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.
In and of themselves, the Suffolk Resolves (I’ll explain what they were in a moment) weren’t all that important. The document produced by a group of Massachusetts activists in September of 1774 was not especially new in terms of its tone or proposals, even if their scope was wider than before. It’s what happened with the Suffolk Resolves that made them a key checkpoint on the road to the American Revolution.
When a group of Whigs (as they were known) led by Joseph Warren, one of the most gifted activists of the revolutionary generation, convened in a house in Milton, Massachusetts on September 6, 1774, they were still pumped up over the Powder Alarm that had almost triggered a revolution the previous week. (You can read my recent post on it here.) They remained upset, as they had been all year long, about the Massachusetts Government Act, part of a legislative package that stripped the colony of key measures of self-rule. There had been protests of this and other laws that were part of the Intolerable Acts all over Massachusetts and elsewhere in the ensuing eight months, and indeed many towns in the colony had set up their own governments. But the committee, led by Warren, that produced the Suffolk Resolves over the next three days—named for the county that included the city of Boston, currently under martial law—went a step further for essentially calling for a new colony-wide government with elected representatives, tax system, and militia. This was audacious in its way, for sure. But in an important sense, it reflected what was, in fact, evolving into reality on the one hand, and was simply a set of proposals that may or may not have been accepted as written on the other (though they were met with a wave of enthusiasm once issued on September 9). Certainly, agitation and high-minded pronouncements coming out of Massachusetts in 1774 were nothing new.
The key catalyst for what followed was Paul Revere. Many of us know him for his fabled ride in April of 1775, but he had emerged as a key figure in Massachusetts long before then. Revere, it seemed, knew everybody, and was at the center of any given action. He was also, literally, the messenger of revolution on multiple occasions. By September 16, he was in Philadelphia reporting the Suffolk Resolves to the members of the recently convened Continental Congress, asking for advice on behalf of the Suffolk committee.
This First Continental Congress (a second would gather the following year) had only just recently begun its seven-week deliberations. The first session was on September 5, and one of the first pieces of information it processed was the Powder Alarm, which turned out to be false but lent an urgency to the proceedings. Now, in its aftermath, Massachusetts was indicating that it was intensifying its push to dissolve the bands that bound it to Great Britain. What would Congress do with this information?
It's worth emphasizing that this Congress did not necessarily get created with a revolution in mind. To be sure, there were plenty of hotheads, like Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina and Patrick Henry of Virginia (“Give me liberty or give me death!”), who wanted one. But there were others, like Joseph Reed of Pennsylvania, who still thought reconciliation with Britain was possible and desirable (though Reed would ultimately serve as a general in the Continental Army under George Washington). Washington himself reacted with caution to the Powder Alarm, noting that “it is not the wish, or the interest of the [Massachusetts] government, or any other upon this continent, to set up for independency.” Some imperial officials had actually looked the other way and condoned sending representatives from their colonies to what they regarded as an illegal Congress, hoping it would produce a compromise.
But the Suffolk Resolves seem to have ionized the First Continental Congress in a fateful way. On September 17, its members unanimously endorsed them, adopting a resolution approving “the Wisdom and Fortitude” of the people of Massachusetts. Moderates could take some solace in what boilerplate language in the Suffolk Resolves calling for calm—and “manly,” which is to say, controlled—passion. But the orientation of the Congress had now moved, and the momentum for separation was now unmistakable. John Adams, representing Massachusetts in Philadelphia, noted in his diary that he regarded the Congressional resolution as “one of the happiest days in my life.”
Others came to different conclusions—but shared the view that the Suffolk Resolves were significant. “Why, if these resolves are to be depended on, they have already declared war against us,” the British secretary for the colonies, Lord Dartmouth, told former Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson when he got the news in London in late October. Dartmouth and King George III agreed: (more) force was necessary. In the months that followed, the army prepared to crush the insurgency.
The people involved in these events did not know what would happen. But the revolution was taking on an inexorable logic of its own. The outcome might not have been inevitable, but it was now beyond the power of an individual or constituency to control. That’s when the forces of history become most thrilling, frightening, and mysterious.