The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (55 page)

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them in a State of Nature, but always in a State of political Society." The political society he referred to was one defined by the British constitution, the common law, the colonial charters -- and not the law of nature. Galloway evidently recoiled from basing rights on nature for fear that such a flexible support might lead to independence. But recognizing that the disposition of the Congress was to reject all Parliamentary authority and wishing to head off anything more extreme, he declared that all colonial rights might be reduced to one: "An Exemption from all Laws made by British Parliament, made since the Emigration of our Ancestors."
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Galloway probably did not believe in this formulation, and no one took it seriously. Most delegates saw no inconsistency in arguing that colonial rights rested, as Richard Henry Lee said, "on a fourfold foundation -- on Nature, on the british Constitution, on Charters, and on immemorial Usage." The "broadest Bottom, the Ground of Nature," offered the most protection to the colonists, and Lee implied that the colonists might require such a defense against further encroachments. Jay, William Livingston, and Roger Sherman argued the same line to the satisfaction of the Congress, and on the day after the debate began the committee agreed that colonial rights were founded on the laws of nature, the British constitution, and the colonial charters.

The responsibility for putting this general statement into a declaration of rights was given to a subcommittee while the main committee moved to the question of what practical measures should be taken in response to the Intolerable Acts. This problem absorbed the remainder of September and most of October until just before the Congress dissolved itself. What took time was deciding what power, if any, Parliament might exercise over colonial trade.

The debate began in confusion as the issues of nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation were taken up almost at random in late September. Through Thomas Cushing and the two Adamses, the Massachusetts delegation let it be known that they would not be satisfied with anything less than an immediate stoppage of trade with Britain. Local interests thereupon began to collide, for the Virginians, formerly so steadfast in the common cause, now revealed that they had come to Philadelphia with instructions not to agree to curb exports before August 10, 1775, the date presumably by which Virginia's tobacco raised in 1774 would be harvested, cured, and sent to market.
The South

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Carolinians also had ideas about nonexportation, most simply that it should not apply to their rice and indigo, both of which went to British markets. Virginia's opposition to a prohibition that went into effect before August 1775 strengthened the Carolinians' resolve to block nonexportation altogether.
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The worst of the fears and the desires of the southern colonists now exposed, the Congress turned to nonimportation, a subject about which there was considerable agreement, and decided that importation from Britain and Ireland should stop on December 1, 1774. It now seemed possible to return to the question of whether exports to Britain should be prohibited. Just as the Congress braced itself for this struggle, Joseph Galloway proposed that conflict with Britain should be resolved not by coercive measures such as nonexportation but by a constitutional revision which would establish a colonial parliament elected by the legislatures. This "grand council" and the British Parliament would undertake to legislate on matters involving the joint interests of Britain and the colonies, such as commerce, for example. Both "parliaments" would have to approve any such legislation before it became law; purely local matters would be left to the individual legislatures.
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Galloway's plan had a simple logic to it resting on an assumption still widely held in both Britain and America: "In every government, Patriarchal, Monarchial, Aristocratical or democratical, there must be a Supreme Legislature." Galloway presented his plan with all the considerable persuasiveness at his command, and James Duane, John Jay, and Edward Rutledge spoke for it. Rutledge in fact declared that he found "it almost a perfect Plan." Others questioned its perfection. Patrick Henry, for example, who argued that by adopting the Galloway plan "We shall liberate our Constituents from a corrupt House of Commons, but thro[w] them into the Arms of an American Legislature that may be bribed by that Nation which avows in the Face of the World, that Bribery is a Part of her System of Government." The possibility that an American parliament would fall into a system of corruption similar to the English may have concerned others besides Henry. More perhaps doubted that the plan carried promise of relief from the present crisis. Richard Henry Lee, executing a maneuver favored by distressed represen-

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tatives for centuries, insisted that his constituents would have to be consulted before he could commit himself. For the time being the Congress tabled the plan, but by a margin of only one as the colonies divided six to five.
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With Galloway and his conservative supporters turned aside, the Congress appointed several committees to get its work done. And there was difficult work ahead, including the fashioning of a mechanism to carry into effect the agreement on nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation. The question of right, discussed in September until virtually all delegates were exhausted, had to be settled too. Prudence suggested to some that a petition to the king asking for a redress of grievances should be dispatched, and if the Congress was going to explain itself to the monarch, why not to the British people as well? Committees could write these messages and accordingly the delegates appointed them.

These early days of October did not see the delegates twiddling their thumbs while their committees turned to real work. Everyone felt the need to get done, a feeling reinforced from out-of-doors. The Massachusetts delegation passed on rumors from Boston about the oppression that city endured, and then on October 6, Paul Revere rode in with the Suffolk Resolves and a letter from the Boston committee of correspondence.

The Suffolk Resolves, written by Dr. Joseph Warren, Sam Adams's henchman, and adopted by Suffolk County on September 9, 1774, were rhetorically extravagant even for a day rapidly becoming accustomed to the extravagant. The preamble did not stop with a declaration that the Intolerable Acts were unconstitutional -- it used such words as "murderous" to describe them. And it urged resistance: until the acts were repealed the people of Massachusetts should withhold taxes from the Crown, cease all trade with Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies, stop consuming "British merchandise and manufactures," and prepare themselves for war.

The letter from Boston that Revere brought asked the Continental Congress what its citizens should do -- the British army was fortifying the town, and with the suspension of the legislature, advice, indeed leadership, was badly needed. The inhabitants of the town might still abandon it, or they might stay. But before they did anything they wanted the counsel of the Congress.
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What Boston's leaders expected to bear from the Continental Congress

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is not clear. What they got was compromise, safe resolutions lashing those who had accepted office under the Massachusetts Government Act and urging that if force were used to execute the Intolerable Acts "all America ought to support [ Boston] in their opposition."
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Before the Congress arrived at this phrasing, it had listened to proposals that Massachusetts be left to its own devices, Galloway's noble resolution, or that the militia attack the British before they could be reinforced, Christopher Gadsden's wild idea. Beside these two, Richard Henry Lee's motion that Congress advise the evacuation of the town appeared almost reasonable, but it too was rejected.

On October 14, three days after the problems of Boston were shelved, the Congress demonstrated that it could agree on something -- a Declaration of Rights. The rights of the colonies had preoccupied the delegates almost from the first day of their meeting. They now adopted a statement which declared that colonial rights were founded on the law of nature, the British constitution, and the colonial charters. The source of this threefold version of rights was a compromise, of course, but the declaration itself was not a weak statement. Neither was it genuinely fresh: the rights it claimed had constituted the American cause for almost ten years. The declaration left no doubt that the colonies would not give up the right to tax and legislate for themselves. They were not represented in the "British Parliament" and "from their local and other circumstances, cannot" be.
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This part of the declaration seems to have commanded broad support in the Congress. There was less, but still a majority, for what followed -the colonies would "cheerfully consent" from the necessity of the case, and "a regard to the mutual interest of both countries" to the regulation of "our external commerce." This portion of the declaration marked the triumph of the Adamses, Richard Henry Lee, and those like them who favored a clear rejection of all the claims of the right of Parliament to govern in America. The remainder of the declaration drove the point home -- the colonies acknowledged their allegiance to the Crown, freely given -- but they would not accept "Acts of Parliament" which violated their rights. And lest there be any doubt, the Congress listed the "infringements and violations" perpetrated by Parliament.

While the delegates worked on the declaration, they also decided on the ways nonimportation, nonconsumption, and nonexportation could be made realities.
They entered rough water almost immediately. The

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South Carolina delegation now revealed how tightly tied its tongue was to the pursestrings of planters at home. The South Carolinians told the Congress that unless rice and indigo were exempted from the ban on exports, they would not sign the "Association," as the agreement on trade restrictions was now called. This announcement drew protests, but after the Carolinians agreed that only rice had to be protected, Congress caved in.
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