No More Learning

Gaz. , June 27, July 4
25, Sept. 19, 1774.
'Letter from a Georgian, 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, p. 733.
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? 380 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
place-men and publick officers with their connections, as the
largest and most populous Government on the Continent,
and those with independent salaries from Government. " *
Furthermore, the inhabitants were in constant peril of an
attack from the Creeks, who threatened to wipe out the
back-country settlements. "We have an enemy at our backs,
who but very lately put us into the utmost consternation,"
wrote a Georgian. "We fled at their approach; we left
our property at their mercy; and we have implored the
assistance of Great-Britain to humble these haughty Creeks.
. . . Our entering into resolutions against the Government,
in the present case, can answer no end but to injure our in-
fant province, by provoking the Mother Country to desert
us. " 2 It is not surprising that the frontier parishes were
unsympathetic to the propaganda against Parliament.
In view of these facts, the radicals were unsuccessful in
arousing indignation by references to past injustices, especi-
ally as they had failed signally in the earlier years in ob-
taining effective action from Georgia. There was only a
handful of radicals in the province--a few active ones in
Christ Church Parish, wherein lay the coast town of Savan-
nah, and a compact group, of New England nativity, in St.
John's Parish, immediately to the south. 8 Late in July, at
the instance of the South Carolina radicals,* appeals began
1Letter from Savannah correspondent in fa. Gas. . Dec. 28, 1774;
also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 1033-1034.
1"Mercurius" in Ga. Gas. , Aug. 10, 1774.
1 St. John's Parish was appropriately named " Liberty County " at a
later time. Medway, the chief settlement, was founded by people from
Dorchester, Mass. , after they had failed in a similar enterprise in South
Carolina. These folks " still retain a strong tincture of Republican or
Oliverian principles," wrote Governor Wright to Dartmouth. White,
Ga. Hist. Colls. , p. 523.
'Letter of Wright to Dartmouth, 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 633-634.
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? CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES
381
to appear in the Georgia Gasette exhorting the inhabitants
to make common cause with Boston. 1 In "The Case
stated," it was declared that the single question was: had
Parliament a right to levy what sums of money on the
Americans they pleased and in what manner they pleased;
for " they that have a right or power to put a duty on my
tea have an equal right to put a duty on my bread, and why
not on my breath, why not on my daylight and smoak, why
not on everything? " The answer of the moderates rang
clear and true: the real issue was not one of taxation but
"whether Americans have a right to destroy private prop-
erty with impunity. " "That the India Company did send
tea to Boston on their own account is undeniable," declared
the writer. "That they had a right so to do and to under-
sell the Merchants there (or rather the Smugglers) is
equally undeniable," and the destructive act of the Boston-
ians "must, in the judgment of sober reason, be highly
criminal and worthy of exemplary punishment. " 2
On July 20 the Gasette contained an unsigned call for a
provincial meeting of delegates at Savannah. A meeting
was accordingly held at the Watch-House on Wednesday,
July 27. ' It is impossible to ascertain how many persons
were present, but a radical account claimed that " upwards
of an hundred from one Parish [St. John's] came resolved
on an agreement not to import or use British manufactures
till America shall be restored to her constitutional rights. "
It is clear that the great body of the province was unrepre-
sented. After several had declined the doubtful honor,
1" The Case stated" and " A Georgian" in issue of July 27, 1774.
1"Mercurius" in ibid. , Aug. 10, 1774.
1This narrative is based chiefly on the radical accounts in 4 Am.
Arch. , vol. i, pp. 638-6. 19; the moderate version in a protest of Savan-
nah inhabitants, Ga. Gas. , Sept. 7, 1774; and the radical rejoinder in
ibid. , Sept. 21.
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? 382 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
John Glenn was chosen chairman. A motion was made to
appoint a committee to draft resolutions "nearly similar
to those of the Northern Provinces," but it was lost by " a
large majority of the respectable inhabitants. " Letters
were then read from the General Committee of South Caro-
lina and other northern committees; and while the reading
was going on, many moderates, believing that the main issue
had been settled, withdrew from the meeting. The radicals
quietly swelled their own numbers by gathering; in " several
transients and other inconsiderable people;" and a motion
for a committee was put a second time and announced as
carried, in face of the protest of several gentlemen that, if
the names of the persons on both sides were put down, it
would appear that a majority of the freeholders present
opposed the motion. A committee of thirty-one was forth-
with chosen; but it was deemed wiser, in view of the irreg-
ular composition of the convention and the high indigna-
tion of the moderate party, to postpone the adoption of
resolutions until a convention of regularly-appointed dele-
gates should meet at Savannah on August 10. It was voted,
however, that the resolutions agreed upon at the forthcom-
ing meeting by a majority of those present "should be
deemed the sense of the inhabitants of this Province. "
When Governor Wright learned that the committee was
summoning the several parishes and districts to a provincial
convention, he adopted the usual course of royal executives,
and on August 5 interposed a proclamation denouncing the
action as "unconstitutional, illegal and punishable by law. " l
More indicative of public opinion was a protest against the
coming meeting, signed by forty-six inhabitants of St. Paul,
one of the most populous parishes of the province. The
paper declared that since the Georgians were not involved
1S. C. Gaz. , Sept. 12, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 699-700.
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? CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 383
in the same guilt as the Bostonians, they could have no
business in making themselves partakers of the ill-conse-
quences of that guilt; and particular stress was laid on the
fact that " the persons who are most active on this occasion
are chiefly those whose property lies in or near Savannah;
and therefore are not so immediately exposed to the bad
effects of an Indian war; whereas the back settlements of
this province, and our parish in particular, would most cer-
tainly be laid waste and depopulated, unless we receive such
powerful aid and assistance as none but Great-Britain can
give. " 1
The tenth of August arrived, and, according to the
authorized account published in the Gazette, a "General
Meeting of the Inhabitants of the Province" assembled at
Savannah and " nemine contradicente" adopted resolutions
condemning the coercive acts as illegal and pledging the
concurrence of Georgia " in every constitutional measure"
for redress adopted by the sister provinces. 2 The deputies
present were added to the existing committee of thirty-one
to act as a General Committee for the province. This
meager and colorless account intentionally failed to disclose
the tense excitement and unscrupulous methods that pre-
vailed at the meeting, or even the fact, admitted later by a
radical, that a motion to send delegates to the Continental
Congress failed of adoption. * But the facts, suppressed in
the official version were voluntarily supplied by indignation
meetings in various parts of the province. A protest, signed
by James Habersham, councillor and merchant, and one
hundred and one other inhabitants of Savannah and Christ
'Now McDuffie County. Ga. Gas. , Oct. 12, 1774; incorrectly
printed in Ga. Rev. Recs. , vol. i, pp. 24-26.
*Ga. Gaz. , Aug. 17, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 700-701.
? Letter from St. John's Parish; Pa. Journ. , Oct. 5, 1774; also 4 Am.
Arch. , vol. i, pp 766-767.
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? 384 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
Church Parish, recounted the devious practices of the rad-
icals at the meeting of July 27, and charged that the im-
portant parish of St. Paul was not represented at the meet-
ing of August 10 and that several other parishes had been
induced to send deputies through a misrepresentation of the
purpose of the gathering. It was further alleged that, in
absence of notification to the contrary, all but the select
few in the secret supposed that the second meeting would be
held at the same place as the earlier one, but in fact it " was
held in a tavern, with the door shut for a considerable time,
and it is said twenty-six persons answered for the whole
province and undertook to bind them by Resolution; and
when several gentlemen attempted to go in, the tavern-
keeper, who stood at the door with a list in his hand, re-
fused them admittance, because their names were not men-
tioned in that list. " 1
These charges were elaborated and confirmed by pro-
tests emanating from three other parishes. The burden of
three different protests from St. Paul Parish, signed in all
by two hundred and eighty-seven names, was that the meet-
ing had been secret, small, unrepresentative, and even, ac-
cording to the belief of the Augusta signers, illegal. 2 From
one portion of St. George Parish came the plaint that,
though many of the subscribers had voted to send deputies
to the Savannah meeting, " it was because we were told that
unless we did send some persons there, we would have the
Stamp Act put in force," while the western district of the
same parish announced that they had known nothing of the
1 Ga. Gos. , Sept. 7, 1774; reprinted in incomplete form in Ga. Rev.
Recs. , vol. i, pp. 18-21.
1Protests from 126 inhabitants of the Kyoka and Broad River Settle-
ments, 123 inhabitants of the township of Wrightsborough and places
adjacent, and from 38 inhabitants of the town and district of Augusta;
Ga. Gaz. , Oct. 12, 1774; aUo Ga. Rev. Recs. , vol. i, pp. 22-24, 27-30,
where the Augusta resolves are given inaccurately.
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? CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES
385
appointment of deputies. 1 In similar strain, a protest from
St. Mathew Parish declared that the signers there had been
told that the meeting would petition the king for mercy for
Boston " as a child begs a father when he expects correc-
tion," and that unless they signed, the Stamp Act would be
imposed on them. 2
The radicals made no effective answer to these apocryphal
accounts.
* A publication of the committee in the Gazette
of September 21 called attention to the fact that only about
one-fifth of the effective men in the parish had signed the
Savannah protest; it justified the presence of "transient
and inconsiderable persons " at public meetings, and denied
that the doors of the tavern had been closed, although ac-
knowledging that several persons had been denied admit-
tance without the knowledge of the committee. These facts
were, in any case, non-essential, it was declared, for the
great issue was whether Parliament had the right to tax
America and whether or not Boston was suffering in the
common cause.
The undaunted radicals of St. John's Parish made one
1 Protests from 123 inhabitants of St. George Parish and from 53 in-
habitants of Queensborough and the western district of the parish; Ga.
Gas. , Sept. 28, 1774; also 5. C. & Am. Gen. Gas. , Oct. 7.
'The protest bore 35 signatures to the body of it and 12 others to an
addendum; Ga. Gas. , Sept. 2, 1774; also Ga. Rev. Jfecs. , vol. i, pp.
32-34.
? Apparently it was left for the patriotic historians writing in after
years to discover that the papers of protest had been "placed in the
hands of the governors' influential friends and sent in different direc-
tions over the country to obtain subscribers, allowing a sum of money
to each of those persons proportioned to the number of subscribers they
obtained," and that in some instances the number of signers exceeded
the population of the parishes or were, in part, recruited from those
who had long since passed away. McCall, H. , History of Ga. (1816)
vol. ii, pp. 24 25. For Governor Wright's letters to Dartmouth, stat,
ing that the papers of protest had been written by the people themselves,
vide Parliamentary History, vol. xviii, pp. 141-142.
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? 386 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763. 1776
more effort to secure the election of delegates to the Conti-
nental Congress, and passed resolutions that they would
join with a majority of the parishes for that purpose. A
meeting was held in St. John's Parish on August 30, at
which appeared deputies from the parishes of St. George
and St. David; and this meager gathering went so far as
to nominate a delegate (Dr. Lyman Hall in all probability)
to go to the Congress, if the other parishes assented. 1 But
that assent was never forthcoming. Georgia was the onlv
one of the thirteen provinces that f illT1 rn h" rppr<>gAnt>>^. ? <?
the First Continental Congress.
In the period intervening between the appointment of
delegates to the Continental Congress in the various prov-
inces and the day of the adjournment of that body, sundry
incidents indicated that the activity and influence of the
radicals was increasing with the passage of the weeks. In
the commercial provinces, the most striking development
was the combination of workingmen of two of the chief
cities to withhold their labor from the British authorities at
Boston. Early in September, 1 774, Governor Gagejaought
workingmen for fortifying . . Boston Neck,
but was met with refusals wherever he turned. The Com-
mittee of Mechanics of Boston, learning that the governor
would now apply at New York, warned their New York
brethren of this fact. 2 Independently of the Boston trans-
actions, the radicals at New York had already begun to
bring pressure to bear on labor contractors to prevent the
exportation of carpenters to Boston, and upon the mer-
chants to prevent the use of their vessels for the transpor-
tation of troops and military stores. 8 The Boston warning
lPa. Journ. , Oct. 5, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 766-767.
? JV. Y. Journ. , Sept. 29, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 803-804.
1/<<</. , vol. i, p. 782; also AT. Y. Journ. , Sept. 15, 1774.
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? CONTEST IN PLANTATION PROVINCES 387
had the desired effect; and on September 24 the New York
Committee of Mechanics gave a unanimous vote of thanks
to tLthose worthy Mechanicks of this city who have de-
clined to aid or assist in the erecting of fortifications on
Boston Neck . . . " Q
Aidfd bj;_the. f ressure of the widespreajdjfflffnjdoyment,
Gage was successful, a_ little jatert in getting Bpstonjcarpen-
ters and"masons to work onjmrragks for the . soldiers for a
few days. " The apparent change of front caused a joint
committee of the selectmen and members of the committee
oj correspondence _ on September 24 to ypte th<>ir opinion
probaM&jesult of such disloval
tfre withholding of contribution. ;} from Boston jjy. , . Other
j>rpjiiflces^ Two davs la,ter the working-men deserted their
jobs. * In order to seal the labor market of the surrounding
country to the British commander, a meeting, composed of
the committees of thirteen towns, resolved that, should any
inhabitants of Massachusetts or the neighboring provinces
supply the troops at Boston "with labour, lumber, joists,
spars, pickets, straw, bricks, or any materials whatsoever
which may furnish them with requisites to annoy or in any
way distress" the citizens, they should be deemed "most
inveterate enemies" and ought to be prevented and de-
feated. The leading towns represented at the meeting ap-
pointed " Committees of Observation and Prevention" to
enforce the resolves, and the resolves were communicated
to every town in the province. 0 The rural towns took heed;
1 N. Y. Journ. , Sept. 29, 1774; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 803-804.
1 Ibid. , vol. i, p. 804.
1 Ibid. , vol. i, p. 802; also Mass. Gas. & Post-Boy, Sept. 26, 1774.
4Ibid. , Oct. 3, 1774; 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 814-815, 820.
6The committees in attendance were from Boston, Braintree, Cam-
bridge, Charlestown, Dedham, Dorchester, Malden, Milton, Mystic,
Roxbury, Stow, Watertown and Woburn. Ibid. , vol. i, pp. 807-808;
also . M Y. Journ. , Oct. 20, 1774.
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? 388 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
and the labor boycott was made effective. 1 The troops did
not get into barracks until November, after Gage had sent
to Nova Scotia for fifty carpenters and bricklayers and had
succeeded in obtaining a few additional ones from New
Hampshire through Governor Wentworth's aid. *
Gage was more successful in dealing with merchants.
Although the merchants at Philadelphia refused contracts
for blankets and. Qther supplies for the troops at Boston,
those_at Ne_w York lent a willing ear. When a mass meet-
ing, called without authority of the " Fifty-One," appointed
a committee to intimidate the merchants in question, the
transactions were repudiated and denounced by the " Fifty-
One," and the merchants completed ttyir nrrfgr^ >> In the
early months of 1775 the same problem arose in slightly
different form. Certain jersons had bgen induced {p supply
the troops at Boston with wagons, entrenching tools and
other equipage for field operations. At the request qf^the
committees of Boston and numerous nthpr rr>wn<^ the ^ro-
hat all such persons should be deemed " inveterate enemies
to America " and oppose^ hy all reasonable means?
Equally significant during these months was the trend
violent "ppoqffion to the tea duty. noticeable i
1 E. g. , the committee of the little town of Rochester, N. H. , found
Nicholas Austin guilty of acting as a labor contractor for the Boston
military. On his knees the culprit was made to pray forgiveness and
to pledge for the future that he would never act " contrary to the Con-
stitution of the country. " N. H. Gas. , Nov. 11, 1774; also 4 Am.
Arch. , vol. i, p. 974.
1 Ibid. , vol. i, pp. 981, 991-992; Mass. Gas. & News-Letter, Nov.
10, 1774; N. Y. Gas. , Nov. 21.
'/Wrf. , Oct. 3, 1774, also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 326-327, 809;
Golden, Letter Books, vol. ii, pp. 366-368.
'Mass. Sfy, Feb. 9, 1775; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. i, pp. 1329-1330.