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August 1, 1768. Sixty merchants of Boston signed a non-importation agreement to cease importing British goods, whether or not they were taxed by the Townshend Revenue Act.
After colonial opposition forced Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act of 1765, Parliament declared that it still had the right to tax the colonies. In June 1767, it passed the Townshend Revenue Act to place duties on glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea as an effort to continue raising revenue from the colonies and to demonstrate that the Parliament would not be bullied by American colonists. Even worse, the revenue was designated to pay British officials in America so that they would be independent of American pressure.
John Dickinson published a persuasive series of "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" in 1767-1768, showing that Parliament had no right to tax Americans who were not represented in that body, and sent them to James Otis in Boston. On August 1, 1768, leading merchants of Boston signed and published a non-importation agreement that applied to all British goods, not just those that were subject to the new taxes. The merchants of the major ports of Philadelphia and New York City also signed the agreement. The merchants intended to pressure British merchants to force Parliament to repeal the Townshend Acts, and they were indeed effective for a few years.
To lessen the hardships on Americans, leading merchants, including John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Paul Revere, increased their smuggling activities to bring in goods from France, Spain, and the Netherlands. This violated the Navigation Acts, which required that the American colonies only import goods from Britain. Violence between the smugglers, along with their Sons of Liberty, and British officials increased, resulting in the British sending troops to Boston in October 1768. Tensions between Bostonians and the Redcoats increased, with the Boston Massacre in March 1770 being the worst and most celebrated incident.
Before learning of the Boston Massacre, in March 1770, Parliament repealed the Townshend Acts, except crucially the duty on tea, which led to the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. In response, Parliament issued the Intolerable Acts, which closed the port of Boston, revoked Massachusetts' representative government, and provided that offenses against British officials would be tried in Britain rather than Massachusetts. Unrest in Boston continued to increase, which led the Colonial Secretary, Lord Dartmouth, to order Gen. Thomas Gage to send out troops in April 1775. The objective was to capture John Hancock and Samuel Adams and to seize patriot military supplies in the village of Concord. Someone fired the shot heard 'round the world, and the American Revolution was on.
The boycott continued into 1770 since the duty on tea had not been lifted, but the repeal of most of the Townshend duties took the bite out of the Non-Importation Agreement, so merchants lost interest in supporting it. The colonial merchants ended it in 1771, but the boycott triggered events that led directly to the revolution.
While no single event can be said to have caused the revolution, the Boston Non-Importation Agreement was a significant escalation. It united more colonies than had been united against the Stamp Act, and the boycott significantly raised the level of smuggling and violence against British officials. The boycott hurt British merchants significantly. The British government greatly increased the number of troops in North America and sent them into an already seething Boston. Only a spark was needed to set off the revolutionary explosion.
Discussion (8)
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Well done! An excellent summary of an often overlooked set of events that contributed to the start of the American War of Independence.
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Good explanation for crucial acts that contributed to the revolution. Thanks, Steve.
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One of the most frustrating things about American politics today is that people don't grok this simple concept that was so easily understood by the founding generation.
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The colonists had a significantly lower overall tax rate than people in Britain. When British soldiers were marching past (or burning and plundering) the farmhouses of rebels they often noted that those colonial families had more room, more land and a higher standard of living than the soldiers' families back in Britain.
It was less the actual tax burden than the well-grounded perception of seemingly arbitrary, not particularly well-crafted tax programs with absolutely no mechanism for reply or redress. It was a political own-goal of major proportions. Even a fake formal process in which a (crown-approved) colonial representative would seek input in some orderly process with assemblies, provide a budget outline/target revenue total and ask how it could otherwise be achieved and then take the result to parliament, it might have worked to greatly reduce tensions if it resulted in visible adjustments.
Fortunately, that government was too arrogant, tone-deaf and heavy-handed to diffuse the issues and hence 'Murica.
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That's a great summary. Today we are so focused on dollars and cents that we forget that the principle behind the taxation or the spending is more important. Like when Congress was discussing defunding CPB, it argued that its appropriation was only $1.60 per American; therefore, it should not be cut. But CPB ignored the principle that the government should never fund news. Fortunately, our founders were a bunch of common-sense farmers and shopkeepers who knew that the principle on which taxation is based is most important.
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