Meanwhile the colonists became increasingly dissatisfied with this condition. The agricultural produce that they sold abroad did not bring enough revenue to buy all the manufactured goods that they needed. After they became indebted to British merchants, they often felt that they were being exploited by their creditors. Denied the right to develop local manufactures, they produced an ever-growing surplus of a few agricultural staples, which flooded the available markets and lowered the final sales price abroad.
The remedy for this condition was to reduce the agricultural surplus by developing local manufactures and by engaging in free commerce with all the world. A vast share of America’s wealth went to British manufacturers, shipowners, and merchants. If the American colonists performed the services formerly supplied by Britain, their wealth would increase, their debts would decrease, and economically they would be able to stand on their own feet.
While the colonies were sparsely peopled and undeveloped, the settlers realized that the benefits they derived from England outweighed the losses inflicted by British restrictions. Now, however, in 1775, the American people were approaching the stature of manhood. Their population exceeded 2 1/2 million, and their growing wealth was able to support new enterprises, of which England disapproved.
The time had come when it seemed that the Americans could do for themselves what England had done for them before. The increase of wealth which freedom promised was expected to overbalance the cost of defending their frontiers, of maintaining a navy, and of securing commercial privileges for their products abroad in free trade with other countries besides England.
The Organization for Revolution
In order to act together in resisting the measures of Britain, the colonists established an effective revolutionary organization. In structure it resembled a pyramid. The bottom stones consisted of committees of correspondence. The first of these committees were set up in the New England towns through the influence of Samuel Adams and at the suggestion of Boston. Elsewhere committees of correspondence were generally established in the counties. They enabled the people of each locality to act together and to communicate with fellow colonists in remote places. When the break with England came, these and similar committees took charge of the work of local government.
The next layer of the pyramid consisted of provincial congresses. Some of these were the former assemblies, meeting in defiance of the English governors. Others were unauthorized bodies composed of delegates selected by the committees in the towns or counties. When England’s authority was rejected, these congresses were ready to make laws and to provide soldiers and money for carrying on the war.
At the apex of the pyramid stood the Continental Congress. Nearly all the delegates who attended its first meeting at Philadelphia in 1774 were members of local committees of correspondence, and many of them had been selected by the provincial congresses. They elected Peyton Randolph, a Virginia lawyer, as president. The Congress denounced parliamentary taxation and the five “intolerable acts.” It signed a Continental Association, intended to destroy all trade with England if the British did not yield. The Congress prepared to enforce this agreement by means of the local committees.
The only authority which the Congress had came from the people themselves. Consequently, England did not regard its acts as legal. When the Congress attempted to force everybody to follow a certain course of action, it functioned as a de facto government. The colonial leaders had now divided into two camps–the Patriots, who were willing to accept the Congress as their guide, and the Loyalists, who counseled submission to Parliament’s decrees.
Conciliation or Force
Meanwhile the air was full of plans for conciliation. Lord North suggested that England would not tax the colonies if they provided a permanent revenue for the support of British officials stationed there. Edmund Burke wanted the colonists to vote their own taxes and govern themselves. William Pitt (now Lord Chatham) wished to repeal the “intolerable acts” and to promise that taxes would not be levied by Parliament except with the consent of the American assemblies. At the first Continental Congress, Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania proposed to erect an American legislature, subordinate to Parliament, which would have the right to veto all British laws relating to the general interests of the colonies. Some leaders favored American representation in Parliament, and a few Englishmen were ready to give the colonies their independence. But all these plans failed, and the issue had to be decided by force.
cing frontier.