Suppose
we were attacked by some foreign power in this state of in-
dependency, for this is the bugbear; what then?
we were attacked by some foreign power in this state of in-
dependency, for this is the bugbear; what then?
Arthur Schlesinger - Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
of observation and inspection " so to regulate the price of
salt, as to prevent unreasonable exactions on the part of the
seller, having due regard to the difficulty and risque of im-
portation; subject however to such regulations as have been,
or shall hereafter be made, by the legislatures of the respec-
tive colonies. " * Provincial authorities and committees of
observation acted upon the recommendation, not only regu-
lating the price of salt but offering bounties for its produc-
tion. 2 In all other respects prices were left undisturbed by
Congress until the latter part of the year 1777, upon the
hope that the influx of goods from foreign countries under
the resolution of April 6, 1776, would bring down prices. 8
Before considering the critical decision which confronted
the merchants when independence was declared, it seems
desirable to re-state, by way of summary, the part which the
merchant class had played in the development of the revo-
lutionary movement prior to that event. Threatened with
bankruptcy by the parliamentary legislation of 1764-1765,
the merchants of the commercial provinces were the insti-
gators of the first discontents in the colonies. The small
factor class in the plantation provinces, by reason of the
limited nature of their trade, had no interest in the adverse
effects of this legislation, and because of their close connec-
tion with their British employers were not at this or any
other time inclined, as a group, to lend support to the
1 Journals, vol. iv, pp. 397-398, 404.
* Contemporary newspapers; Smith, loc. cit.
1 Before this could occur, however, the excessive issues of paper
money served to keep prices in an inflated condition. For a lucid dis-
cussion of the troubles over prices in the later period with special
reference to Massachusetts, vide Davis, A. McF. , "The Limitation of
Prices in Massachusetts, 1776-1779," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs. , vol. x,
pp. 110-134,
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? 592
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
projects of the northern merchants. Their attitude there-
fore need not be considered in the present summary.
The merchants of the great northern ports were startled
by the mob excesses and destruction of property which their
agitation had caused; but only the official class and the
social class with which it was allied were moved to place
themselves squarely on the side of parliamentary authority
thereafter. The developments of the years 1767-1770,
fomented by the mercantile interests in large part, brought
the merchants to a serious realization of the growing power
of the irresponsible elements and of the drift of events
toward lawlessness. But for the ill-advised attempt of the
British ministry to assist the East India Company to
monopolize the tea market at the expense of the colonial
merchants, it is probable that the great influence of the
trading class would have been thrown on the side of law
and order at this time, and the separation of the colonies
from the mother country postponed or prevented. Some
merchants did indeed abstain from further activity against
parliamentary measures; but a majority joined with the
radicals to defeat the dangerous purposes of the British
trading company.
The disastrous outcome of this unnatural alliance con-
vinced the merchants as a class that their future welfare
rested with the maintenance of British authority. As a
matter of tactics, many individuals lingered in the radical
movement for the purpose of controlling it; others were
there because persuaded in spite of their self-interest. With
the advent of the First Continental Congress and its brood
of committees, other merchants withdrew from radical
affiliations, some of them becoming active loyalists. The
outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord furnished
another opportunity for decision. Finally, in the spring
and summer months of 1776,' when the dismemberment of
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
the British empire was impending, came the time for the
supreme choice. The position of the merchants in these
last months needs to be examined in some detail.
Their natural disrelish for the idea of separation was in-
creased by the character of the arguments which the rad-
icals were using at this time to inform and consolidate the
mechanic and agrarian classes in support of independence. 1
Thus, Tom Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense, which ap-
peared on January 9, 1776, repelled the typical merchant
while it carried ready conviction to the man of ordinary
"common sense," who, impatient of the fine-spun political
disquisitions and cautious policies of past years, was eager
for a political philosophy of plain, unqualified phrases and
for a definite program of action in which he could take
aggressive part. That this great piece of propagandist
writing, with its crudities and bad taste, proved entirely
satisfactory to men of this type is shown by the fact that
one hundred thousand copies were quickly needed to spread
the gospel of Common Sense to the uttermost portions of
the United Colonies,2 and that Paine's pamphlet became the
progenitor of a brood of lesser tracts and articles.
1 The radical writers made it clear that merchants were no longer
to be regarded as the directors of public policy. "Remember the
influence of wealth upon the morals and principles of mankind,"
admonished "A Watchman" in the Pa. Packet, June 24, 1776. "Recol-
lect how often you have heard the first principles of government
subverted by the calls of Cato and other Catalines [loyalist writers],
to make way for men of fortune to declare their sentiments upon the
subject of Independence, as if a minority of rich men were to govern
the majority of freeholders in the province. "
1 Vide Tyler, M. C. , Literary History of the American Revolution
(New York, 1897), vol. i, pp. 469-474. "The temper and wishes of
the people supplied every thing at that time," says John Adams in his
Autobiography, "and the phrases, suitable for an emigrant from New-
gate, or one who had chiefly associated with such company, such as,
'The Royal Brute of England,' 'The blood upon his soul,' and a few
others of equal delicacy, had as much weight with the people as his
arguments. " Works, vol. ii, p. 509.
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? 594
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
But such appeals to passion produced a very different
effect on the wavering merchants, who regarded themselves
still as the only true conservators of colonial rights. Well
might a writer familiar with the long cherished aspirations
of the merchant class and of the moderates generally, in-
dignantly deny that "all men who oppose the scheme of
Independence are advocates for absolute tyranny. Were
this once proved, as it had been often asserted, the contest
would be at an end, and we should all unite in hand and
heart for their beloved Utopian plan; but it never has been,
it never can be proved. The opposers of Independence in
every publick body, from the Congress downwards, and in
the mass of the people, are the true Whigs, who are for
preserving the Constitution, as well against the secret
machinations of ambitious innovators as against the open
attacks of the British Parliament; they are the men who
first set on foot the present opposition, and who, I trust,
will, if they are permitted to go on, bring it to a happy con-
clusion. " And he added, by way of warning to his fellow-
citizens, that " a set of men whom nobody knows . . . are
attempting to hurry you into a scene of anarchy; their
scheme of Independence is visionary; they know not them-
selves what they mean by it. " *
On the other hand, the three resolutions of Congress,
passed in April, 1776, for annulling the acts of navigation
and trade, reviving the sale of teas, and removing all price
restrictions, made strong appeal to mercantile self-interest.
This advantage was followed up by radical writers who de-
1"Civis," Philadelphia, Apr. 30, 1776; 4 Am. Arch. , vol. v, pp. 1141-
1142. Some months earlier "Phileirene" at Boston had remarked of
independence that "in whatever light we consider this truly Utopian
project, the more attentively we view it, and the more thoroughly we
scan it, the more impracticable, absurd, and ridiculous it appears. "
Ibid. , vol. i, p. 1188.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
595
picted the presumed materialistic benefits of independence.
They painted a Golden Age of commerce in the future more
glorious than that which had existed before 1763. 1 They
even restrained their impatience when cautious members of
the trading class called for a bill of particulars.
Thus, a writer at Philadelphia voiced the opinion of a
good many merchants in the commercial provinces when, in
an open letter to the writers on both sides of the question,
he urged that the whole question of separation be entered
into " fairly, fully and freely. " To explain what he meant,
he continued: "with respect to Independence, some people
will be satisfied with nothing short of such clear and demon-
strative evidence; you must tell them, also, of the partic-
ular new trades, which will be opened to us; the prices our
goods will bear at home to the farmer, and what they will
bring at such and such ports, and how much those prices
exceed what we have been used to get for them at the mar-
kets we were allow'd to trade to; in this you must name the
articles, the prices, and the places; you must then tell us,
the advantages of buying linens, woolens, cottons, silks and
hard ware in France, Spain and Portugal, and other coun-
tries in Europe, and how much cheaper they are than in
England and Ireland; . . . and whether those places will
take in exchange, our lumber, our naval stores, our tobacco,
our flax seed, &c &c and what prices they will give; what
credit it is customary for those several places to allow to
foreigners on what we commonly call dry goods . . . Next
you must shew, that the charge of supporting government
will be less, in a state of Independence, than it hath been
heretofore . . . Lastly you are to consider, after all things
are candidly stated, whether the sums annually raised on
the one hand to protect ourselves, and the absolute gain in
1 Articles were also written to belittle the advantages of the period
before 1763; e. g. , "An American," ibid. , vol. v, pp. 225-227.
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? 596 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
trade (over and above what we used to make) on the other
hand, do or do not render it most for our interest to sep-
arate from Britain. "
In like manner this writer demanded that the opponents
of independence should make a ledger account of their side
of the question: "they must shew . . . what were the cus-
tomary expences of government in America, before the
present rupture; what are the exclusive privileges, we derive
from exporting goods to Great-Britain; whether there are
acts of Parliament in favour of the Colonies, to the preju-
dice of other nations, . . . and whether these are equivalent
to any loss we may sustain, by having our trade confined to
them; . . . you are to particularize the ports we may trade
to under the old regulations; and the different articles of
America, which we may carry directly to foreign ports; you
must also shew that the principal part of the goods we im-
port from England and Ireland could not be supplied us
upon as good terms, from any other country, and that those
nations, with whom we might incline to trade, would not
grant us bounties upon naval stores, and sundry other arti-
cles, in the same manner as England does, the amount of
which, annually paid to the Colonists, you should sum up.
You should also shew cause (if you can) why America
ought not to take credit to herself, for all the taxes paid by
the English manufacturers, before they send their goods to
the Colonies, it being generally granted that the consumer
ultimately pays all charges; you must also shew, whether
taxes on goods imported into America from Holland,
France or Spain (where imposts are very heavy) are or are
not added to the cost of the said goods, in the same manner
as we reckon them on English goods. Also whether the
long established credit, our American merchants have ob-
tained in England in the interior part of the kingdom, with
the original manufacturers, cannot be as well accomplished
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 597
in the new countries we may go to; or whether we must
take their goods from merchants at the out-ports, with all
the middle men's or intervening dealer's profits added to
them . . .
"Whether it is not a general established custom with all
trading nations, to trust foreigners with whom they have no
legal or political constitutional connexion as freely as their
own subjects in distant parts of the world; if this is not
generally the case, you should shew why America can't
make treaties with such powers, in order to obtain credit
. . . You should also shew . . . whether if France, Spain
and Holland should refuse to give credit to every young
merchant going out for a cargo, with a tolerable recommen-
dation, as the traders in England have been accustomed to
do, I say, if this should be the case, and the importations
should fall wholly into the hands of a few rich merchants,
why might not some mode of restriction be entered into, for
preventing the exorbitant exactions they might be guilty of,
to the great injury of the consumers? . . .
"You must also prove that England, on a reunion, would
grant us such protection as would secure our property in
any part of the world . . . ; or if a reunion should not take
place, you are to point out sufficient reasons to justify you
in the supposition that America has not, or may not, have
a naval power competent to the task, of doing herself jus-
tice. . . . And you must lastly shew, that by a reconcilia-
tion on constitutional principles, we shall return to the free
money-getting trade we formerly enjoyed, and that we
shall have it enlarged to us upon a grand national scale,
without any regard to the private emolument of this or that
party; but upon principles of the general interest of the
whole empire, without our paying any taxes for the support
of government more than what we have been used to (the
debt arising from the present dispute only excepted). That
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? THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the administration of justice, and security of property, will
be as upright and safe as heretofore; and that the present
happiness and future liberty of America would be as well
maintained in a reunion as by a separation. I shall read
your controversy with great attention, and so will thou-
sands beside me; and if, upon an impartial hearing, it shall
appear to be the real interest of America to cut the Gordian
Knot and establish Independence--I declare with the utmost
sincerity and solemnity, that I will give it my hearty con-
currence. " l
While the controversial writers never achieved the par-
ticularity which this writer demanded, the radicals labored
hard to portray the economic advantages which a state of
independence promised for merchants and for men of means
generally. "Some think they say everything against a
state of independence by crying out that in a state of de-
pendance we enjoyed the protection of Great-Britain . . . ,"
wrote " Salus Populi. " "But do we not pay dearly for this
protection? The restriction of our trade alone is worth ten
times the protection, besides the sums we pay in customs
and other duties to the amount of more than a million an-
nually. The customs of the port of London alone are worth
? 2,000,000 sterling per annum. . . . Let us for once sup-
pose an independency, that we may observe the consequence.
We should then trade with every nation that would trade
with us, i. e. with every nation in Europe at least.
Suppose
we were attacked by some foreign power in this state of in-
dependency, for this is the bugbear; what then? The nation
that would be fool enough to do it would raise a hornet's
nest about its ears . . . Every nation which enjoyed a
share of our trade would be guarantee for the peaceable be-
haviour and good conduct of its neighbours . . . To ask
1 "A Common Man " in the Pa. Ledger, Mch. 30, 1776.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
what we should do for fleets to protect our trade, is as ab-
surd as to ask if timber grows in America. . . . But the
war once over, fleets to protect our trade will be nearly un-
necessary. Our trade will protect itself. It never will be
the interest of any nation to disturb our trade while we
trade freely with it, and it will ever be our interest to trade
freely with all nations. As long as the wide Atlantic ocean
rolls between us and Europe, so long will we be free from
foreign subjection were we once clear of Great-Britain:
And as long as we remain free from foreign subjection, so
long will our trade protect itself. "1
"What will be the probable benefits of independence? "
queried another writer. "A free and unlimited trade; a
great accession of wealth, and a proportionable rise in the
value of land; the establishment, gradual improvement, and
perfection of manufactures and science; a vast influx of
foreigners . . . ; an astonishing increase of our people
from the present stock. Where encouragement is given to
industry; where liberty and property are well secured;
where the poor may easily find subsistence, and the middling
rank comfortably support their farms by labour, there the
inhabitants must increase rapidly. " 2 In a similar strain,
"A. B. " argued the advantages of independence: "Let us
try what improvements we may be drawn into by a general
correspondence with the whole world, with people who will
require from us every different article our lands, our differ-
ent climates, can produce; and from whom may be had
directly, at first hand, every thing requisite for us. Let us
have access to the lowest and best markets for every com-
modity. Let this be the case, but for half the time the
1 Pa. Journ. , Feb. 14, 1776; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. iv, pp. 1142-1143.
1 "Questions and Answers," Feb. 17, 1776; ibid. , vol. iv, pp. 1168-1171. -
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? 6oo THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763. 1776
Colonies have already existed, and the doubts and struggles
too, concerning independence, will be at an end. "1
On the other hand, in the plantation provinces, where
from the outset the factor class had consistently sacrificed
the interest of the community at large to that of themselves
and their British employers, no effort was made to win
mercantile support. Due to their British nativity and the
pecuniary indebtedness of the planters to them, the factors
had come to be regarded as a parasitic excrescence on the
community. Chief emphasis was placed by the radical
writers on the fact that political independence would also
mean emancipation from the power of factors and British
mercantile houses. "A Planter" cited Virginia as an ex-
ample of the conditions prevailing in the provinces from
Maryland to Georgia. "You are without merchants, ships,
seamen, or ship-builders . . . ," he declared to the Virgin-
ians in a newspaper article. ? " Your trade is confined to a
single spot on the globe, in the hands of the natives of a
distant Island, who fix the market of all commodities at
their pleasure, and we may be very sure will rate yours at
the lowest, and their own at the highest prices, they will in
any conscience bear. Every article of merchandise, that is
not the produce of Britain, must first pay its duties to the
Crown, perhaps must be increased in the price a very large
advance per cent there, and then be re-exported to Virginia,
and undergo an additional advance of seventy-five, and
sometimes near one hundred and fifty per cent here. " In
the northern colonies, he pointed out, linens and broad-
cloth were sold by the retail merchants at the same price
that the Virginia factors claimed they paid as prime cost in
Britain. "By this means you fairly lose seventy-five pounds
currency on every one hundred pounds sterling worth of
1"Plain Hints on the Condition of the Colonies," Feb. 28, 1776;
4 Am. Arch. , vol. iv, p. 1524.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 601
merchandise you import from Great Britain that is not
native to that country;" a loss amounting annually to prob-
ably ? 200,000, which might be saved by the opening up of
a free and independent trade with the world.
Furthermore, he continued, there were probably fifty for-
eign houses or companies and two thousand factors, who
had charge of the trade of Virginia. "It is not unreason-
able to say, that every house or company makes fifteen
thousand pounds a year, net gain, by the trade of this
Colony; and, consequently, fifty houses will annually export
seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling to Scot-
land and England; which will be just so much saved to the
Colony, whenever its own natives shall become its mer-
chants. " Supposing the factors to lay aside ? 60 on the
average, here was to be found ? 120,000 more, which was
expended abroad. The total loss from these two sources
alone amounted to ? 870. 000 sterling, or ? 1,087,500 cur-
rency.
Another instance of exploitation was to be seen, he de-
clared, in the marketing of the Virginia staple, tobacco,
"upon which the Government of England and the mer-
chants of Scotland, have it in their power to put what price
they please. " The present rate of about 2os. per hundred-
weight was considered a very good average price. This
tobacco was exported to Britain, paid a duty almost four
times the price it bore in Virginia, and their merchants made
their fortunes out of it afterwards. 1 By exporting the
tobacco directly to the countries that consumed it, the Vir-
ginia planter would receive five pounds per hundredweight
instead of 20s. Making large allowance for losses, if the
colonies separated from Great Britain which now consumed
1 A reply by "A Virginian" pointed out that this duty was remitted
when tobacco was re-exported from Great Britain. Dixon & Hunter's
Va. Gaz. , Apr. 27, 1776.
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? 602 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a large proportion of the tobacco, its common price would
still be ? 3, or 40s. more than the planters received at pres-
ent. Figuring on an average exportation of 110,000 hogs-
heads per year, the gain to Virginia in a state of independ-
ence would be ? 2,200,000.
In summary, this writer estimated the commercial losses
due to dependence on Great Britain, so far as Virginia
was affected, substantially as follows:
1. On imports, as above ? 200,000 currency
2. Merchants' net profits 1,087,500
3. Tobacco planters' gross profits 2,200,000
4. On wheat, flour, hemp, flax, &c. , at least
half as much; but say 1,000,000
5. That part of the gross profits of the mer-
chants that would go to the artisans,
seamen, sail-makers, dealers in cordage,
anchors, etc 1,500,000
Sum total ? 5,987,500 currency
"That is, it [independence] will increase the real property
among us annually to near six millions. . . . Here is a
fund sufficient for defraying all the expenses . . . for the
preservation of our liberties against the avarice of a nation
much more powerful than the English, and not a farthing
of our present property touched. . . . If we aim only at
interest in the present contest, it appears plainly what part
we ought at once to resolve upon. " *
Turning again to the situation in the commercial prov-
inces, it should be recognized that, when the moment for the
crucial decision came, the choice which every merchant had
to make was not, and could not be, a mere mechanical one,
premised upon strict considerations of an informed class
interest. Like other human beings, his mind was affected
or controlled by the powerful influences of temperament,
1 Va. Gas. , Apr. 13, 1776; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. v, pp. 914-917.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 603
environment and tradition. Furthermore, the degree to
which his wealth was removable was an important factor in
his decision, for his business and the good will of his cus-
tomers were not commodities to be packed up and carried
bodily over into British lines. These facts caused many a
merchant to follow the line of least resistance when inde-
pendence was promulgated.
Henry Laurens of South Carolina has left on record that
he wept when he first heard the Declaration of Independ-
ence read; but he aligned himself with the revolutionists. 1
John Ross of Philadelphia, who " loved ease and Madeira
much better than liberty and strife," was one type of a
large group who claimed the right to be neutral. 8 The
Quakers, whose membership embraced the principal mer-
chants of Philadelphia, took an official stand against inde-
pendence at a meeting of representatives of Pennsylvania
and New Jersey Quakers on January 20, 1776. They re-
solved that: "The benefits, advantages and favours we
have experienced by our dependence on, and connection
with, the kings and government. . . appear to demand from
us the greatest circumspection, care and constant endeav-
ours, to guard against every attempt to alter, or subvert
that dependence and connection;" and they urged Friends
to unite firmly " in the abhorrence of all such writings and
1 Wallace, Laurens, pp. 224-225, 377.
s Graydon, Memoirs of His Own Times, p. 118. Another interesting
example is Peter Van Schaack, a New York lawyer, who had favored
the Continental Association. In May, 1775, he removed to Kinderhook
where he studied Vattel, Pufendorf, Grotius and other writers in the
hope of finding precedents to support colonial resistance. Having made
up his mind to remain neutral, he declined to sign the defense associa-
tion, and in 1777 refused to take the oath of allegiance to the state of
New York. The following year he was banished and went to England
where he remained until 1785. Then he returned to America and re-
sumed the practice of law. Van Schaack, H. C. , Life of Peter Van
Schaack (New York, 1842), passim.
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? 604 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
measures as evidence a desire and design to break off the
happy connection we have heretofore enjoyed with the
kingdom of Great-Britain, and our just and necessary sub-
ordination to the king and those who are lawfully placed in
authority under him . . . " * They attempted, during the
war for independence, to steer a middle course, although
many of the . younger members, in defiance of their elders,
joined heartily in the American cause. 2
Many merchants, on the other hand, actuated by a
broader understanding of class interest, frankly cast their
lot with the mother country. In Massachusetts, where the
conversion of the merchants to the loyalist side had occurred
earlier than in the other provinces, more than two hundred
1nembers of the trade accompanied the British troops upon
the evacuation of Boston in March, 1776. The elder
Thomas Wharton, a foremost member of the merchant-
aristocracy of Philadelphia and a "non-importer" of
earlier days, had forsaken extra-legal activities when the
results of the First Continental Congress showed that his
efforts to guide events in approved channels had proven
futile. A year or so later he was exiled to Virginia because
his presence in Philadelphia was deemed dangerous to the
patriot cause in view of the proximity of the British army
after the battle of Brandywine. In South Carolina Miles
Brewton, a wealthy merchant who had been a candidate of
the Charleston Chamber of Commerce for nomination to
the First Continental Congress, departed for England with
most of his movable property when independence was de-
clared, a destination he was not fated to reach. 4
1 Pa. Ledger, Jan. 27, 1776; also Sharpless, Quakers in the Revolution,
pp. 125-128.
1 Ibid.
? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
of observation and inspection " so to regulate the price of
salt, as to prevent unreasonable exactions on the part of the
seller, having due regard to the difficulty and risque of im-
portation; subject however to such regulations as have been,
or shall hereafter be made, by the legislatures of the respec-
tive colonies. " * Provincial authorities and committees of
observation acted upon the recommendation, not only regu-
lating the price of salt but offering bounties for its produc-
tion. 2 In all other respects prices were left undisturbed by
Congress until the latter part of the year 1777, upon the
hope that the influx of goods from foreign countries under
the resolution of April 6, 1776, would bring down prices. 8
Before considering the critical decision which confronted
the merchants when independence was declared, it seems
desirable to re-state, by way of summary, the part which the
merchant class had played in the development of the revo-
lutionary movement prior to that event. Threatened with
bankruptcy by the parliamentary legislation of 1764-1765,
the merchants of the commercial provinces were the insti-
gators of the first discontents in the colonies. The small
factor class in the plantation provinces, by reason of the
limited nature of their trade, had no interest in the adverse
effects of this legislation, and because of their close connec-
tion with their British employers were not at this or any
other time inclined, as a group, to lend support to the
1 Journals, vol. iv, pp. 397-398, 404.
* Contemporary newspapers; Smith, loc. cit.
1 Before this could occur, however, the excessive issues of paper
money served to keep prices in an inflated condition. For a lucid dis-
cussion of the troubles over prices in the later period with special
reference to Massachusetts, vide Davis, A. McF. , "The Limitation of
Prices in Massachusetts, 1776-1779," Col. Soc. Mass. Pubs. , vol. x,
pp. 110-134,
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? 592
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
projects of the northern merchants. Their attitude there-
fore need not be considered in the present summary.
The merchants of the great northern ports were startled
by the mob excesses and destruction of property which their
agitation had caused; but only the official class and the
social class with which it was allied were moved to place
themselves squarely on the side of parliamentary authority
thereafter. The developments of the years 1767-1770,
fomented by the mercantile interests in large part, brought
the merchants to a serious realization of the growing power
of the irresponsible elements and of the drift of events
toward lawlessness. But for the ill-advised attempt of the
British ministry to assist the East India Company to
monopolize the tea market at the expense of the colonial
merchants, it is probable that the great influence of the
trading class would have been thrown on the side of law
and order at this time, and the separation of the colonies
from the mother country postponed or prevented. Some
merchants did indeed abstain from further activity against
parliamentary measures; but a majority joined with the
radicals to defeat the dangerous purposes of the British
trading company.
The disastrous outcome of this unnatural alliance con-
vinced the merchants as a class that their future welfare
rested with the maintenance of British authority. As a
matter of tactics, many individuals lingered in the radical
movement for the purpose of controlling it; others were
there because persuaded in spite of their self-interest. With
the advent of the First Continental Congress and its brood
of committees, other merchants withdrew from radical
affiliations, some of them becoming active loyalists. The
outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord furnished
another opportunity for decision. Finally, in the spring
and summer months of 1776,' when the dismemberment of
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
the British empire was impending, came the time for the
supreme choice. The position of the merchants in these
last months needs to be examined in some detail.
Their natural disrelish for the idea of separation was in-
creased by the character of the arguments which the rad-
icals were using at this time to inform and consolidate the
mechanic and agrarian classes in support of independence. 1
Thus, Tom Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense, which ap-
peared on January 9, 1776, repelled the typical merchant
while it carried ready conviction to the man of ordinary
"common sense," who, impatient of the fine-spun political
disquisitions and cautious policies of past years, was eager
for a political philosophy of plain, unqualified phrases and
for a definite program of action in which he could take
aggressive part. That this great piece of propagandist
writing, with its crudities and bad taste, proved entirely
satisfactory to men of this type is shown by the fact that
one hundred thousand copies were quickly needed to spread
the gospel of Common Sense to the uttermost portions of
the United Colonies,2 and that Paine's pamphlet became the
progenitor of a brood of lesser tracts and articles.
1 The radical writers made it clear that merchants were no longer
to be regarded as the directors of public policy. "Remember the
influence of wealth upon the morals and principles of mankind,"
admonished "A Watchman" in the Pa. Packet, June 24, 1776. "Recol-
lect how often you have heard the first principles of government
subverted by the calls of Cato and other Catalines [loyalist writers],
to make way for men of fortune to declare their sentiments upon the
subject of Independence, as if a minority of rich men were to govern
the majority of freeholders in the province. "
1 Vide Tyler, M. C. , Literary History of the American Revolution
(New York, 1897), vol. i, pp. 469-474. "The temper and wishes of
the people supplied every thing at that time," says John Adams in his
Autobiography, "and the phrases, suitable for an emigrant from New-
gate, or one who had chiefly associated with such company, such as,
'The Royal Brute of England,' 'The blood upon his soul,' and a few
others of equal delicacy, had as much weight with the people as his
arguments. " Works, vol. ii, p. 509.
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? 594
THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
But such appeals to passion produced a very different
effect on the wavering merchants, who regarded themselves
still as the only true conservators of colonial rights. Well
might a writer familiar with the long cherished aspirations
of the merchant class and of the moderates generally, in-
dignantly deny that "all men who oppose the scheme of
Independence are advocates for absolute tyranny. Were
this once proved, as it had been often asserted, the contest
would be at an end, and we should all unite in hand and
heart for their beloved Utopian plan; but it never has been,
it never can be proved. The opposers of Independence in
every publick body, from the Congress downwards, and in
the mass of the people, are the true Whigs, who are for
preserving the Constitution, as well against the secret
machinations of ambitious innovators as against the open
attacks of the British Parliament; they are the men who
first set on foot the present opposition, and who, I trust,
will, if they are permitted to go on, bring it to a happy con-
clusion. " And he added, by way of warning to his fellow-
citizens, that " a set of men whom nobody knows . . . are
attempting to hurry you into a scene of anarchy; their
scheme of Independence is visionary; they know not them-
selves what they mean by it. " *
On the other hand, the three resolutions of Congress,
passed in April, 1776, for annulling the acts of navigation
and trade, reviving the sale of teas, and removing all price
restrictions, made strong appeal to mercantile self-interest.
This advantage was followed up by radical writers who de-
1"Civis," Philadelphia, Apr. 30, 1776; 4 Am. Arch. , vol. v, pp. 1141-
1142. Some months earlier "Phileirene" at Boston had remarked of
independence that "in whatever light we consider this truly Utopian
project, the more attentively we view it, and the more thoroughly we
scan it, the more impracticable, absurd, and ridiculous it appears. "
Ibid. , vol. i, p. 1188.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
595
picted the presumed materialistic benefits of independence.
They painted a Golden Age of commerce in the future more
glorious than that which had existed before 1763. 1 They
even restrained their impatience when cautious members of
the trading class called for a bill of particulars.
Thus, a writer at Philadelphia voiced the opinion of a
good many merchants in the commercial provinces when, in
an open letter to the writers on both sides of the question,
he urged that the whole question of separation be entered
into " fairly, fully and freely. " To explain what he meant,
he continued: "with respect to Independence, some people
will be satisfied with nothing short of such clear and demon-
strative evidence; you must tell them, also, of the partic-
ular new trades, which will be opened to us; the prices our
goods will bear at home to the farmer, and what they will
bring at such and such ports, and how much those prices
exceed what we have been used to get for them at the mar-
kets we were allow'd to trade to; in this you must name the
articles, the prices, and the places; you must then tell us,
the advantages of buying linens, woolens, cottons, silks and
hard ware in France, Spain and Portugal, and other coun-
tries in Europe, and how much cheaper they are than in
England and Ireland; . . . and whether those places will
take in exchange, our lumber, our naval stores, our tobacco,
our flax seed, &c &c and what prices they will give; what
credit it is customary for those several places to allow to
foreigners on what we commonly call dry goods . . . Next
you must shew, that the charge of supporting government
will be less, in a state of Independence, than it hath been
heretofore . . . Lastly you are to consider, after all things
are candidly stated, whether the sums annually raised on
the one hand to protect ourselves, and the absolute gain in
1 Articles were also written to belittle the advantages of the period
before 1763; e. g. , "An American," ibid. , vol. v, pp. 225-227.
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? 596 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
trade (over and above what we used to make) on the other
hand, do or do not render it most for our interest to sep-
arate from Britain. "
In like manner this writer demanded that the opponents
of independence should make a ledger account of their side
of the question: "they must shew . . . what were the cus-
tomary expences of government in America, before the
present rupture; what are the exclusive privileges, we derive
from exporting goods to Great-Britain; whether there are
acts of Parliament in favour of the Colonies, to the preju-
dice of other nations, . . . and whether these are equivalent
to any loss we may sustain, by having our trade confined to
them; . . . you are to particularize the ports we may trade
to under the old regulations; and the different articles of
America, which we may carry directly to foreign ports; you
must also shew that the principal part of the goods we im-
port from England and Ireland could not be supplied us
upon as good terms, from any other country, and that those
nations, with whom we might incline to trade, would not
grant us bounties upon naval stores, and sundry other arti-
cles, in the same manner as England does, the amount of
which, annually paid to the Colonists, you should sum up.
You should also shew cause (if you can) why America
ought not to take credit to herself, for all the taxes paid by
the English manufacturers, before they send their goods to
the Colonies, it being generally granted that the consumer
ultimately pays all charges; you must also shew, whether
taxes on goods imported into America from Holland,
France or Spain (where imposts are very heavy) are or are
not added to the cost of the said goods, in the same manner
as we reckon them on English goods. Also whether the
long established credit, our American merchants have ob-
tained in England in the interior part of the kingdom, with
the original manufacturers, cannot be as well accomplished
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 597
in the new countries we may go to; or whether we must
take their goods from merchants at the out-ports, with all
the middle men's or intervening dealer's profits added to
them . . .
"Whether it is not a general established custom with all
trading nations, to trust foreigners with whom they have no
legal or political constitutional connexion as freely as their
own subjects in distant parts of the world; if this is not
generally the case, you should shew why America can't
make treaties with such powers, in order to obtain credit
. . . You should also shew . . . whether if France, Spain
and Holland should refuse to give credit to every young
merchant going out for a cargo, with a tolerable recommen-
dation, as the traders in England have been accustomed to
do, I say, if this should be the case, and the importations
should fall wholly into the hands of a few rich merchants,
why might not some mode of restriction be entered into, for
preventing the exorbitant exactions they might be guilty of,
to the great injury of the consumers? . . .
"You must also prove that England, on a reunion, would
grant us such protection as would secure our property in
any part of the world . . . ; or if a reunion should not take
place, you are to point out sufficient reasons to justify you
in the supposition that America has not, or may not, have
a naval power competent to the task, of doing herself jus-
tice. . . . And you must lastly shew, that by a reconcilia-
tion on constitutional principles, we shall return to the free
money-getting trade we formerly enjoyed, and that we
shall have it enlarged to us upon a grand national scale,
without any regard to the private emolument of this or that
party; but upon principles of the general interest of the
whole empire, without our paying any taxes for the support
of government more than what we have been used to (the
debt arising from the present dispute only excepted). That
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? THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
the administration of justice, and security of property, will
be as upright and safe as heretofore; and that the present
happiness and future liberty of America would be as well
maintained in a reunion as by a separation. I shall read
your controversy with great attention, and so will thou-
sands beside me; and if, upon an impartial hearing, it shall
appear to be the real interest of America to cut the Gordian
Knot and establish Independence--I declare with the utmost
sincerity and solemnity, that I will give it my hearty con-
currence. " l
While the controversial writers never achieved the par-
ticularity which this writer demanded, the radicals labored
hard to portray the economic advantages which a state of
independence promised for merchants and for men of means
generally. "Some think they say everything against a
state of independence by crying out that in a state of de-
pendance we enjoyed the protection of Great-Britain . . . ,"
wrote " Salus Populi. " "But do we not pay dearly for this
protection? The restriction of our trade alone is worth ten
times the protection, besides the sums we pay in customs
and other duties to the amount of more than a million an-
nually. The customs of the port of London alone are worth
? 2,000,000 sterling per annum. . . . Let us for once sup-
pose an independency, that we may observe the consequence.
We should then trade with every nation that would trade
with us, i. e. with every nation in Europe at least.
Suppose
we were attacked by some foreign power in this state of in-
dependency, for this is the bugbear; what then? The nation
that would be fool enough to do it would raise a hornet's
nest about its ears . . . Every nation which enjoyed a
share of our trade would be guarantee for the peaceable be-
haviour and good conduct of its neighbours . . . To ask
1 "A Common Man " in the Pa. Ledger, Mch. 30, 1776.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION
what we should do for fleets to protect our trade, is as ab-
surd as to ask if timber grows in America. . . . But the
war once over, fleets to protect our trade will be nearly un-
necessary. Our trade will protect itself. It never will be
the interest of any nation to disturb our trade while we
trade freely with it, and it will ever be our interest to trade
freely with all nations. As long as the wide Atlantic ocean
rolls between us and Europe, so long will we be free from
foreign subjection were we once clear of Great-Britain:
And as long as we remain free from foreign subjection, so
long will our trade protect itself. "1
"What will be the probable benefits of independence? "
queried another writer. "A free and unlimited trade; a
great accession of wealth, and a proportionable rise in the
value of land; the establishment, gradual improvement, and
perfection of manufactures and science; a vast influx of
foreigners . . . ; an astonishing increase of our people
from the present stock. Where encouragement is given to
industry; where liberty and property are well secured;
where the poor may easily find subsistence, and the middling
rank comfortably support their farms by labour, there the
inhabitants must increase rapidly. " 2 In a similar strain,
"A. B. " argued the advantages of independence: "Let us
try what improvements we may be drawn into by a general
correspondence with the whole world, with people who will
require from us every different article our lands, our differ-
ent climates, can produce; and from whom may be had
directly, at first hand, every thing requisite for us. Let us
have access to the lowest and best markets for every com-
modity. Let this be the case, but for half the time the
1 Pa. Journ. , Feb. 14, 1776; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. iv, pp. 1142-1143.
1 "Questions and Answers," Feb. 17, 1776; ibid. , vol. iv, pp. 1168-1171. -
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? 6oo THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763. 1776
Colonies have already existed, and the doubts and struggles
too, concerning independence, will be at an end. "1
On the other hand, in the plantation provinces, where
from the outset the factor class had consistently sacrificed
the interest of the community at large to that of themselves
and their British employers, no effort was made to win
mercantile support. Due to their British nativity and the
pecuniary indebtedness of the planters to them, the factors
had come to be regarded as a parasitic excrescence on the
community. Chief emphasis was placed by the radical
writers on the fact that political independence would also
mean emancipation from the power of factors and British
mercantile houses. "A Planter" cited Virginia as an ex-
ample of the conditions prevailing in the provinces from
Maryland to Georgia. "You are without merchants, ships,
seamen, or ship-builders . . . ," he declared to the Virgin-
ians in a newspaper article. ? " Your trade is confined to a
single spot on the globe, in the hands of the natives of a
distant Island, who fix the market of all commodities at
their pleasure, and we may be very sure will rate yours at
the lowest, and their own at the highest prices, they will in
any conscience bear. Every article of merchandise, that is
not the produce of Britain, must first pay its duties to the
Crown, perhaps must be increased in the price a very large
advance per cent there, and then be re-exported to Virginia,
and undergo an additional advance of seventy-five, and
sometimes near one hundred and fifty per cent here. " In
the northern colonies, he pointed out, linens and broad-
cloth were sold by the retail merchants at the same price
that the Virginia factors claimed they paid as prime cost in
Britain. "By this means you fairly lose seventy-five pounds
currency on every one hundred pounds sterling worth of
1"Plain Hints on the Condition of the Colonies," Feb. 28, 1776;
4 Am. Arch. , vol. iv, p. 1524.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 601
merchandise you import from Great Britain that is not
native to that country;" a loss amounting annually to prob-
ably ? 200,000, which might be saved by the opening up of
a free and independent trade with the world.
Furthermore, he continued, there were probably fifty for-
eign houses or companies and two thousand factors, who
had charge of the trade of Virginia. "It is not unreason-
able to say, that every house or company makes fifteen
thousand pounds a year, net gain, by the trade of this
Colony; and, consequently, fifty houses will annually export
seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling to Scot-
land and England; which will be just so much saved to the
Colony, whenever its own natives shall become its mer-
chants. " Supposing the factors to lay aside ? 60 on the
average, here was to be found ? 120,000 more, which was
expended abroad. The total loss from these two sources
alone amounted to ? 870. 000 sterling, or ? 1,087,500 cur-
rency.
Another instance of exploitation was to be seen, he de-
clared, in the marketing of the Virginia staple, tobacco,
"upon which the Government of England and the mer-
chants of Scotland, have it in their power to put what price
they please. " The present rate of about 2os. per hundred-
weight was considered a very good average price. This
tobacco was exported to Britain, paid a duty almost four
times the price it bore in Virginia, and their merchants made
their fortunes out of it afterwards. 1 By exporting the
tobacco directly to the countries that consumed it, the Vir-
ginia planter would receive five pounds per hundredweight
instead of 20s. Making large allowance for losses, if the
colonies separated from Great Britain which now consumed
1 A reply by "A Virginian" pointed out that this duty was remitted
when tobacco was re-exported from Great Britain. Dixon & Hunter's
Va. Gaz. , Apr. 27, 1776.
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? 602 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
a large proportion of the tobacco, its common price would
still be ? 3, or 40s. more than the planters received at pres-
ent. Figuring on an average exportation of 110,000 hogs-
heads per year, the gain to Virginia in a state of independ-
ence would be ? 2,200,000.
In summary, this writer estimated the commercial losses
due to dependence on Great Britain, so far as Virginia
was affected, substantially as follows:
1. On imports, as above ? 200,000 currency
2. Merchants' net profits 1,087,500
3. Tobacco planters' gross profits 2,200,000
4. On wheat, flour, hemp, flax, &c. , at least
half as much; but say 1,000,000
5. That part of the gross profits of the mer-
chants that would go to the artisans,
seamen, sail-makers, dealers in cordage,
anchors, etc 1,500,000
Sum total ? 5,987,500 currency
"That is, it [independence] will increase the real property
among us annually to near six millions. . . . Here is a
fund sufficient for defraying all the expenses . . . for the
preservation of our liberties against the avarice of a nation
much more powerful than the English, and not a farthing
of our present property touched. . . . If we aim only at
interest in the present contest, it appears plainly what part
we ought at once to resolve upon. " *
Turning again to the situation in the commercial prov-
inces, it should be recognized that, when the moment for the
crucial decision came, the choice which every merchant had
to make was not, and could not be, a mere mechanical one,
premised upon strict considerations of an informed class
interest. Like other human beings, his mind was affected
or controlled by the powerful influences of temperament,
1 Va. Gas. , Apr. 13, 1776; also 4 Am. Arch. , vol. v, pp. 914-917.
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? TRANSFORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION 603
environment and tradition. Furthermore, the degree to
which his wealth was removable was an important factor in
his decision, for his business and the good will of his cus-
tomers were not commodities to be packed up and carried
bodily over into British lines. These facts caused many a
merchant to follow the line of least resistance when inde-
pendence was promulgated.
Henry Laurens of South Carolina has left on record that
he wept when he first heard the Declaration of Independ-
ence read; but he aligned himself with the revolutionists. 1
John Ross of Philadelphia, who " loved ease and Madeira
much better than liberty and strife," was one type of a
large group who claimed the right to be neutral. 8 The
Quakers, whose membership embraced the principal mer-
chants of Philadelphia, took an official stand against inde-
pendence at a meeting of representatives of Pennsylvania
and New Jersey Quakers on January 20, 1776. They re-
solved that: "The benefits, advantages and favours we
have experienced by our dependence on, and connection
with, the kings and government. . . appear to demand from
us the greatest circumspection, care and constant endeav-
ours, to guard against every attempt to alter, or subvert
that dependence and connection;" and they urged Friends
to unite firmly " in the abhorrence of all such writings and
1 Wallace, Laurens, pp. 224-225, 377.
s Graydon, Memoirs of His Own Times, p. 118. Another interesting
example is Peter Van Schaack, a New York lawyer, who had favored
the Continental Association. In May, 1775, he removed to Kinderhook
where he studied Vattel, Pufendorf, Grotius and other writers in the
hope of finding precedents to support colonial resistance. Having made
up his mind to remain neutral, he declined to sign the defense associa-
tion, and in 1777 refused to take the oath of allegiance to the state of
New York. The following year he was banished and went to England
where he remained until 1785. Then he returned to America and re-
sumed the practice of law. Van Schaack, H. C. , Life of Peter Van
Schaack (New York, 1842), passim.
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? 604 THE COLONIAL MERCHANTS: 1763-1776
measures as evidence a desire and design to break off the
happy connection we have heretofore enjoyed with the
kingdom of Great-Britain, and our just and necessary sub-
ordination to the king and those who are lawfully placed in
authority under him . . . " * They attempted, during the
war for independence, to steer a middle course, although
many of the . younger members, in defiance of their elders,
joined heartily in the American cause. 2
Many merchants, on the other hand, actuated by a
broader understanding of class interest, frankly cast their
lot with the mother country. In Massachusetts, where the
conversion of the merchants to the loyalist side had occurred
earlier than in the other provinces, more than two hundred
1nembers of the trade accompanied the British troops upon
the evacuation of Boston in March, 1776. The elder
Thomas Wharton, a foremost member of the merchant-
aristocracy of Philadelphia and a "non-importer" of
earlier days, had forsaken extra-legal activities when the
results of the First Continental Congress showed that his
efforts to guide events in approved channels had proven
futile. A year or so later he was exiled to Virginia because
his presence in Philadelphia was deemed dangerous to the
patriot cause in view of the proximity of the British army
after the battle of Brandywine. In South Carolina Miles
Brewton, a wealthy merchant who had been a candidate of
the Charleston Chamber of Commerce for nomination to
the First Continental Congress, departed for England with
most of his movable property when independence was de-
clared, a destination he was not fated to reach. 4
1 Pa. Ledger, Jan. 27, 1776; also Sharpless, Quakers in the Revolution,
pp. 125-128.
1 Ibid.
