Essay: The First Contested Election in America

Prologue

After the Stamp Act was repealed, Parliament tried to discover new ways to balance their budget and manage their deficit, with the Townshend Duties, the Tea Act, and various other attempts at exacting internal revenue from the colonies. By the time of the Boston Tea Party, sentiments among American legislators had already evolved, and they had, through their pattern of internal taxation, identified Parliament as the perpetrator of burdensome policies; they now also perceived them to be acting deliberately, not accidentally.

A congress of the colonies met in 1774, after Parliament had closed the port of Boston. Their mission was to address and repeal “the several acts of the British Parliament, for levying taxes upon his Majesty’s subjects in America, without their consent, and particularly…for blocking the port of Boston.”[1]

No longer were they concerned with a single and discrete act of their parent legislative body. They were now concerned with the actions and potential actions of the body as a whole. John Adams and others were equally concerned about the mission of the First Continental Congress. Many wanted to repeal the Navigation Acts in toto, but Richard Henry Lee feared “that to strike at the Navigation Acts would unite every Man in Britain against us, because the Kingdom could not exist without them.”[2]

Even as Massachusetts recognized “the power but not the justice, the vengeance but not the wisdom of Great Britain,” their first declaration on September 17, 1774, made it clear that they still would “cheerfully acknowledge…George the Third to be our rightful sovereign, and that said covenant is the tenure and claim on which are founded our allegiance and submission.”[3] All of the immediate resolutions were directed at Parliament or bureaucracy, never at the King. The very next day Congress unanimously and emotionally passed a resolution urging the King’s administration to replace the “unwise, unjust, and ruinous” policies with “better men and wiser measures.”[4]

Their next resolution was the famous non-importation request and agreements.[5] The request was passed unanimously, and Congress hoped that the final act would pass likewise. They quickly realized this would not be possible, especially when restricting exportation as well as importation. Joseph Galloway—who would later remove to Great Britain during the Revolution as a loyalist—made a compelling speech emphasizing the unforeseen consequences and illegality of such an imposition.  He also wrote to New Jersey Governor William Franklin that he was “reserved in no Point save that of a Representation in Parliament,”[6] but he confided in Franklin that he felt vastly outnumbered by the more zealous patriots. When Charles Thomson, whom Galloway called “one of the most violent Sons of Liberty,” was elected as Secretary, “The New Yorkers and myself and a few others, finding a great majority, did not think it prudent to oppose it.”[7] The Act, unlike the Request, did pass, but not unanimously.[8]

In addition to the non-importation/exportation agenda of 1774, Congress was struggling to find a way to reclaim its liberty. At this time, they did not wish to exacerbate tensions, and most of the members thought it prudent enough to request that King George III influence Parliament to restore all regulations concerning the Americas to those existing just after the Seven-Years’ War—including the Proclamation Line of 1763.

Galloway, on the other hand, empathized with British Parliament’s authority to pass these acts, but he was not opposed to reform. He proposed a plan that retained America’s subordination to the Crown, but gave them their own continental parliamentary body, which would “hold and exercise all the like rights, liberties and privileges, as are held and exercised by and in the House of Commons of Great Britain.”[9] His plan, after many “warm and long debates,” was narrowly defeated by the votes of six colonies to five, with Rhode Island being divided.[10] The American colonies, in essence, nearly approved a petition urging the King to plant duchies and earldoms on the soils of their boroughs and townships. Instead, they plead their case to the King and British subjects, urged them to recognize their rights and grievances, and influence Parliament to withdraw its burdensome regulations. Their letter to the people of Great Britain complained of the parliamentary “plan for inslaving us.”[11] The petition to the King urged him to use his

royal indignation…on those designing and dangerous men, who daringly interposing themselves between your royal person and your faithful subjects…incessantly employed to dissolve the bonds of society by abusing your majesty’s authority, misrepresenting your American subjects and the most desperate and irritating projects of oppression.[12]

Conspicuously absent is any direct address to the Houses of Lords and Commons, to whom their plaints, they supposed, would fall on deaf ears. In the final text of the non-importation Association resolve, Parliament was obliquely addressed, and disparaged as a “wicked ministry.”[13] Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry began to employ the word “tyranny” at this time, but the description is ambiguously directed at Parliament or local authorities. Adams believed members of the Congress were in opposition to the “tyrannical Acts” of General Gage and other “dignified Scoundrels.”[14] Henry, in his draft petition to the king, describes the conduct of British military and Parliament as tyrannical, but these words were expurgated from the final draft.[15] Despite the harsh language of a few, people like Thomas Lynch of North Carolina still believed that America was “most sincerely attached to England and desirous of a perpetual union, [but] will, by force only, be brought to admit of domination.”[16]

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The Election of 1775

The First Continental Congress adjourned at the end of October 1774, with a provision to meet again in May the following year. They rushed the publication and post of their petitions because Parliament was scheduled to have elections in 1775, giving them prospects of a more American-friendly legislative body. John Dickinson—who would later withhold his signature from the Declaration of Independence—hoped for peace, and that a “considerable Change be made at the next general Election [of Parliament]. Why should Nations meet with hostile Eyes, because Villains & Ideots have acted like Villains & Ideots.”[17]

The delegates could not have anticipated the following events. Parliament, in a sudden decision, decided to dissolve itself in September of 1774, and hold new elections between October and November of the same year, instead of 1775 as scheduled.

This hasty dissolution and election removed any possibility of the American Congress’s petition reaching the king, or more importantly, the people of England before a new parliament was to be chosen.

David Ramsay recorded in 1789 that it was Parliament’s “desiring to have the whole business of elections over, before the inconveniences of a non-importation agreement could be felt…” But with the new election, Parliament “consisted, either of former members, or of those who held similar sentiments [and] Americans could expect no more favour from the new parliament, than they had experienced from the late one.”[18] The Prime Minister, Lord North, hoped this premature dissolution and election would allow a new Parliament to make new policies before the negative consequences of its old policies were felt in England. His plan succeeded and he gained more supporters, while America lost more than anticipated.[19]

To exacerbate this turn of events, the King addressed the new Parliament, and offered no conciliatory remarks toward the American Colonies. Instead, he declared in his opening statement to this newly elected parliament on Nov 29, 1774, that “a most daring spirit of resistance and disobedience to the law still unhappily prevails in the Massachuset’s Bay [sic], and has in divers parts of it broke forth in fresh violences of a very criminal nature.” Furthermore, he declared his consort with Parliament, affirming “my firm and stedfast resolution to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair the supreme authority of this legislature over all the dominions of my crown.”[20]

News of this new parliament would not arrive in America until December 1774, and the King’s Speech not until the next year.

John Adams lamented. He hoped that the publication of the petitions to the King in England, along with letters to the inhabitants of Great Britain, would have a beneficial “Effect upon the Nation, during the Fall and Winter, while the People were canvassing for [Parliamentary] Elections, and that…Some alteration in the House of Commons for the better might have been made. But the Sudden Dissolution of Parliament and the impatient Summons for a new Election, have blasted all these Hopes” [emphasis added].

It was quite evident what the intent of Parliament was, and “no Hopes are to be left…but in the Sword.”[21]  Adams also wrote to a friend in London, wondering why “a new parliament is called of a sudden, before the people could hear from America, as If the minister [Lord North] disdained or dreaded that the nation should have an opportunity to judge of the State of America, and choose or instruct their representatives accordingly.”[22]

It was easy to see in this a ministerial corruption, or even a direct influence from the King himself. Lord North was a favorite of the King, and the intimate association was well-known. Shortly after this news reached America, James Duane opined that the Ministry had “spent their malice in enacting that cruel project of Shutting up the port of Boston.”[23] To which Samuel Chase replied with a reflection upon “the enormous Influence of the Crown, the System of Corruption introduced as the Art of Government, the Venality of the Electors…the open & repeated Violations, by Parliament, of the Constitution.”[24]

Suspicions of the King’s Ministry were not entirely new. John Dickinson confided to Arthur Lee shortly after the adjournment that “it is suspected here, that a Design is regularly prosecuted by the Ministry to make his Majesty dethrone himself.”[25]  But because of these events, and the supposed influence the King and his Ministry held over Parliament, the language began to turn.

Additionally, Between the First Continental Congress’s adjournment and the next meeting, shots rang out in Lexington and Concord, and the day of the Second Continental Congress’s first meeting, May 10, 1775, Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga. Whereas in the First Congress, Benjamin Franklin officially viewed independence with “Abhorrance,”[26] the political and military developments now forced delegates to question the end-result of their missions, and to “farther consider the state of America.”[27]

But at the opening of the second Congress, the King was still not the official enemy. A circular from William Bollan, Arthur Lee, and Benjamin Franklin, writing from London, identified that the King had complied with the first Congress’s request, “laying the petition before his two houses of Parliament.” They then noted that Parliament refused to act and set them aside as “undistinguished among a variety of letters and other papers from America.”[28]

Yet, in private, Parliament was now a scapegoat. The real enemy lay higher in the nobility. Richard Henry Lee warned that the “profligate Ministry,” would make “millions and Millions yet unborn are to be plunged into the abyss of Slavery…The Colonies are now united, and may bid defiance to Tyranny and its famous Abettors.”[29] Samuel Adams, censoring himself, was convinced “most abundantly that it is the Determination of the K. & his Ministers to establish arbitrary Government in the Colonies by Acts of Parliamt.”[30] Parliament was no longer the enemy; it was a tool for the King and his council, though Congress would not officially demonstrate this yet.

As concern grew over the use of Parliament, the actions of the King’s ministers, and the King himself, the House of Commons passed in February a spiteful resolution declaring, if the colonies would raise all revenues necessary for “contributing their portion to the common defence…and shall engage to make provision also for the support of the civil government and the administration of Justice,” only then would they withdraw to any complying colony any “further duty, tax or assessment,” except to regulate international commerce.[31]

When they received this, Congress’s immediate reaction was to “persevere the more vigorously in preparing for their defence, as it is very uncertain whether the earnest endeavors of the Congress to accommodate the unhappy differences between G. Britain and the colonies by conciliatory Measures will be successful.”[32] In June 1775, Congress again decided to petition the king one last time. In response to military affronts in Massachusetts, they also resolved to annul their charter and to consider the crown-appointed offices vacated, because “there was no council there.” Rage in this resolution was still officially directed at local commanders and appointees, along with Parliament. General Gage had “levied war…against his Majesty’s peaceable and loyal subjects,” and the people of Massachusetts would not obey—nor would the other colonies recognize—any Massachusetts governor, unless it was “of his Majesty’s appointment.”[33]

For the next month, the Congress moved and debated on military affairs, and on June 30, 1775, they issued the Rules and Regulations for servicemen in armed conflict against the “several unconstitutional and oppressive acts of the British parliament.”[34] After these were passed they moved toward Indian affairs and trade, describing the “two Acts passed in the first session of the present parliament” as “unconstitutional, oppressive, and cruel.”[35] But the delegates’ private language was no longer concerned with the House of Commons. John Adams wanted “to immediately dissolve all Ministerial Tyrannies, and Custom houses, [and] set up governments of our own.”[36] Benjamin Franklin had lost hope, as well, informing an acquaintance in London, “The Congress will send one more Petition to the King which I suppose will be treated as the former was, and therefore will probably be the last.”[37] Many delegates knew who the real antagonist to Liberty was, but their legislative body could not yet recognize it.

On 6 July 1775, Thomas Jefferson was ordered to draft the Declaration on Taking Arms. The great political composer who would a year later have his Declaration of Independence praised did not receive the same treatment in this composition. John Dickinson described his first draft as containing too much “fault-finding and declamation, with little sense or dignity. [Jefferson seems] to think a reiteration of tyranny, despotism, bloody &c. all that is needed to unite us at home….”[38]

It was Jefferson who first proposed the word “tyranny” in an official document from Congress in his initial draft of the Declaration on Taking Arms; but still it was not addressed directly at the Crown. It was through the “several acts of parliament,” that “they have erected a tyranny in a neighboring province…a tyranny dangerous to the very existence of all these colonies.”[39]

The first use of “tyranny” was probably stricken by Dickinson, and the second usage is loudly absent from the final draft. Instead, Dickinson substituted the term “despotism,” a more ambiguous and politically omnidirective term, though Parliament was still its ostensible target.[40] Richard Henry Lee, likewise complained of the same “despotism” in an official letter to the Lord Mayor of London on 8 July 1775.[41]

In contrast to the Declaration on Taking Arms, the petition to the King, signed the following day, was much more reconciliatory, but slightly more direct than the previous petition. Yet it still seems more an expected courtesy than a genuine plea. Instead of urging him to persuade Parliament, the delegates began identifying his Ministers’ “delusive pretences, fruitless terrors, and unavailing severities, that have…been dealt out by them.” The accused was now identified after a royal genitive noun, The King’s Ministers.

“Your Majesty’s Ministers,” the petition repeated, “have compelled us to arm in our own defence, and have engaged us in a controversy so peculiarly abhorrent to the affections of your still faithful colonists….” The remainder of the sentence is of the utmost importance, for it demonstrates to the King that the Americans might be willing to abandon their due fidelity: “when we consider whom we must oppose in this contest, and if it continues, what may be the consequences, our own particular misfortune are accounted by us.”[42] The Colonial delegates had realized that armed conflict would easily be perceived by the Crown as an attack against him, and while they made many linguistic efforts to justify their defense, they knew that any prolonged engagement against the King’s army would eventually be considered an act of high treason.

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[1] Journals of the Continental Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 1:17 (Jul 3, 1774). [Hereafter cited as JCC.] An explanation of the term ‘several’ must be made. Its primary connotations were not numerical—i.e., quantitative—but were rather of a qualitative nature. The Royal English Dictionary of 1775 defines ‘several’ as being “unlike each other,” “divers,” or “distinct.” By recognizing this definition, the implications of states’ identifying ‘several’ onerous acts changes. The burden was not simply a matter of numbers; it was a matter of qualitative but discrete oppressions that seemed arbitrary and had the potential to affect every aspect of colonial life.

[2] John Adams’ Diary, Sep 3, 1774, LDC, 1:8

[3] JCC, 1:32-33 (Sep 17, 1774).

[4] JCC, 1:39 (Sep 18, 1774). These were the Suffolk Resolves.

[5] The first resolve simply requested merchants “not to send to Great Britain any Orders for Goods,” while five days later, they ordered that “there be no importation into British America from Great Britain…” (see JCC, 1:41, 43.)

[6] Joseph Galloway to William Franklin, Sep 3, 1774, LDC, 1:24.

[7] Joseph Galloway to William Franklin, Sep 6, 1774, LDC, 1:27.

[8] For Joseph Galloway’s speech, do not see the Library of Congress’s online version (http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/ presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/amrev/rebelln/galloway.html), as it is incomplete. The full text of the speech, especially the refuting of patriot arguments, is contained in JCC, 1:43-48. The vote tally is recorded in JCC, 1:48.

[9] JCC, 1: 49-51 (Sep 28, 1774). This proposition is intriguing, as it sets up a completely independent House of Commons from England. The only thing explicitly missing from this constitutional plan in order to make it a kingdom in its own right, as the British understood it, was an aristocracy. Had this plan been approved by the colonies and the Crown, King George III may easily have been persuaded to appoint by writ nobles to the American colonies to balance their House of Commons; and with completely independent parliaments, his title may well have been King of Great Britain and America.

[10] Joseph Galloway’s Statement on His Plan of Union, LDC, 1:119-127, and Samuel Ward’s Diary, [Oct 22, 1774], LDC 1:234; also, JCC, 1:48 (Sep 28, 1774).

[11] JCC, 1:87 (Oct 21, 1774).

[12] JCC, 1:118 (Oct 26, 1774).

[13] JCC, 1: 75-81 (Oct 20, 1774).

[14] Samuel Adams to Thomas Young, Oct. [17], 1774, LDC, 1:205.

[15] Patrick Henry’s Draft Petition to the King, LDC, 225-227, 228-232.

[16] Thomas Lynch to Ralph Iazard,Oct. 26, 1774, LDC, 1:247.

[17] John Dickinson to Arthur Lee, Oct 27, 1774, LDC, 1:250.

[18] David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia: R. Aitkin & Son, 1789), 1:146.

[19] Peter Whiteley, Lord North: The Prime Minister Who Lost America (London: The Hambledon Press, 1996), 145-147.

[20] The Parliamentary History of England: From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, T.C. Hansard, 1813), 18:columns 33-34.

[21] John Adams to [James Burgh], Dec 28, 1774, LDC, 1:275-276.

[22] John Adams to a Friend in London, Feb 10, 1775. LDC, 1:308-310.

[23] James Duane to Samuel Chase, Dec 29, 1774, LDC, 1:277-278.

[24] Samuel Chase to James Duane, Feb 5, 1775, LDC, 1:305-306.

[25] John Dickinson to Arthur Lee, Oct 27, 1774, LDC, 1:250.

[26] JCC, 1:48 (Sep 28, 1774).

[27] JCC, 2:54, passim.

[28] JCC, 2:22 (May 11, 1775).

[29] LDC, Richard Henry Lee to Gouverneur Morris, May 28, 1775, LDC, 1:415.

[30] LDC, Samuel Adams to (**@#((#$), 1:468.

[31] Journals, 2:62-63. The regulation of international commerce was rarely, if ever, disputed as the a parliamentary prerogative. It was the internal taxes that caused so much discomfort among the colonists. This resolution was passed in parliament on 20 Feb 1775, but did not reach the colonies until 26 May 1775.

[32] JCC, 2:64 (May 26, 1775).

[33] JCC, 2:83-84 (Jun 8, 1774). Massachusetts’s council was dissolved as part of the Coercive Acts.

[34] JCC, 2:111 (Jun 30, 1775).

[35] JCC, 2:125 (Jul 4, 1775).

[36] John Adams to James Warren, Jul 6, 1775, LDC, 1:589.

[37] Benjamin Franklin to Jonathan Shipley, Jul 7, 1775, LDC, 1:605.

[38] JCC, 2:128, n. 1 (Jul 6, 1775).

[39] JCC, 2:132-133 (Jul 6, 1775).

[40] For a comparison of the drafts, see JCC, 2:128-157. The use of “tyranny” describing a government classically referred to a corrupt monarch. See Polybius, Histories, Book 6; Aristotle, Politics; and Plato, The Republic. Machiavelli repeated this assertion in his Discourses on Livy; Hobbes refuted the corrupt nature, but still identified tyranny as the perceived corruption of a monarch in his De Cive and Leviathan.

[41] JCC, 2:171 (Jul 8, 1775).

[42] JCC, 2:158-161 (Jul 8, 1775).

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