The Continental Association, often known simply as the "Association", was a system created by the First Continental Congress The First Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from twelve of the thirteen North American colonies that met on September 5, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. Called in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament, the Congress was attended by 56 in 1774 for implementing a trade boycott A boycott is a form of consumer activism involving the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons with Great Britain The Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1801. It was created by the merger of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England, under the Acts of Union 1707, to create a single kingdom encompassing the whole of the island of Great. Congress hoped that by imposing economic sanctions Economic sanctions are domestic penalties applied by one country on another for a variety of reasons. Economic sanctions include, but are not limited to, tariffs, trade barriers, import duties, and import or export quotas. The most famous example of an economic sanction is the fifty-year-old United States embargo against Cuba, Great Britain would be pressured to redress the grievances of the colonies, and in particular repeal the Intolerable Acts The Intolerable Acts or the Coercive Acts are names used to describe a series of five laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America. The acts triggered outrage and resistance in the Thirteen Colonies that later became the United States, and were important developments in the growth of the American passed by the British Parliament The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland. The Acts created a new unified Kingdom of Great Britain and dissolved the separate English and Scottish parliaments in favour of a single parliament, located in the former home of the. The Association aimed to alter Britain's policies towards the colonies without severing allegiance An allegiance is a duty of fidelity said to be owed by a subject or a citizen to his/her state or sovereign.
The boycott became operative on December 1, 1774. The Association was fairly successful while it lasted. Trade with Great Britain fell sharply, and the British responded with the New England Restraining Act of 1775. The outbreak of the American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War or American War of Independence began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen former British colonies in North America, and concluded in a global war between several European great powers effectively superseded the attempt to boycott British goods.
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Background
The British Parliament The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and Parliament of Scotland. The Acts created a new unified Kingdom of Great Britain and dissolved the separate English and Scottish parliaments in favour of a single parliament, located in the former home of the passed the Coercive Acts The Intolerable Acts or the Coercive Acts are names used to describe a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America. The acts sparked outrage and resistance in the Thirteen Colonies and were important developments in the growth of the American Revolution in 1774 to reform colonial administration in British America British America consisted of the English and later British Empire in continental North America in the 17th century and 18th century. Formally, the British Colonies in North America were known as "British America" and the "British West Indies" until 1783, when Britain recognized the United States of America as a sovereign nation and, in part, to punish the Province of Massachusetts The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a crown colony chartered October 7, 1691 in North America by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. The charter was put into effect on May 14, 1692 and included the former Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony, as well as the Province of Maine, Martha' for the Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. Many American colonists saw the Coercive Acts as a violation of the British Constitution The UK has no single constitutional document comparable to those of most other nations. It is therefore often said that the country has an "unwritten", uncodified, or de facto constitution. However, the word "unwritten" is something of a misnomer as the majority of the British constitution does exist in the written form of and a threat to the liberties of all of British America, not just Massachusetts. As they had done during the 1760s—most effectively during the Stamp Act crisis The Stamp Act of 1765 was a tax imposed by the British Parliament on the colonies of British America. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London and carrying an embossed revenue stamp. These printed materials were legal documents, magazines, newspapers and many other types of paper of 1765—colonists turned to economic boycotts A boycott is a form of consumer activism involving the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons to protest what they saw as unconstitutional legislation. The word boycott had not yet been coined; colonists referred to their economic protests as, depending upon the specific activity, "non-importation", "non-exportation", or "non-consumption".
On May 13, 1774, the Boston Town Meeting In Massachusetts, for example, generally the least populous towns have open town meeting form of government. Through a town charter revision process, no town with fewer than 6,000 residents may adopt representative town meeting form of government; towns with 6,000 or more residents may optionally adopt the representative town meeting form. The, with Samuel Adams Samuel Adams was a statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United acting as moderator, passed a resolution that called for an economic boycott in response to the Boston Port Act, one of the Coercive Acts. The resolution said:
That it is the opinion of this town, that if the other, Colonies come, into a joint resolution to stop all importation from Great Britain, and exportations to Great Britain, and every part of the West Indies, till the Act for blocking up this harbour be repealed, the same will prove the salvation of North America and her liberties. On the other hand, if they continue their exports and imports, there is high reason to fear that fraud, power, and the most odious oppression, will rise triumphant over right, justice, social happiness, and freedom.[1]
Paul Revere Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution, who often served as messenger, carried the Boston resolutions to New York and Philadelphia.[2] Adams also promoted the boycott through the colonial committees of correspondence The committees of correspondence were bodies organized by the local governments of the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution for the purposes of coordinating written communication outside of the colony. These served an important role in the Revolution, by disseminating the colonial interpretation of British actions between the colonies, through which advocates of colonial rights in the various provinces kept in touch. The First Continental Congress The First Continental Congress was a convention of delegates from twelve of the thirteen North American colonies that met on September 5, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution. Called in response to the passage of the Coercive Acts by the British Parliament, the Congress was attended by 56 was convened at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-most-populous city in the United States on September 5, 1774, to coordinate a response to the Coercive Acts. Twelve colonies were represented at the Congress.
On October 20, 1774, Congress created the Association, based on the earlier Virginia Association. The Association signified the increasing cooperation between the colonies. As a sign of the desire still prevalent at the time to avoid open revolution, the Association notably opened with a profession of allegiance to the king, and they placed the blame for "a ruinous system of colony administration" upon Parliament and lower British officials rather than the king directly. The Association alleged that this system was "evidently calculated for enslaving these colonies, and, with them, the British Empire The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a."
Provisions
The articles of the Continental Association imposed an immediate ban on British tea, and a ban on importing or consuming any goods (including the slave trade The history of slavery covers systems throughout human history in which one human being is legally the property of another, can be bought or sold, is not allowed to escape and must work for the owner without any choice involved. A critical element is that children of a slave mother automatically become slaves. It does not include forced labor by) from Britain, Ireland Ireland (pronounced [ˈaɾlənd],; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen); Ulster Scots: Airlann) is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the northwest of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland is Great Britain, separated from, and the British West Indies The British West Indies was a term used to describe the islands in and around the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire The term was sometimes used to include British Honduras and British Guiana, even though these territories are not geographically part of the Caribbean. As of 1912, the British West Indies were divided into eight colonies: to take effect on December 1, 1774. It also threatened an export ban on any products from the American colonies to Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies, to be enacted only if the complained of acts were not repealed by September 10, 1775; the Articles stated that the export ban was being suspended until this date because of the "earnest desire we have not to injure our fellow-subjects in Great-Britain, Ireland, or the West-Indies." This was a recognition of the need and demand for American goods abroad, though the ban was likely deferred to avoid inflicting immediate economic hardship on American merchants. All American colonists were to direct their agents abroad to also comply with these restrictions, as would all ship owners.
The Association set forth policies by which the colonists would endure the scarcity of goods. Merchants were restricted from price gouging. Local committees of inspection were to be established in the colonies by which compliance would be monitored, through strong-arming local businesses. Any individual observed to violate the pledges in the Articles would be condemned in print and ostracised in society "as the enemies of American liberty." Colonies would also cease all trade and dealings with any other colony that failed to comply with the bans.
The colonies also pledged that they would "encourage frugality, economy, and industry, and promote agriculture, arts and the manufactures of this country, especially that of wool; and will discountenance and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation," such as gambling, stageplays and other frivolous entertainment. Specific instructions were even set forth on properly frugal funeral observations, pledging that no one "will go into any further mourning-dress, than a black crepe or ribbon on the arm or hat, for gentlemen, and a black ribbon and necklace for ladies, and we will discontinue the giving of gloves and scarves at funerals."
Signers
These delegates signed the Association in Congress. Many local signings also took place.
Effects
The Continental Association went into effect on December 1, 1774. The ban did succeed for the time it was in effect. However, the British retaliated by blocking colony access to the North Atlantic Fishing Area.
Only one colony failed to establish local enforcement committees; in the others, the restrictions were dutifully enforced—by violent measures on some occasions. Trade with Britain subsequently plummeted. Parliament responded by passing the New England Restraining Act, which prohibited the northeastern colonies from trading with anyone but Britain and the British West Indies, and they barred colonial ships from the North Atlantic fisheries. These punitive measures were later extended to most of the other colonies as well.
The outbreak of open fighting between the colonists and British soldiers in April 1775 rendered moot any attempt to indirectly change British policies. In this regard, the Association failed to determine events in the way that it was designed—Britain did not cave to American demands but instead tried to tighten its grip, and the conflict escalated to war. However, the true long-term success of the Association was in its effective direction of collective action among the colonies and expression of their common interests. This recognition of union by the Association, and its firm stance that the colonies and their people had rights that were being infringed by Britain, made it a direct precursor to the 1776 Declaration of Independence, which by contrast repudiated the authority of the king once it was clear that no other solution would preserve the asserted rights of the colonies.
Legacy
In his first inaugural address in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln traced the origins of the United States back to the Continental Association:
The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured ... by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."
References
- Notes
- ^ Ammerman, Common Cause, 24; for full text of Boston resolutions, see Peter Force, American Archives, 1:331.
- ^ Ammerman, Common Cause, 24.
- Bibliography
- Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. New York: Norton, 1974.
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