Committees of correspondence

Similar to the SoNS OF Liberty, committees of correspondence developed between 1772 and 1775 to exchange information between colonies and communities and to organize resistance to British imperial measures. There were two types of committees of correspondence: inter-colonial and local. The inter-colonial committees were established by colonial assemblies. The local committees, however, were more important. As the conflict with Great Britain intensified after the passage of the Coercive Acts (1774), the local committees took on expanded roles. When government began to break down in the wake of the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775), the committee system became more elaborate and began to assume administrative duties. Often the committees of correspondence then took on new names (like committees of safety) and became a central driving force behind the Revolution.

Although tensions between the colonies and Great Britain were reduced after the repeal of the Townshend Duties (passed 1767; repealed 1770), many colonial Americans believed that they needed to be on guard against other encroachments on their liberty. Upon receiving news of the Gaspee affair (1772), the Virginia House of Burgesses decided to establish a committee of correspondence to keep in contact with other colonial assemblies. Within a year, every colony but Pennsylvania had established a similar committee.

The local committees—developed at different times and in different places—acted as direct representatives of the people. Boston and smaller Massachusetts towns took the lead in organizing these committees. When the British government moved to make judges’ salaries independent of the legislature, Samuel Adams was outraged. He convinced the Boston town meeting to call for the legislature to meet, and when the governor refused to gratify this request, Sam Adams thought that it was time to create an organization to help guard the liberty of the people. In November 1772 he asked for a committee of correspondence to be formed “to state the Rights of the Colonists. . . as Men, as Christians, and as Subjects; to communicate and publish the same to the several Towns in this Province and the World as the sense of this Town, with the Enfringements and Violations thereof that have been, or from time to time may be made.” He also wanted the committee to request that each town freely communicate “their Sentiments on this Subject.” While not every community responded, by April 1773 half of the towns and districts in Massachusetts had set up committees of correspondence.

Sam Adams could not have timed his organizational efforts better. In May 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, and the committees of correspondence were abuzz with discussions of this new presumed attack on liberty. The Boston committee of correspondence organized the protest that culminated in the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) and then guided the reaction to the Coercive Acts (1774), calling for nonimportation. Outside Boston, the New England committees of correspondence joined in this movement, while committees of correspondence started to appear elsewhere. As colonial Americans came to understand the full implications of the Coercive Acts, support for Boston grew. Committees began to organize the local militia as New England prepared for armed conflict. By the time hostilities broke out, long organizational experience that had begun with the Sons of Liberty in 1765, and had accelerated with committees of correspondence in the 1770s, prepared men from a wide spectrum of society to assume the new responsibilities of self-government. During the Revolutionary War (1775-83) this experience would give the committeemen an edge over their Loyalist opponents in gaining control over local communities.

See also resistance movement.

Further reading: Richard D. Brown, Revolu-tionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772-1774 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970); Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1981).