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Historical Background

Mounting Political Tension

While wars with Indian and European enemies occupied the 18th-century English colonists, another conflict gained momentum, less spectacular but far more significant for the future. As the Colonies approached maturity, they increasingly resented efforts by the mother country in the direction of strict rule. The mother country responded to this resentment by trying to tighten the controls further. The result was growing friction that brought about an open rupture in 1775.

The friction expressed itself principally in a struggle between colonial Governors and colonial assemblies. Most of the Colonies had either a royal or a proprietary form of government. In the royal Colonies the Governors received their appointments from the Crown and answered directly to the Crown. In the proprietary Colonies they were appointed by and answered to the grantees or proprietors, who were usually favorites of the Crown. In both forms the Governors in theory ruled independently of the people and their elected representatives, the provincial assemblies. But in practice, the assemblies had a powerful weapon with which to contest the authority of the Governors—control of the purse. Because of the nearly constant need of the Governors for defense money, the legislative bodies were able to use their control of internal finances to assert progressively more authority.

By 1763 most of the colonial assemblies had, through this means, extended their powers to include freedom of debate, the right to judge the qualifications of their own members, regularly scheduled meetings, the right to fix their date of adjournment, and the exclusion of Crown-appointed officers from deliberations. Some had further gained the right to appoint provincial treasurers, customs and tax collectors, Indian commissioners, provincial military officers, and agents to represent them in London, as well as the right to authorize military expeditions and the construction of forts.

Reenactment of a meeting of the Virginia House of Burgesses, in their reconstructed hall, Capitol building, Williamsburg. At the far end of the room is the original Speaker's chair, used here in the 18th century. The Speaker occupied this chair and attempted to stop Patrick Henry during his famed "Caesar-Brutus" speech. (Courtesy, Colonial Williamsburg.)

Despite this legislative ascendancy, however, the fundamental question at issue remained unanswered, the relationship of the colonial constitutions to the imperial constitution. Colonial political thought, strongly influenced by John Locke, had evolved two ideas foreign to the British political system—a growing belief in written constitutions and a belief in direct representation on a territorial basis. Colonial legislators rejected the Crown's contention that the instructions issued to royal Governors automatically became part of the colonial constitutions. Denying the theory of "virtual representation" (that is, that all members of Parliament represented all British subjects, not merely the constituencies that elected them), the legislators maintained that none but themselves could properly legislate the internal affairs of the Colonies.

The home government struck back, on occasion. In 1749, for example, the Crown disallowed 10 laws passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses simply because they omitted the usual provision that the laws were not to take effect until approved by the Crown. Patrick Henry challenged the right of the Crown to disallow any Virginia law approved by the Governor, in 1763 in the famous "Parson's Cause," a years-long dispute over ecclesiastical salaries. He argued that such action violated the British Constitution and the fundamental rights of British subjects.

The accent on self-government stimulated thinking on civil liberty and personal freedom. The trial of John Peter Zenger in New York in 1735 was a notable expression of this trend. Two important precedents were set by the Zenger case: first, that in a jury trial for libel the jury rather than the judge must decide on libelous matter; second, that a true statement cannot be libelous. (See Federal Hall, p. 60.)

The widening gulf between England and her American Colonies inevitably influenced the complexion of political parties in the Colonies. There were not only well-defined "court" and "colony" parties, but also "gentlemen's" and "country" parties. The conservative gentlemen's party, zealously guarding its power, stood for such things as a stabilized currency and political encouragement to land speculation. The liberal country party, on the other hand, stood for unlimited paper money, free land, and adequate frontier defense. This division, which identified conservatives with loyalists, had much to do with making the approaching break with England not only an imperial civil war but also a revolution.

Increasingly aware of problems with the mother country that were common to them all, many colonials also came to see that the whole range of issues could be handled best through concerted action by the Colonies. Among them were relations with the Indians, control of the fur trade, and defense against foreign foes. Seven Colonies went so far as to send representatives to Albany to devise a plan of union when war threatened in 1754. Though rejected by the colonial assemblies, the Albany Congress was an important recognition of the need for solidarity and also a portent of things to come.

England adopted a series of measures in the decade following 1763 that dramatized the drift of colonial thinking away from the established concepts of imperial relationships and impelled the Colonies down the road to revolution. After conclusion of the Treaty of Paris, the British Government found itself with the dual problems of recouping its strained finances and governing effectively its vastly expanded North American empire. Since much of the cash outlay had been for colonial defense, imperial administrators considered it simple justice for the Colonies to make up a share of the deficit. But the methods adopted to collect the money, coming at a time when the Colonies had achieved political and economic maturity and when their major foreign foe had been routed, had an effect completely unanticipated by the home government.

The home of John Dickinson, "Penman of the Revolution," was first built in 1740 by Dickinson's father. Destroyed by fire in 1804, the house was rebuilt under Dickinson's supervision. (National Park Service)

Parliament stirred up the Colonies between 1763 and 1765 by enacting one law after another that Americans regarded as oppressive. Led off by the Proclamation of 1763, which tried to halt the westward movement, the series reached its climax with the Stamp Act of 1765, which sought to tax every business transaction in the Colonies. Patrick Henry rose to castigate Parliament, and his "Virginia Resolves," characterized by the Governor of Massachusetts as the "alarm Bell to the disaffected," echoed throughout the Colonies. Nine Colonies sent representatives to New York in October 1765, where they placed themselves on record in opposition to the doctrine of "virtual representation." The Stamp Act, a dead letter from the start, was repealed soon.

The furor had scarcely subsided, however, when it was revived by the Townshend Acts of 1767, aimed at tightening the system of collecting import duties in the Colonies. Popular opposition broke out with renewed vigor, manifested boldly at Boston's Old South Meeting House (see pp. 105-107) and elsewhere. British troops were sent to Boston, and the Massachusetts Assembly was dissolved for circulating a letter inviting the other Colonies to resist. Virginia again led the opposition with George Mason's "Virginia Resolves of 1769." John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, the most outspoken critic of the Townshend Acts, circulated the widely read "Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer," which argued that Parliament had no right to tax imperial commerce. Colonial merchants united to carry out nonimportation agreements, the most effective of all protest measures.

Although the Townshend duties were repealed in 1770, the fundamental issue remained. The breakdown of nonimportation that followed repeal brought 3 years of relative prosperity, but it marked the beginning of an even wider cleavage between "moderates" and "radicals." The first group was dismayed by the excesses of the other, while the latter was infuriated by the "desertion" of the merchants. Only the greatest necessity could drive them into alliance again. Parliament obliged by providing the necessity.