamphlet proposed instructions for the Virginia delegates, and rejected all parliamentary authority whatever over the colonies, acknowledging that allegiance was owed only to the king. Since the British king could not impose legislation or taxation without Parliament, such allegiance would necessarily be more ceremonial and pro forma than anything else, and signified an advance to virtual independence from Great Britain. Jefferson grounded his case not only on legal and historical claims but especially on the Lockean natural rights of man. The libertarian rights of the colonists included freedom of trade with all parts of the world, and this right invalidated even parliamentary attempts to regulate American trade. Even the king himself was warned to desist from tyranny: “... kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George III be a blot on the page of history.”

It might be noted that shortly after publication of Jefferson’s pamphlet, a rising young Pennsylvania lawyer, James Wilson, issued an updated version of an unpublished paper of six years before. Wilson’s Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament also espoused independence of parliamentary authority. Legislatures must themselves be regulated by natural law, wrote Wilson, who added: “All men are, by nature, equal and free: No one has a right to any authority over another without his consent....” Citing the Swiss political theorist Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, Wilson proclaimed that “all power is derived from the people—that their happiness is the end of government,” and that any invasions of this principle were illegitimate acts of government. From what source, then, does the alleged sovereignty of Parliament flow? “Have they a natural right to make laws, by which we may be deprived of our properties, of our liberties, of our lives?... What act of ours has rendered us subject to those, to whom we were formerly equal? Do those, who embark, free men, in Great Britain, disembark, slaves, in America...?”

Another important and trenchantly radical essay in Virginia was a series of pseudonymous articles in the Virginia Gazette by the eminent lawyer and planter Thomson Mason. Mason denied Parliament’s power to legislate for the colonies, but his major stress was on the methods for Americans to pursue—on tactics rather than basic philosophic principles. Brilliantly rejecting total boycott as a temporizing and rather vulnerable measure, Thomson Mason boldly cut straight to the heart of the matter: Congress should flatly refuse every law, regulation, and tax imposed by Parliament. And should this total civil disobedience to Great Britain be challenged by British arms, it should press onward to armed resistance and outright secession if necessary. For Mason realized that more was at stake than nonintercourse with Britain; far more important would be civil disobedience at least to the anti-Massachusetts laws and perhaps to all the others as well.

The Virginia Convention met on August 1–6. Spurred by Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and the radical planters George Mason, George Washington, and Richard Henry Lee, the convention proceeded to top all previous colonial gatherings, save that of Massachusetts and its Solemn League and Covenant, by refusing to wait for the Congress to impose a boycott. The convention boldly adopted the Virginia Association, which pledged: (1) immediate nonimportation and nonuse of any kind of tea; (2) an absolute boycott of all direct or indirect imports from Great Britain (including slaves from Africa or the West Indies) except medicines, beginning on November 1; and (3) absolute nonexportation direct or indirect to Great Britain, beginning on August 10, 1775. The total boycott would remain in effect until all the grievances named by the Congress were redressed. To supervise enforcement of the association, a committee was chosen in each county, and nonsigning or violating merchants and traders were publicly boycotted and severed from all dealings with the public.

North Carolina followed after Virginia and thus came under radical control. A six-county meeting was held at Wilmington on July 21, under the chairmanship of a young ex-Bostonian lawyer, William Hooper. A provincial convention representing the counties was then called for August 25. Governor Josiah Martin proclaimed his prohibition of this scheduled “illegal meeting,” but the North Carolinians simply ignored the decree. The provincial convention met on schedule at New Bern, with thirty-two of the thirty-eight counties and two of the six towns represented. The convention adopted a slightly modified variant of the Virginia Association: East India tea was not to be used after September 10, all British imports except medicine were to stop after January 1 (no slaves imported after November 1, 1774), and no exports to Great Britain after October 1, 1775. In one respect, North Carolina went slightly beyond its sister colony, for it pledged a boycott of any province, town, or individual that failed to abide by any plan adopted by the Continental Congress.

In South Carolina the radical leaders, notable as they were, had a far more difficult time. On hearing of the Boston Port Act, Peter Timothy and his South Carolina Gazette called for a general nonimportation and perhaps nonexportation with Britain. Christopher Gadsden, “the Sam Adams of South Carolina,” was of course ready to plunge wholeheartedly into the fray, even at the risk of his entire considerable mercantile fortune. However, the merchants and factors were generally recalcitrant, and the rice planters, heavily dependent on export of their staple, were strongly opposed to any nonexport agreement. A plea to wait for Congress to act therefore exerted great effect in South Carolina.

On June 13 the General Committee of Charleston called a general meeting, representing the people of South Carolina, for July 6. Articles in Timothy’s Gazette called insistently for boycott instructions to the delegates at the Congress, but the newly formed chamber of commerce bitterly opposed any boycott measure and drew up a slate of delegate nominations that pledged to support the chamber’s views.

The extralegal general provincial meeting took place at Charleston, July 6–8. Appointment of representatives was haphazard and chaotic, but the meeting soon clearly divided into two factions. The radicals favored adopting the Boston boycott idea immediately, and allowing South Carolina’s delegates to the Congress full power to vote. The conservatives wanted restricted powers for the delegates and a postponement of all action until Congress made its decision. The first step of the convention was to reject any immediate boycott. Following this, the convention vested the delegation with full power to vote for any measures at the Congress.

The struggle now shifted to the personnel of the South Carolina delegation. Here every freeman of the entire province was declared to be entitled to vote. However, the radicals proved themselves even more tactically inept than in New York; for although the radical slate won the election by over four hundred votes, the radicals had oddly chosen, on their slate of five, no less than three conservatives. Thus a conservative majority was assured for South Carolina’s delegation to the Congress. Only conservative Edward Rutledge’s status as son-in-law to Gadsden seems to account for his place (and that of his brother John) on the radical slate. On August 2 the Commons House of Assembly officially ratified the slate of delegates and voted money for their expenses.

By the end of August, twelve American colonies had selected delegates to the Continental Congress—with Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina leading the radical cause, having already pledged a comprehensive boycott of trade with Great Britain. Only one colony sent no delegates: the newest, smallest, and southernmost province of Georgia.

The task of the radicals in Georgia proved insurmountable. In the first place, Georgia received a generous annual subsidy from Parliament and as a result was hagridden by as many placemen and government bureaucrats as the most populous of colonies. It received one million dollars a year in general subsidy as well as lavish bounties for growing silk and indigo. The vested economic interests created in the tiny colony by this lavish spending by the British government proved too much to overcome. Furthermore, back-country Georgians hankered after British troops to aid them in fighting the numerous Creeks and other Indians in the back country, as well as, perhaps, heavily armed Spanish Louisiana. Finally, Georgia was the only colony with no charter and therefore with no legal rights recognized by Great Britain. Georgians were thus at the mercy of their royally appointed governor.

The small group of radicals in Georgia were concentrated in Christ Church Parish, including the seaport of Savannah, and St. John’s Parish directly to the south, which contained former citizens of Dorchester, Massachusetts, who had founded the settlements of Midway and Sunbury. The latter was later to be renamed, appropriately, “Liberty County.” Toward the end of July, the Georgia radicals, under the plotting of their South Carolina confreres, peppered the Georgia Gazette with propaganda defending the Boston cause. Hastily, on July 20, the Gazette called for a provincial meeting at Savannah on July 27. This meeting first rejected, then fraudulently drove through the appointment of a committee to draw up resolutions. The meeting, seeing itself beleaguered and outnumbered, called a systematically selected, though extralegal, provincial convention at Savannah for August 10. Sir James Wright followed the usual precedent of provincial governors by interdicting the forthcoming meeting, while forty-six inhabitants of St. Paul Parish (Augusta) attacked any solidarity with Boston and called for British troops to aid in fighting Indians.

The convention of August 10 condemned the Coercive Acts and pledged Georgia’s support to measures of redress adopted by the other colonies. For the first time in an American province, a motion to select delegates to the Continental Congress was rejected—this despite numerous irregular practices committed by the desperate radicals. From Savannah to the back country, numerous protests poured in against the secrecy, fraud, and misrepresentation practiced by the radicals, but all these practices were to no avail. The intrepid radicals of St. John’s Parish, in a last desperate try, held a convention of St. John’s, St. George’s (Waynesboro), and St. David’s parishes, and chose Dr. Lyman Hall as delegate, provided that the other parishes would agree. But nothing ever came of this plea. Georgia alone remained unrepresented at the Continental Congress of 1774.