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The colonial response to Parliament’s passage of the Coercive Acts between March and June 1774 (see AMCOM Flight, 2Qtr 2024) was almost immediate. Although leery of following Boston’s proposal to cease all trade with the mother country, the other British colonies on the Atlantic seaboard agreed upon a united course of resistance similar to the joint effort in 1765 known as the Stamp Act Congress. Held in New York City from Oct. 7-25 to protest Parliament’s initial attempt to levy a direct revenue tax on them, only nine of the 13 colonies actually sent delegates to this precedent-setting meeting at the start of the escalating confrontation with the imperial government.
The Stamp Act Congress’s deliberations concluded with the issuing of a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances,” acknowledging the colonists’ allegiance to George III as well as their subordination to Parliament’s authority in all legislative matters and regulation of trade throughout the empire. However, the delegates made a clear distinction between those centralized legislative/regulatory powers and the imposition of taxes on the individual colonies in North America. Only their own elected colonial assemblies had the constitutional right to tax them directly. “No taxation without representation” became the first and one of the best-known political slogans in American history.
However, that early effort to dissuade Parliament from subsequent attempts to levy taxes on the king’s subjects in North America did not truly succeed. Although it repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, Great Britain did not surrender any control over its colonies; instead, it passed the Declaratory Act on the same day it rescinded the tax. In that measure, Parliament, with George III’s consent, stated decisively its “full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” Despite colonial claims to the contrary, Parliament held political primacy within the British Empire.
The growing struggle over the American colonists’ refusal to accept that assertion resulted in repeated clashes, ultimately leading to the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the harsh reprisals imposed by the Coercive Acts in 1774. By July, 12 of the colonies saw enough merit in the 1765 model for political action to start electing delegates to a “Grand Continental Congress” to respond to the “intolerable” measures imposed on Massachusetts. Only Georgia did not send any representatives because the royal governor successfully blocked their election, partly based on colonists’ fears about the loss of British military aid against outside threats.
Set to meet in Philadelphia in September and October 1774, most of those chosen to attend the colonial call to action had a long ride by horseback, carriage or water. The journeys of George Washington and John Adams are two examples of what the delegates were willing to endure in order to protest what they saw as Parliament’s attempted tyranny. Today, a trip by car from Mount Vernon, Virginia, to Philadelphia takes about three hours along I-95, travel conditions contingent; it took Washington five days. Traveling by horseback and boat, he arrived at his destination the day before the delegates first met as a body on Sept. 5.
Now a six-to-seven-hour trip by car, the journey from Braintree, Massachusetts, where Adams set out, normally took 10 to 14 days by horse and carriage in 1774. However, he and other members of the Bay Colony’s delegation spent 19 days of unhurried yet hot and dusty travel to the “City of Brotherly Love,” with many stops along the way. Their route to Pennsylvania took them through Connecticut, New York (including a five-day stay in New York City) and New Jersey. The travelers met a variety of “other gentlemen,” took in the sights of the locales through which they passed, visited numerous churches and other civic buildings, as well as attended several church services, made many social calls and spent much of their time in “the Depths of Politics.” The group’s arrival in Philadelphia on Aug. 29 left them several days to get settled, meet other delegates and local residents, eat many “elegant” meals and tour the town before getting down to business for the first time at the City Tavern.
Originally known as “ordinaries,” taverns were an important element in the public life of the colonists in British North America. The first such establishment opened in Boston in 1634. For the next 140 years, these public houses flourished as central locations for many facets of colonial life. In addition to being the main place for men to imbibe alcoholic beverages, talk about local happenings and read available newspapers in the company of friends and neighbors, taverns were the most likely places for residents to meet visitors and come into contact with travelers passing through on longer journeys. Over food and drink in these usually convivial settings, locals and outsiders shared news and discussed current events. Taverns also facilitated the exchange of information by serving as early post offices, where mail going to or coming from distant places was collected and distributed. Many of these establishments also furnished overnight lodging of varying types and quality. Moreover, taverns served as signposts for travelers, with placards depicting not only the inn’s name but various symbols offering directions obvious to non-locals and those unable to read.
As well as organizing assorted games and other entertainments such as gambling and dancing, proprietors supplied space for numerous public gatherings. Merchants, farmers and artisans managed their economic affairs; many workmen began and ended their workday with a hearty meal; churchgoers used the common room to warm themselves or rest between sessions of day-long Sunday meetings; assemblies and courts sometimes met to conduct official business; recruiting and mustering of militias took place. Moreover, by the time delegates to the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, taverns had become crucial in the political life of the colonies by bringing together people of like mind to discuss, debate, and ultimately take action against Britain’s increasingly harsh attempts to control its American subjects. For example, members of the “Sons of Liberty” met at the Green Dragon Tavern in 1773 to plot the Boston Tea Party, while the recently formed “Minute Men” prepared at Buckman’s Tavern for what would become their historic encounter with the British Redcoats on Lexington Green in April 1775.
One of the most notable of these establishments was the City Tavern, which first opened for business in February 1774 at the intersection of Walnut and Second Streets in Philadelphia, not far from Benjamin Franklin’s home. Also referred to as the “New Tavern” by Washington in his diary, The Pennsylvania Packet described the establishment in March 1774 as “by much the largest and most elegant house occupied in that way in America.” Members of Philadelphia’s social elite financed the tavern’s construction by the sale of shares to subscribers. To actually manage the new tavern, however, the “Gentleman Proprietors” selected Daniel Smith, an experienced publican who soon served as host to many of the men now counted among the nation’s Founding Fathers. To make himself known to potential clientele, Smith advised the public in February 1774 that he “has laid in every article of the first quality perfectly in the style of a London Tavern: And in order to accommodate strangers, he has fitted up several elegant bedrooms detached from noise, and as private as in a lodging house. The best livery stables are quite convenient to the house. He has also fitted up a genteel Coffee Room well attended and properly supplied with English and American papers and magazines.”
From 1774 to about 1800, the City Tavern served as the political and social center for some of the most pivotal events in U.S. history. Distinguished American leaders such as Washington, Adams, and Patrick Henry frequented the house while serving as delegates to the First Continental Congress, as did other later representatives of the Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. One online account noted, “The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution both owe much to the food and spirits consumed in this building.” In fact, contrary to popular belief, the structure now known as Independence Hall (originally the Pennsylvania Assembly House) was not the site where delegates met in 1774 to deliberate on a suitable course of action, short of actual rebellion.
The colonial representatives first began work on the morning of Sept. 5 at the City Tavern, where the delegates’ credentials were read. After electing Peyton Randolph of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson’s cousin) as president of the convention and Charles Thomson of Pennsylvania as secretary, the delegates walked over to Carpenters’ Hall to inspect the meeting space offered for their use by the Carpenters’ Guild of Philadelphia. As William Bradford (a lawyer and son of the printer for the congress) relayed to James Madison in a letter of Oct. 17, 1774: “The Congress sits in the Carpenters’ Hall in one room of which the City Library is kept & of which the Librarian tells me the Gentlemen make great & constant use. By which we may conjecture that their measures will be wisely plan’d since they debate on them like philosophers; for by what I was told Vattel, Barlemaqui, Locke & Montesquie[u] seem to be the standard[s] to which they refer either when settling the rights of the Colonies or when a dispute arises on the Justice or propriety of a measure.” Founded by Franklin and housed in this building for 17 years (it still operates in another location), Philadelphia’s oldest library served as the first congressional library until 1800. Still, the City Tavern remained a constant venue for food, drink and political discourse during this period.
Little was known of the congress’s proceedings at the time they were underway because the representatives agreed to keep their deliberations private until they had their response to Parliament ready. However, the body’s first official act was a reaction to the Suffolk (Mass.) Resolves were presented to it on Sept. 17. After learning that British Gen. Thomas Gage had seized provincial military supplies, the delegates unanimously endorsed the measures, which “ordered citizens to not obey the Intolerable Acts, to refuse imported British goods, and to raise a militia.” Despite their desire for secrecy, support for the Suffolk County committee’s plan of resistance indicated clearly the collective temperament of the 56 men meeting in Philadelphia.
Previously, on Sept. 7, the Congress appointed two committees with 12 members apiece, each chosen from the 12 colonies in attendance. John Adams later recounted that “The first Committee was instructed to prepare a Bill of Rights as it was called or a Declaration of the Rights of the Colonies; the second, a List of Infringements or Violations of those Rights.” Extensive discussions on the basis for the rights claimed by the colonists, as well as details on how and when to implement colony-wide non-importation/non-exportation agreements to defend those rights, lasted about seven weeks. Like many of the other delegates not selected to serve on a committee, George Washington attended every session, where he followed his usual practice as a Virginia burgess by meeting the other delegates, sharing his views on important topics and becoming more widely known to influential leaders from the other colonies. He also voted on the various issues presented to the general assembly.
On Oct. 14, 1774, members of the First Continental Congress adopted its “Declaration and Resolves,” in which they asserted, “That the inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following RIGHTS…” followed by a long roster detailing those rights and listing Parliament’s abuse of those essential guarantees of American liberty. Another crucial piece of business was the adoption on Oct. 20 of the “Articles of Association,” by which the colonies promised the start of economic warfare by threatening a boycott of British goods if Parliament did not repeal the Intolerable Acts by Dec. 1, 1774; failure to lift the despised legislation would result in an embargo on colonial exports to the mother country the following year. Furthermore, having learned a lesson from the failure of similar economic sanctions in 1765, the delegates, on Oct. 26, endorsed a plan to enforce the articles. Known as the Continental Association, the Congress called on the colonies to establish committees to implement the adopted non-importation, non-consumption and non-exportation agreements. Given authority by each colony to punish violators, some later historians viewed the Association committees as “true revolutionary bodies” because greater property ownership in North America allowed more colonists to vote and participate politically (including women in some provinces).
Having kept their deliberations secret for almost two months before they disbanded, the delegates approved separate statements to explain the colonial position in the struggle with the mother country. The first statement accepted on Oct. 21 was sent to the people of Great Britain and the Atlantic seaboard colonies. On Oct. 26, during its final day, the congress endorsed a similar address for the people of Quebec. The first of three such letters written to the inhabitants of Canada, these attempts to communicate directly with the people of the recently acquired former French province tried unsuccessfully to convince Quebec to support the Patriot cause. That same day, the delegates also approved an address to George III outlining the colonists’ grievances but without blaming him, instead reiterating earlier declarations of loyalty to the crown. The First Continental Congress then adjourned, with plans to convene again on May 10, 1775, unless Parliament addressed the colonies’ concerns. Earlier, though, delegates advised the colonies to raise militias for their defense. One of the first to act on that advice was the Bay Colony, meeting in defiance of the royal government’s crackdown, which reorganized its citizen defenders into a volunteer group pledged to be ready to fight “at a minute’s warning....”
Not long after the delegates completed their work, on Nov. 16, 1774, one of the most aggressive loyalist attacks on the congress was published by “A Westchester Farmer,” the later identified pseudonym of Samuel Seabury, a Church of England (i.e., Anglican) rector in Westchester, NY. The following month, 17-year-old Alexander Hamilton, still a student at King’s College (now Columbia University), spent a month composing his first published work, a pamphlet titled “A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, from the Calumnies of their Enemies; In Answer to A Letter, Under the Signature of A.W. Farmer. Whereby His Sophistry is exposed, his Cavils confuted, his Artifices detected, and Wit ridiculed; in a General Address To the Inhabitants of America, And A Particular Address To the Farmers of the Province of New York. Veritas magna est & proevalebit. Truth is powerful, and will prevail.” In this lengthy piece, Hamilton defended the congress’s decision to use economic sanctions against Britain. It was the first of three political pamphlets he wrote while still a student, foreshadowing his many contributions as one of the nation’s Founding Fathers.
By Dr. Kaylene Hughes, Aviation and Missile Command Historian
| Date Taken: | 09.25.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.25.2024 13:05 |
| Story ID: | 481741 |
| Location: | REDSTONE ARSENAL, ALABAMA, US |
| Web Views: | 60 |
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