The Boston Massacre helped spur Bostonians and the surrounding countryside
to action. Adams successfully argued that the New Englanders should
be prepared to resist the next incursion of British troops right
from the start. Local militias began drilling in open fields and
preparing to do battle with the Redcoats, should they arrive again.
In Boston, the militia drilled nightly on Boston Common. Adams
proclaimed, "Innocence is no longer safe, we are now obliged to
appeal to God and to our Arms for defense."
Across the colonies, the Townshend Acts and the Boston
Massacre had similar effects. During the Stamp Act crisis, New
York merchants had learned perhaps one of the most effective ways
to pressure the British government: they canceled outstanding orders with
British merchants and refused to purchase additional goods until
the act was repealed. When Adams remembered the New York ploy after
the passage of the Townshend Acts, he began to advocate for a similar
boycott. At the town meeting, he got Boston to agree to refuse
importation of a long list of British goods, and, even though the
Townshend Acts did not directly menace the town's merchants, he
eventually was able to circulate a petition successfully (He achieved
this partly through vague threats about his trained mob and how
they didn't like people who disagreed with them). In March 1768,
they passed a nonimportation agreement against Britain. Other colonies
proved more difficult: A similar effort in Philadelphia the following
month failed. However, over the summer, New York joined the agreement,
thereby blocking many British goods from the East Coast's two largest
seaports.
The nonimportation agreements marked a change in American economics,
because it forced the development of local industries not previously
viable in the colonies. Adams and other leaders set about starting
up clothing manufacturers and other similar industries. The following
spring, seniors at Princeton and Harvard proudly wore American-made
robes to Commencement. Britain laughed off the manufacturing efforts,
since as one of the great nations of the world, it figured that
rabble in Massachusetts could never hope to match the homeland.
And while America did struggle to fill the void left by the nonimportation
agreements, the manufacturing efforts went a long way toward encouraging
inter- colony unity and a sense of independence. Economic independence
was now on the horizon, why not political independence as well?
Any anti-Britain, pro-independence emotions that were
felt in other colonies were magnified ten-fold in Boston. On the
eve of 1769, one Tory remarked that Boston stood ready to do war
with Britain all by itself. Thomas Hutchinson blatantly refused
to yield his trade to the nonimportation agreements, and Tory merchants
in the area proceeded to stand with him. For its part, Britain
remained infuriatingly magnanimous in its treatment of the colonies:
the government began work to address the complaints of those who
opposed the Townshend Acts. The Crown still refused to recognize that
the colonies were headed to war, and Britain needed to make appropriate
arraignments. Adams and his fellow patriots, though, wanted independence
and war, and they continued to hound away at violators of the nonimportation
agreements even as Britain offered to repeal all of the Townshend
Acts except the tax on tea. After a drawn-out battle, even Hutchinson
ordered his merchants to give up their imported goods early in
1770.
Adams stood fast on the patriots' claim of "no taxation
without representation." As Britain attempted to repeal the Townshend Acts,
Adams expanded the claims to air all of the colonies' complaints.
The larger issue remained: the colony's did not want to have anything
taken–taxes, duties, or otherwise–without their consent or, at
the very least, a voice in the shaping of the policy. To further push
Britain, Adams arranged for all of the British goods already in
Boston to be shipped back to England aboard ships of wealthy merchant
and patriot John Hancock.
His moves, though, began to alienate many members of his
party, especially conservatives and non-militant members, as his
threats began to wear thin around Boston. The nonimportation agreements
were failing to arrest trade with Britain in other colonies, and,
coupled with the acquittal of the soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre
in late 1770, Adams's continued hold on the patriots' party seemed
tenuous.
As the "tyranny" of the British in America dried up and
the nonimportation agreements failed, Adams was forced to take
a more moderate approach. He argued that all Bostonians wanted
was a return to the "good old days" they had seen under Governor
Thomas Pownall. Then came one of the worst setbacks in Adams's
campaign for freedom and "no taxation without representation": Hutchinson,
his long-time nemesis, was appointed governor of the colony. Hutchinson,
Adams knew, would be tougher than any governor the Sons of Liberty
had yet faced: he was Boston-born and raised, a strong fighter,
and had already resisted two decades of the best vitriol that Adams
could muster. Hutchinson moved British soldiers back into Boston's
Castle Williams late in 1770, and suddenly Boston was back under
British guns. He also helped spread the testimony from the Boston
Massacre trials that found Adams and other patriot ringleaders
partly responsible. The countryside, once so inflamed by the massacre,
now sided with Hutchinson–costing Adams one of his key constituencies.
Across the colonies a similar downturn occurred. In New York and
Philadelphia the Sons of Liberty saw significant losses in elections,
and Virginian papers now found much of their advertising revenue
from British merchants. In 1772, conservatives led an anti-Adams
effort at the Boston polls and almost a third of all votes were
against Adams and his supporters. It actually began to look like
Boston might return to Tory hands.
