Run up to the Revolution, V: Olive branches and stolen cannons

Before the Continental Congress ended in late October, 1774, it had shot arrows toward King George III and Parliament in London, one of them a last-ditch “olive branch” appealing to the king to solve the dispute with the Mother Country, and the other a warning to Parliament that if it was not solved, a boycott of British goods was about to begin in earnest.

While a few delegates expected the arrows to ameliorate the problems between the colonists and Great Britain, most did not, and had successfully pushed in Philadelphia to decree militia training under local auspices. So before returning to Mount Vernon, Virginia delegate George Washington bought muskets and military apparel, and ordered a book on military discipline. Once home, he actively supported the boycott.

Massachusetts delegate John Adams, upon returning home, became enraged by a newspaper essay from a man calling himself Massachusettensis, who hated the boycott idea; so Adams, under the pseudonym Novanglus, began to compose an ardent defense of the boycott, the military training, and of putting economic distance between the colonies and Great Britain.

A similar goad from a pro-British essayist who called himself a farmer awakened the talents of a then-unknown sophomore at Kings College in New York, Alexander Hamilton. He wrote, in anonymous articles later collected as “The Farmer Refuted,” that it was stupid of Great Britain to attempt to stifle the economic growth of a continent whose natural resources “will infinitely exceed the demands that Great Britain and her connections can possibly have for them.” Hamilton predicted that these natural resources, and America’s prodigious population growth, would assure the colonies’ win in any future conflict.

That same argument – population growth, natural resources – was being woven into the fabric of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, then in preparation, and had long been proffered by the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania colonies’ agent in London, Benjamin Franklin, 68, who had all but exhausted his nine-year attempt to sway British opinion to reduce rather than exacerbate tensions. Then Franklin received an odd invitation: to play chess with the sister of the two Lord Howes, so they could chat about how to prevent things from becoming worse. That session went well, and at a second, during his courtesy visit on Christmas Day, she asked if he would like to speak privately with her brother, who soon arrived. Viscount Howe requested that Franklin write up a proposal for reconciliation. He did.

It was rejected out of hand, as was the “olive branch.” King George III’s reaction: “The New England governments are now in a state of rebellion [and] blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent.” Virtually no one else was uttering that incendiary word, “independence,” even in America. A new Parliament had been selected at the behest of the king, who judged the old one too lenient. The new MPs vowed to support the king in whatever he did. Troops were readied to sail and instructions were sent to Boston to seize the property of the wealthy John Hancock and other leaders.

The wound was not to be treated; more salt was to be poured in.

And this, despite George’s general in America, Thomas Gage, having pleaded with London to rescind the main cause of the wound, the Coercive Acts.

Gage sought to avoid war but prepared for it, augmenting his Boston garrison to nine regiments – one Redcoat for every five Bostonians. Emboldened, the Redcoats ran their sabers through Hancock’s wooden fence and barged into his stables to assess them for a barracks. In reaction, a Hancock-led “safety committee” stole some British cannons. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, several hundred like-minded colonists invaded Fort William and Mary, looting cannons and gunpowder.

There were still thoughtful Americans who believed that outright war could be averted. Twenty-three-year old college graduate James Madison, at his estate, Montpelier, looked into having a “Bill of Rights” adopted by Parliament to give colonists a way of redressing grievances and enabling America’s liberties to be “firmly fixed.” But Madison too joined his local Committee of Safety and prepared its militia for service.

Next time: In early 1775, further provocations and preparations.

Salisbury resident Tom Shachtman has written many books, including three about the Revolutionary Era.