Suffolk Resolves: Joseph Warren's Draft, Revere's Ride and Shut Courts

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In August 1774, Massachusetts was living under the Coercive Acts, which colonists called the Intolerable Acts. The Boston Port Bill closed the harbor, and the Massachusetts Government Act gutted the Charter of 1691, replacing elected officials with royal appointees and banning unapproved town meetings. On August 26 and 27, delegates from Suffolk, Middlesex, Essex and Worcester counties met at Faneuil Hall and urged every county to shut its courts. In Worcester and Berkshire, thousands of militiamen surrounded courthouses and made judges read resignations, and by early October seven of nine mainland counties had closed their courts. Suffolk, which included Boston and General Thomas Gage's troops, could not.

Instead, delegates met at the Woodward Tavern in Dedham, Joseph Warren presented a draft on September 6, and the Suffolk Resolves were adopted on September 9 at the Daniel Vose House in Milton. They called for a boycott of British goods, declared the two acts unconstitutional, demanded resignations from royal appointees, told citizens to withhold taxes, backed a free colonial government and urged militias. Paul Revere carried the text to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, where conservatives such as Joseph Galloway sought reconciliation, and Congress endorsed it on September 17, 1774. A month later the Continental Association made the boycott mandatory across the colonies, enforced by local committees.

• John Adams called the endorsement one of the happiest days of his life and wrote that America will support Massachusetts or perish with her.
• In London, Edmund Burke urged conciliation, and Parliament ignored him.
• Local committees inspected merchants' ledgers and published blacklists of violators in newspapers.
• Over 90 local declarations followed by spring 1776, including the Mecklenburg and Tryon Resolves in North Carolina.
• Slated for demolition in 1950, the Vose House was moved to Canton Avenue and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.