On December 10, 1774, the First Massachusetts Provincial Congress adjourned. They had been in session since October 7. They were America’s first revolutionary legislature, and they handled their business quite well. You can read all about it in their Journals.
It’s an old nostrum that America was able to achieve independence so easily because they’d been running themselves for so long—and it’s true. The Massachusetts Provincial Congress was the old Massachusetts legislature acting as normal, just—just!—without the Royal Governor and the say-so of Great Britain’s King and Parliament. And it’s true. There’s a wonderful legislative humdrumness and detail mixed in with revolutionary actions. The best way to get a sense of how Massachusetts set about making its revolution, by time-honored parliamentary procedure in the service of rebellion, is to extract highlights from the Congress’ Journal—and the existence of that Journal itself also tells you that Massachusetts already was familiar with the daily business of self-government.
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October 7: Congress set about the first order of business: “the members aforesaid to now resolve themselves into a Provincial Congress.”
October 12: Congress divided the pews of their meeting hall “in order the more easily to ascertain a vote.” The same day they also appointed Mr. Jeremiah Hunt as doorkeeper—you need someone to keep the legislative meetings private! It also established a committee—that basic cell structure of representative government—“to take into consideration the state of the province, and report as soon as may be.”
October 14: Congress resolved that “the several constables and collectors of taxes throughout the province” not pay any more monies to the royal government. The towns and districts should keep their money “until the further advice of a Provincial Congress, or order from a constitutional assembly of this province.”
October 19: Congress established “a committee to make as minute an inquiry into the present state and operations of the army as may be, and report.” The next day it appointed a committee “to consider what is necessary to be now done for the defence and safety of the province.”
October 24: The “committee appointed to consider the most proper time for this province to provide themselves with powder, ordnance, &c.” reported “that now was the proper time for the province to procure a stock of powder, ordnance, and ordnance stores.” A committee was established at once for the purpose.
October 25: “Mr. Wheeler brought into Congress a letter … purporting the propriety, that while we are attempting to free ourselves from our present embarrassments, and preserve ourselves from slavery, that we also take into consideration the state and circumstance of the negro slaves in this province.” Congress debated a motion to set up a committee to consider the issue—and tabled the motion.
October 25, also: The ordnance committee reported that Massachusetts needed to spend £20,837 for 16 three-pounder cannon, four six-pounder cannon, 12 battering cannon, four mortars, and a miscellany of equipment, 5,000 guns and bayonets, flints, grapeshot, bomb shells, lead balls, barrels of powder, and “contingent charges.”
October 26: Congress established a Committee of Safety with the power to muster the Massachusetts militia. They also established a committee to supply and pay the militia when they were mustered and appointed officers to command the militia. Congress further resolved that “the inhabitants of this province” immediately arm themselves and set about drilling to prepare themselves for any battle.
October 28: Congress adjourned until November 23.
November 26: Congress established a committee “to devise some means of keeping up a correspondence between this province, Montreal and Quebec, and of gaining a very frequent intelligence from thence of their movements.”
November 30: Congress considered a resolution to express “the thanks of this body to the other colonies, for their generous donations to the inhabitants of the town of Boston, now laboring under the oppression of certain acts of the British parliament.” The resolution passed on December 1.
December 2: Congress chose John Hancock, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine to serve as delegates the next May at the Second Continental Congress.
December 5: Congress gratefully endorsed and approved the actions of the Continental Congress, above all the general boycott of British goods.
December 8: the committee on manufactures recommended that Massachusetts promote domestic manufacturers and manufacturers of a great many goods, including nails, steel, tin plates, firearms, gun locks, saltpeter, gunpowder, and powder mills.
December 9: Congress received a petition on behalf of the Baptist churches, requesting full religious liberty in Massachusetts. This politely was tabled on the grounds that it was business that a regular general assembly should deal with.
December 10: Congress dissolved itself, calling for elections to a second Provincial Congress to meet on February 1.
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Massachusetts’ Provincial Congress put off some urgent business—the abolition of slavery and religious liberty. Slavery would be abolished by 1783. Full religious liberty did not come to Massachusetts for another 50 years: only in 1833 did Massachusetts finally disestablish the Congregational Church. But these literally were the order of business already in 1774.
The Congress did the most essential work. It detached tax money from the royal government. It began to establish and pay for an army. It established good diplomatic relations with the other British colonies and kept a weather eye on Quebec—wanting friendship and watching out for British armies marching from the north. It set the goal of domestic production of military goods. Most important of all, it existed, did its work, and acquired the authority that a revolutionary government most needs—that it can do its job from day to day.
It helped tremendously that it was scarcely revolutionary at all. Massachusetts had been acting much the same way for a century and more, save for the irritation of compromise with the royal government. Now that compromise could be dispensed with.
Our own federal government, alas, is far more intrusive than was King George’s. And should we face naked tyranny? We do have state income tax bureaus that could act for the IRS, state policemen to keep order, businesses whose bureaucracies parallel and mimic that of the federal government. We are rustier at self-government than were our ancestors in Massachusetts—but our means are not entirely decayed. We, too, can put the mechanisms of bureaucratic and legislative routine to the service of liberty.
We, too, have practiced enough of liberty that we can seize it all if needs be.
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A few more points.
First slavery in Massachusetts ended because the (state) constitution that John Adams wrote in 1780 stated that “all men are born free and equal” with several slaves then saying “what about me” and in both 1781 and 1783, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said “you’re right.” See: https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-constitution-and-the-abolition-of-slavery.
Second, the Puritan Church became the Congregational Church, with the Baptist Church splitting off over some theological differences. Religious tolerance came to Massachusetts in three waves. The first was when the Quakers won the “Battle of Boston” by sending more people to Boston than the Puritans were willing to hang. The 1660 execution of Mary Dyer freaked a lot of people out and raised serious questions about the practice of hanging Quakers on the Boston Common (for merely being Quakers).
Remember that the Congregational Church was not only the official (taxpayer supported) church, but that to become a town, you had to convince the General Court (legislature) that you (a) had the property tax base to support a minister and (b) had one willing to move to your town. So the second wave was when the Baptists no longer had to pay the portion of their property tax that supported the town’s Congregational Church if they could prove that they were supporting a Baptist Church instead — everyone else still had to pay.
The third wave was when church and state were physically separated — this often meant that the town would have to build a town hall because the church had been used for that purpose, and then as central heating arrived in the latter half of the 19th century, the church often built a new church that was heated by something other than the woefully inefficient open fireplaces. Both buildings were often right next to each other with the original “meeting house” often becoming a historical museum.
I’m not sure about the 1833 date because I have seen some evidence of town meetings supporting the church after that, although town meetings can and do illegal things (even today) and it’s up to the Attorney General’s office to catch that and tell them not to. More importantly, there was no single “before and after” date — the disestablishment of the church in Massachusetts was a process that occurred over a couple hundred years.
But the big thing here is the “Committee of Safety”. Often called the “Committee of Public Safety”, it is one of the more unsavory aspects of the Revolution, and one that is rarely taught — and is also the actual origin of the term “lynching”, although that was in Virginia, involving a man named Lynch and his mob.
It’s an understatement to say that not everyone supported the Revolution — only about a third of the Americans did, with a second third (Loyalists) who wanted things to remain as they were under British rule, and a third who didn’t care and just wanted to be left alone. It’s like today where 40% support Trump, 40% despise him, and 20% are undecided, and there would be concentrations of opinion, one side or the other, in various communities.
Without going too deeply into the weeds, what the Committee of Public Safety did was oppress the Loyalists by first stealing their property (looting their houses) and then banishing them. I’m not sure if it came from here, but I am aware of a 1774 act “naming certain notorious tories” and stating that they would be “executed without benefit of clergy” if they were ever found in Massachusetts again.
When Boston was evacuated on March 17, 1776, it wasn’t just the British who left. A lot of American Loyalists had fled to Boston because of the Committee for Public Safety and officially they went to Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada) and London — in reality a lot actually went to Vermont (then disputed between NY & NH) and the Maine Kennebec River Valley which was then the frontier.
The reason why the committee needed the militia was to enforce its edicts against people who would otherwise be able to defend themselves. Not only was this an unsavory aspect of the Revolution but why Shay’s Rebellion 15 years later so terrified people — and why the Constitution was written the way it was.
Many historians argue that the Revolution was actually a civil war between Americans that the British were involved in. At the very least it wasn’t just a united group of Americans that decided to ship the British home — as the war is often depicted. And that goes to another point — Massachusetts has never had a legislature, instead it had (and has) a “Great and General Court.” While I am not exactly sure of what the 18th century meaning of the word “congress” was, one meaning today is an assembly of sovereigns, and Massachusetts (today) is a commonwealth and not a state. Could it have been that they were considering each town and city to be its own sovereign entity? Or were they outright rejecting royalty (which subsequently returned after the Revolution with elected Governors)?
And one purpose of a doorman is to keep people *in*, not out. At least in Massachusetts there is a “motion to secure the doors” — to not let anyone leave so that you don’t lose your quorum. While there was a need to keep outsiders out, my guess is that there was a greater need to maintain the quorum.
” kept a weather eye on Quebec—wanting friendship and watching out for British armies marching from the north”
I-93 runs from the Boston suburb of Canton to St. Johnsbury, Vermont and that’s 190 miles with another ten on I-91 to the border and then more in Canada itself. You are up in the Appalachian Mountains and remember what a feat it was for Knox to haul the cannon down from Fort Ticonderoga — it took him three months, in winter when the swamps were frozen, and he went all the way south to what is essentially I-90 (Mass Pike) today, and then east to Boston — 300 miles.
If the British army wanted come down from Quebec, they would have likely gone to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then come south by ship. Maybe landed at their fort in Castine (ME), or in somewhat friendly Portsmouth (NH) or maybe even Boston itself. It took post-WWII explosives and heavy equipment technologies to build I-93 and I-91, I can’t see any sane military leader wanting to march his troops through there.
The British did some truly stupid things during the Revolution, but I haven’t heard any plans of this..