General Gage Appointed Governor: Massachusetts Circular and Hampden Hall

The proceedings of the Assembly, and of the people, greatly irritated Gage. He had troops at his back, but had resolved not to use them excepting in an extremity. He issued flaming proclamations from time to time, which excited the ridicule of the patriots. One of these was burlesqued in the Massachusetts Spy, a newspaper published in the midst of British bayonets, which was commenced as follows:

Tom Gage

The proposition for a General Congress to be held in September, in Philadelphia, contained in the Massachusetts Circular, received universal assent, and before the close of the summer of 1774, twelve of the thirteen British American colonies had chosen delegates to attend it. Rhode Island has the honor of first speaking out publicly on the subject after New York suggested it. A General Congress was proposed at a town-meeting held in Providence on the 17th of May. Four days afterward (21st) a committee of a town-meeting held in Philadelphia recommended such a measure; and on the 23d, a town-meeting in the city of New York did the same. We have seen that the meeting of the burgesses of Virginia at the Raleigh tavern warmly recommended the measure, on the 27th of May; and on the 31st, a Baltimore county-meeting at Norwich, Connecticut, approved of a General Congress; and on the 11th, a county-meeting at Newark, New Jersey, did the same. The action of the Massachusetts Assembly at Salem and the town-meeting at Faneuil Hall, which urged the measure, did so on the 17th of June. On the 29th, a county-meeting at New Castle, Delaware, approved the measure; and on the 6th of July, the Committee of Correspondence at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, expressed their approbation. A general province-meeting was held on the 6th, 7th and 8th of July, at Charleston, and they urged the necessity of such a Congress; and a district-meeting at Wilmington, North Carolina, held on the 21st of July, heartily responded affirmatively to the Massachusetts Circular. Only Georgia remained silent.

The state of political society in New York, at this juncture, was peculiar. The professed republicans were divided by political distractions and social differences, and were designated by the respective titles of Patricians and Tribunes. The former were composed of the merchants and gentry, and the latter were mostly the mechanics. The former, who were conservative, joined with the loyalists in attempts to check the influence of the radical democrats of Hampden Hall. With these conservatives were found most of the leading merchants, who, as a class, were (as usual) averse to popular commotions which disturbed trade. They were not ready to enter into non-importation agreements again hastily; and the letter which the Hampden Hall patriots sent by Ludlow, to Boston, alarmed them and the conservative republicans. A meeting was called at a public-house, "to consult on the measures to be pursued in consequence of the late extraordinary advices received from England." At that meeting a Committee of Fifty were nominated as "representatives of public sentiment in New York." A few of the radicals were placed upon the committee; and at another meeting held on the 19th of May, the nomination was ratified and one more added to the committee, making the number Fifty-one. Concerning this movement, Governeur Morris wrote to a friend:

"The heads of the nobility grow dangerous to the gentry, and how to keep them down is the question. While they correspond with the other colonies, call and dismiss popular assemblies, make resolves to bind the consciences of the rest of mankind, bully poor printers, and exert with full force all their tribunitial powers, it is impossible to curb them. But art sometimes goes further than force, and, therefore, to trick them handsomely, a Committee of Patricians was to be nominated, and into their hands was to be committed the majority of the people, and the highest trust was to be reposed in them by a mandate that they should take care quod republica, non capiat injuriam. The Tribunes, through the want of good legerdemain in the senatorial order, perceived the finesse, and yesterday I was present at a grand division of the city, and there I beheld my fellow-citizens very accurately counting their chickens, not only before they were hatched, but before one-half of the eggs were laid. In short, they fairly contended about the future form of our government--whether it should be founded on aristocratic or democratic principles."

The grand Committee of Fifty-one publicly repudiated the strong letter sent to Boston by the radicals on the 14th of May. They received Paul Revere courteously, but did not agree with the proposal of the Bostonians to revive non-importation or non-intercourse agreements. They sent a letter to Boston (supposed to have been written by John Jay) expressing their dissent, but heartily approving of a General Congress; and in another letter on the 7th of June, they requested the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence to name a time and place for the holding of a General Congress. The people of the other colonies approved non-intercourse, and New York, as represented by the Grand Committee, stood alone in opposition to a stringent non-importation league. The loyalists rejoiced, and a writer in Rivington's Royal Gazette exultingly exclaimed: