Going National
Peer pressure in the making of the Nation
This is an installment of “Sestercenntenial Moments,” marking the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and its memory in our national life. For more on the background of the series, see here.
I have a little schtick I use when I teach the coming of the American Revolution involving Samuel Adams’s brilliant political tactic of resisting the Townshend Acts, a series of taxes imposed on the 13 colonies for lead, glass, paper, and tea. The first three items were luxury goods—lead and glass were used for windows; paper was an expensive necessity for those creating documents like contracts and wills—while tea was pretty much a universal vice, though one that could vary in price and quality. Adams realized that the best way to oppose the law was simply not to buy these items in the first place. This would defeat the British objective of raising revenue to cover the cost of the recently concluded French & Indian War while at the same time making a statement that the colonists deserved more say, in the form of political representation, for the taxes they had to pay.
Of course, for this novel tactic—we know it as a boycott—to work, everyone would have to cooperate. But would everyone? To a great degree the answer was yes, thanks to revolutionary organizations like the Sons of Liberty. To explain why, I make a quick mental note of the footwear of everyone in the room, pick a brand, and then zero in on a prospective scofflaw, who we’ll call Tanner:
Well, I think our friend Tanner seems not to have gotten the message that we’ve all agreed not to wear Adidas gear. And yet here’s Tanner with a conspicuously white set of Stan Smiths. I think we should pay Tanner a little visit, don’t you? All of us. At three in the morning. We’ll find him at home then, don’t you think? Then we can help Tanner—and his wife Jill, and his two little boys Sammy and Steven and that puppy of his, Lucky—understand about Adidas. Such a cute doggie. Would hate to see anything happen to Lucky.
My students are always quick to get the point: that the American Revolution was not a decorous little affair conducted by men wearing funny tri-cornered hats.
I bring this up because on October 20, 1774, the First Continental Congress, which was wrapping up its session in Philadelphia—it had agreed to convene again the following spring—passed a resolution creating what was known as The Association: essentially a continent-wide application of Samuel Adams’s boycott concept. The document essentially cut off all colonial trade with Great Britain—even the slave trade. There were also behavioral provisions: no cock fights, no stage entertainment, not even new mourning clothes for funerals. The goal was to damage the entire British economy.
That goal was achieved—perhaps with less arm-twisting than of the kind of the Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts, but with social pressure all the same. In response, the British government implemented the New England Restraining Act, scheduled to take effect 1775 and later extended to cover all the colonies, severely constricting colonial trade. But by that point, the law, like The Association itself, was a moot point, because an armed conflict was already underway.
The Association was the surest sign yet that by October of 1774 Britain’s thirteen colonies were becoming united in their revolutionary state. Then, as later, unity was not something to be taken for granted. And it wasn’t always conferred with enthusiasm. But like pretty much everything in life, victory has a price.