The Growth of Discontent: Burgesses and Boston

In Virginia, when the Burgesses met, resolutions were passed declaring against taxation, and asserting the right to trial by a jury of the vicinage, and to combination among the colonies. Botetourt dissolved the Assembly, and the Burgesses met in convention and formed a stringent non-importation agreement. Virginia carried with her the Southern colonies, and her example was followed in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and when the general court came together again in Massachusetts they promptly adopted the resolutions. Some of the troops had been withdrawn; but two regiments were kept on Bernard's request, and he and the legislature were in no good humor when they met at Cambridge, whither the governor adjourned them. The House refused flatly to provide for troops, or to give a salary for the year to Bernard, who was recalled, and who soon after, having prorogued the refractory Assembly, departed from Boston, amid the noisy rejoicings of the populace, leaving Hutchinson to rule in his stead. While Massachusetts and Virginia were thus coming together and preparing the American Union, the ministry in England, halting and undecided, rather frightened at the results of their energetic policy, and desperately embroiled with Wilkes, decided to recede. They sent a circular to the colonies, promising to lay no more taxes, and to repeal the duties on glass, paper, and colors, retaining only that on tea. Their action was that of well-meaning, narrow, and weak men. They should either then and there have enforced their policy at the point of the bayonet, or they should have fully and frankly given way on every point. To save their pride, maintain their doctrines, and please the king, they retained one paltry tax, yielding perhaps three hundred pounds a year, but which carried the vital principle with it as surely and clearly as revenue involving millions. The course of the ministry had slowly brought the conflict to the point at which complete victory on one side or the other was alone possible. The colonies were fully alive to the situation, and saw that while one tax remained nothing had been gained. The non-importation agreements spread everywhere, and were strongly enforced, and all society was drawn into a refusal to use tea. Conflicts with the revenue officers in Rhode Island and elsewhere grew more and more frequent, and the relations of the people with the soldiery in New York and Boston more and more strained. In New York there were violent affrays between the soldiers and the people over the erection of the liberty-pole, and there was fighting in the streets. These outbreaks heightened the feeling in Boston, where the soldiers were taunted and insulted, and where recurring fights between populace and red-coats showed that a crisis was at hand. On the 3d of March there was an ugly brawl, and on the evening of the 5th there was another fray, and trouble with the sentry. Before quiet was restored there was renewed fighting, and a crowd gathered round the sentry in King Street. Alarmed and angry, the man called out the guard; the mob rapidly increased; insults were followed by missiles; one soldier discharged his gun; there was a scattering fire from the troops, and three of the citizens were killed and two mortally wounded. Blood had been shed, and it looked as if civil war had begun. The regiments were turned out, the people poured into the streets; it was a mere chance that the American Revolution was not then to open. But Hutchinson appeared in the balcony of the State-House, promised an investigation, and besought peace. The people dispersed, and war was for the moment averted; but nothing could efface the memory of this affray. Regular troops had fired upon the citizens, human life had been sacrificed, and the exaggerated title of the "Boston Massacre" showed the importance attached to this event, which served for years to keep alive and develop resistance to England.