The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (57 page)

government. But long before Gage acted and the Provincial Congress convened, a small-scale political revolution had occurred in western Massachusetts.

Western Massachusetts contained two counties, Hampshire and Berkshire, and about 15 percent of the colony's population. The Connecticut River cut through the region and gave it a means for shipping its lumber, hides, meat, and crops to the outside world. The most important towns of the area grew near the river, but most of its people got their livings farming in the Connecticut River Valley and in the narrow spaces of the Berkshires.
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A few great men had run the West and everyone in it for more than a generation. There was Israel Williams of Hatfield, an able, toughminded merchant, land speculator, and politician. Colonel John Worthington did the same for Springfield, and Joseph Hawley, though different in several ways from the others -- he did not speculate in land -- had things to his liking in Northampton. These men, their families, and a handful of others like them -- in many cases related to them, the Stoddards and the Partridges, for example -- dominated the valley so thoroughly as to earn the name the River Gods.

The River Gods did not ignore politics. They, their kin, and their henchmen served as judges, selectmen, town clerks, and sheriffs, or effectively controlled all these offices and virtually all others through their mastery of business and their connections to the royal governor in Boston. Only Joseph Hawley remained aloof from Boston, and largely through his own efforts he managed to keep his hand in public affairs in Northampton despite his aberrant refusal to tie himself to the governor.

The other River Gods looked upon the agitation against imperial policies with a horror similar to Bernard's and Hutchinson's. Since the River Gods actually possessed power that the eastern Tories dreamed of, they kept western Massachusetts quiet while Boston rioted and protested. They ignored the Stamp Act, and they regarded nonimportation at the time of the Townshend acts with equal indifference. They did not take offense at Hillsborough's circular letter in 1768, but six of the representatives they sent to the House voted to rescind the Massachusetts Circular Letter. Only one westerner voted with the "Glorious Ninety-Two," those worthies who chose to defy Hillsborough, and three did not even bother to attend the session which took up this celebrated issue.
The next

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year, 1769, the West returned three of its rescinders to the House; only two others survived the purge in the remainder of the colony. Nor did the West take Sam Adams's convention seriously. One delegate appeared from all the towns of Hampshire County, and none from Berkshire.

The River Gods unknowingly ran up a debt for the obedience they compelled: the hatred of thousands of ordinary men who resented all the bowing and scraping they had to do. In 1772, when news spread that the English ministry had decided to pay superior court justices from the customs rather than leave that responsibility to the legislature, part of the debt was called due in the West, as six towns passed resolutions condemning this new policy. The courts were hated anyway; the River Gods and their crowd used them against small borrowers, and used them without mercy.

The Intolerable Acts -- in particular the ones revoking the charter and removing the administration of justice even farther from popular control -- were simply not to be borne; all the latent animosities broke free. In July and August mobs closed the county courts; they remained closed until 1778 in Hampshire and until 1781 in Berkshire. Town and county conventions -- extralegal bodies -- met and established their own courts, or in some cases turned the whole business over to the town meeting, which still had claims to legitimacy. In Pittsfield, for example, the town appointed a special committee to try cases; other towns relied on already overburdened selectmen. In the East these actions were watched closely, and in Boston grand and petit jurymen refused to take oaths, thereby bringing the superior court to a close.

These actions humiliated the River Gods, but they soon felt the anger of their people more directly. Israel Williams and Colonel John Worthington were named to the mandamus council, the new royal agency created by the Massachusetts Government Act. Neither dared accept, but before they could make their refusal known they were mobbed by angry crowds and made to resign in public. Colonel Worthington was completely intimidated and in effect switched sides, breaking his old ties with the eastern establishment. Israel Williams accepted the loss of his power but spoke of his dislike of patriot actions. In February 1775, long after he had turned down the appointment to the council, he received another visit from the crowd, which evidently expected something approaching obsequious behavior from Tories. Williams did not crack, and he spent the night in a smokehouse breathing the aroma of wood fires and cured meat. After that he was quiet.

Mandamus councillors far from the protection of the troops in Boston endured similar abuse. After Timothy Ruggles's appointment became known, he was warned by a friend in Hardwicke not to return home: "There are those here who I am satisfied thirst for your blood, and they have influence enough over others to put them upon spilling it."
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Timothy Paine, visited by a crowd of two thousand people in Worcester, was forced to write out his resignation which contained an abject apology for accepting an appointment he had not sought, and then was compelled to read it aloud, hat in hand, in the middle of the mob. The Worcester crowd included several militia companies which then marched off to Rutland, twelve miles to the northwest, in search of another councillor who fled before they arrived. Daniel Leonard also drew a crowd which "formed themselves into a Battalion before my House."
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This group was not easily put off and that night fired shots into the house.

These tactics worked. Virtually every councillor who failed to make his way to sanctuary in Boston resigned, and the rump in Boston exercised paper powers. Outside Boston the government resided in local bodies, towns, conventions, committees, and occasionally mobs. The conventions and committees drew most of the energies of resistance to themselves -they were unencumbered by traditional methods -- and took upon themselves the organization of political and military resources.

Stopping trade with Britain was the easiest task these agencies had. By closing up Boston, the British had shut off imports. Warm spirits outside Boston now wanted the civilian population to evacuate the city in preparation for an attack on the troops. The Boston committee looked askance at this proposal, as did indeed most leaders in the countryside. Throughout the summer these men gathered together to plan actions short of war but in preparation for it. The men of Worcester County were especially active, meeting in August to reject all Parliamentary claims to authority in America, calling for larger gatherings, and attending one in Boston with delegates from Middlesex, Suffolk, and Essex counties. Early in September the Worcester Convention closed the county courts and began to reorganize the militia, first forcing the resignation of all officers and then urging towns to select new ones whose loyalty to the common cause" was unimpeachable.
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All these local maneuverings led finally to the meeting of a Provincial Congress early in October. Gage had already adjourned the legislature before it had a chance to meet. The representatives and a good many other delegates then convened in Cambridge. There the newly aroused countryside showed its zeal, first by sending many more delegates than it ordinarily did to the legislature -- Hampshire County, for example, sent thirty-nine rather than its usual twenty -- and then by driving through measures looking towards war. Within three weeks, under western leadership, the Provincial Congress approved an appropriation of £20,000 for arms and ammunition, the money apparently to come from taxes ordinarily collected by the regular government. It also created a committee of safety and, after making certain that its membership would be controlled by westerners, authorized the committee or any five of its members to arm, supply, and order the militia into action. What was said at the Provincial Congress may have been even more warlike than any of these acts, as a number of once-passive delegates urged that Boston should be evacuated and then attacked and burned to the ground with his majesty's garrison inside.
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At the end of October the Provincial Congress adjourned, not to reconvene until the final week of November. When it did, it had the results of the first Continental Congress to consider. The Association seemed weak to many of these Massachusetts men, and they refused to approve it until they found a means of toughening its requirements. There was a rural animus against the city in the demand that the sales of all imported goods be banned sometime after nonimportation went into effect. The Congress eventually decided that no such goods, even though they were legally imported before December 1, 1774, should be sold after October 10, 1775. They had been tricked by the merchants before, or believed so, and they did not propose to let it happen again.
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Early in December the Provincial Congress dissolved itself, but not before ugly words were spoken in arguments over what to do about the troops in Boston. Sam Adams had returned from Philadelphia to take part in this second series of meetings and he rather liked what he heard from western tongues. Not surprisingly, Adams favored large-scale preparations -- 20,000 militia seemed an appropriate number to him and an immediate attack on the redcoats an appropriate course of action. Other easterners were not so sure -- Thomas Cushing among them, who argued that in an assault on the British army, Massachusetts would

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fight alone, for only the most blatant outrages by the British would bring the other colonies into a war. Adams professed to believe that the other colonies would not hesitate but would rush to the defense of Massachusetts, whereupon Cushing flared out: "that is a lie, Mr. Adams, and I know it and you know that I know it."
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There were no such abrasive encounters among Virginia's leaders in the autumn of 1774. Even the merchants fell all over themselves in declaring their satisfaction at the Association adopted by the first Continental Congress. Well they might, for in August just before the Continental Congress convened, the provincial convention closed down the county courts. This action was a response to the attempts by Scottish factors and merchants resident in Virginia to collect debts before the association adopted by Virginia brought business to a stop. These Scottish businessmen were pressing hard on their debtors in the local courts. Now with the Continental Association replacing the local agreement, the merchants attempted to head off reprisals against themselves.
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They had reason to be concerned. At the urging of the rump of the Burgesses the previous spring, meetings of freeholders in at least thirty counties had discussed stopping all trade with Britain, and though they had usually agreed that nonexportation was not expedient, most favored closing Virginia to imports from Britain. And in the two months following the close of the first Continental Congress about half of Virginia's sixtyone counties had chosen committees to enforce the Continental Association; most of the remainder followed suit early in 1775.