1774-2024: Run-Up to A Revolution
It is now 250 years since 1774. We are still two years short for the 250th Anniversary of the formal Declaration of Independence from the British Empire: 1776 / 2026. So what is there to commemorate in our new year, 2024?
The 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre is already behind us -- that happened 5 March 1770, so the Semiquincentennial fell at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, in 2020. No wonder we missed celebrating it.
As many patriotic commemorative poems recall, the first to die was Crispus Attucks, a sailor of some twenty years experience, a man of dark complexion, who may or may not have been enslaved at one time, and may or may not have run away.
At any rate, he was very much alive, free, with a skilled trade, and ready to confront British soldiers in Boston. The often commemorated dead also included Gray, Caldwell, Carr and Maverick.
John Adams referred to those confronting the lobsterbacks (red coats) as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mullatoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars [sailors]." His cousin Sam Adams memorialized them throughout the colonies as martyrs for liberty.
The Quarter Millennial of the Boston Tea Party (another way of saying 250th anniversary) just passed: 16 December 1773 / 2023. For better or for worse, that passes into history with little notice. A vendor did try selling a commemorative packet of teas -- which kind of misses the whole concept.
In 1774, nobody except Sam Adams and a small number of radicals was pushing for independence. But there were a lot of tensions. All the other colonies were shipping guns and ammunition to Massachusetts. There is an excellent book focusing on that specific year, Mary Beth Norton's 1774: The Long Year of Revolution.
January 1774 colonists argued about whether the East India Company's cargo should have been dumped into Boston Harbor or not. (Perhaps in 2024 schools should sponsor debate contests arguing the affirmative and the negative, researching what contemporaries had to say at the time).
March 1774, the British parliament passed the first of four "coercive acts" that got everyone in the colonies hopping mad. All of them were retaliation for the Tea Party. The Boston Port Act blockaded the harbor and closed the city's main businesses.
The Massachusetts Government Act, May 20, replaced an elected council with one appointed by the Crown, and authorized the governor to appoint jurors. The so-called Impartial Administration of Justice act gave the governor power to move a trial to another colony, or Great Britain.
Finally, the June 2 Quartering Act authorized military officers to seize property to house their troops, at the colonist's expense.
In September 1774, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Stopping well short of revolution, in October the congress voted for a non-importation agreement, "to obtain redress of these grievances which threaten destruction to the lives, liberty, and property of His Majesty's subjects in North America."
Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia, where the First Continental Congress met.
Colonial subjects refused to purchase a wide range of British commodities, including molasses, syrups, paneles, coffee, pimento, wines and indigo. Further "we will wholly discontinue the slave trade and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it." All these measures were intended to inflict loss of revenue on the British economy.