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Talbot Resolves
Part of the American Revolution
Historic marker for Talbot Resolves
DateMay 24, 1774; 250 years ago (1774-05-24)
Location
Easton, Maryland, U.S.

38°46′29.5″N 76°4′36.5″W / 38.774861°N 76.076806°W / 38.774861; -76.076806
Caused byBoston Port Act
GoalsTo protest British Parliament's closing of the Port of Boston as punishment for the Boston Tea Party.
Parties
Lead figures

The Talbot Resolves was a proclamation made by Talbot County citizens of the British Province of Maryland, on May 24, 1774. The British Parliament had decided to blockade Boston Harbor as punishment for a protest against taxes on tea that became known as the Boston Tea Party. The Talbot Resolves was a statement of support for the city of Boston in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The author of the Talbot Resolves is unknown. Speculation has been made that the author is Matthew Tilghman or a group of citizens that included Tilghman, Edward Lloyd IV, Nicholas Thomas, and Robert Goldsborough. All four were leading citizens of Talbot County, and they represented the county in a statewide meeting held in June shortly after the reading of the Talbot Resolves.

Meetings were held, bla bla bla that led to the July 4, 1776, signing of the Declaration of Independence. Tilghman was one of the Maryland representatives at the Second Continental Congress that approved the Declaration in Philadelphia, but he returned home before the signing.

Background

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Further information: American Revolution and Sons of Liberty

A charter for the Province of Maryland was issued to Lord Baltimore in 1632 by the king of England.[1] The colony became part of a group of English (later British) colonies located along the east coast of North America.[2] During the 1760s after the French and Indian War, Great Britain began imposing taxes on its North American colonies.[3] From the British point of view, the colonies were being taxed to cover the cost of the British Army protecting them.[4] Taxes related to the American Act of 1764 and Stamp Act of 1765 caused discontent in the colonies.[5] The major objection was that the taxes were being imposed on the colonists by politicians that did not represent colonists. A slogan often used by the colonists was "no taxation without representation".

Protests against taxes

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A popular pamphlet written by Maryland lawyer Daniel Dulany in 1765 was called Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies. Although this pamphlet complained mostly against the Stamp Act, it also noted that the restriction on the colonial export of tobacco to countries other than Great Britain was costing farmers money.[6] Notable incidents of violence that occurred between 1765 and 1767 happened at Pokomoke, Maryland; Dighton, Massachusetts; Boston, Massachusetts; Newbury, Massachusetts; and Charlestown, South Carolina. These events typically happened between customs officers and locals.[7]

In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts which added different types of taxes as part of an attempt to suppress anti-British activity among the colonists.[3] Among the new law's provisions was an import tax on items such as glass, paper, and tea—all of which had to be imported from Britain.<need cite> The act reinvigorated dissent.[3] In March 1770, British troops fired on an angry mob of colonists in what became known as the Boston Massacre.[3] During the same month, many of the taxes from the Townshend Acts were repealed. A significant exception was tea.

Boston Tea Party

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Boston Tea Party mural in statehouse

Effective May 10, 1773, the Tea Act of 1773 went into effect. This act was designed to assist the financially troubled British East India Company and enable tea to enter North America priced lower than the tea typically smuggled in to avoid taxes.[3] Colonists recognized that by buying this lower-cost tea, and paying the import tax from the Townshend Acts, they would be setting a precedent of abiding by a type of tax they believed unfair.[8] On December 16, 1773, a protest led mostly by the Sons of Liberty was conducted in Boston Harbor. Men dressed as native Americans boarded a British East India Company ship in the harbor at night and destroyed its entire shipment of tea by throwing it into the water.[3] Over the next few weeks, tea from the British East Company was rejected at ports in Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia.[9] The December 16 incident became known as the Boston Tea Party, and it along with related protests led to the American Revolution.[10]

The action involved dumping tea from a British ship into the harbor, and many of the protesters involved were members of a group called the Sons of Liberty.[3] The incident occurred on December 16, 1773, and it became known as the Boston Tea Party. The British response to close the port was to be effective June 1, 1774.[11]

The Resolves

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The 13 British American colonies before the United States existed

The Talbot Resolves was a proclamation in support of the citizens of Boston. It was read by leading citizens of Talbot County at Talbot Court House on May 24, 1774.[11][Note 1] The statement was read in response to the British plan to close the Port of Boston as punishment for a protest action against the Tea Act.[11] John Thomas Scharf, a 19th century historian and author who wrote a history of Maryland, wrote that "...no county was more decided in its action than Talbot.[13][Note 2]

It is believed that in 1958 Baltimore writer Neil H. Swanson was the first to call the statement made at Talbot Court House the "Talbot Resolves".[15] The earliest record of the Talbot Resolves is at the bottom of page 3 in the September 2, 1774, edition of the Maryland Gazette. The word "resolve" is nowhere to be found in the article.[16] On the same newspaper page is another article that lists a statement made by the citizens of Chester Town, and it makes liberal use of the term "resolved".[14][Note 3] A summary paragraph of the Chester Town proclamation, in a paragraph above the Talbot Court House statement and below the Chester Town statement, says "The above resolves were entered into upon a discovery of a late importation of the dutiable tea...."[14]

No record is known to exist of the men at the meeting that produced the Talbot Resolves. Matthew Tilghman, a future member of the First Continental Congress, is the person who called the meeting on the courthouse lawn.[11] On June 22, Tilghman, Edward Lloyd IV, Nicholas Thomas, and Robert Goldsborough IV represented Talbot County's committee of correspondence that met in Annapolis with similar committees from other Province of Maryland counties.[18][19] It is possible, some say probable, that Tilghman and/or the other three men elected as representatives wrote the document.[11][Note 4]

The Talbot Resolves
 Alarmed at the present situation of America and impressed with the most tender feelings for the distresses of their brethren and fellow subjects in Boston, a number of gentlemen having met at this place, took into their serious consideration the part they ought to act as friends of liberty and the general interests of mankind.

To preserve the rights and to secure the property of the subject, they apprehend is the end of government. But when those rights are invaded—when the mode prescribed by the laws for the punishment of offences and obtaining justice is disregarded and spurned—when without being heard in their defence, force is employed in the severest penalties inflicted; the people, they clearly perceive, have a right not only to complain, but like–wise to exert their utmost endeavors to prevent the effect of such measures as may be adopted by a weak and corrupt ministry to destroy their liberties, to deprive them of their property and rob them of the dearest birthright as Britons.

Impressed with the warmest zeal for and loyalty to their most gracious sovereign, and with the most sincere affection for their fellow subjects in Great Britain, they have determined calmly and steadily to unite with their fellow subjects in pursuing every legal and constitutional measure to avert the evils threatened by the late act of Parliament for shutting up the port of Boston; to support the common rights of America and to promote the union and harmony between the mother country and the colonies on which the preservation of both must finally depend.[21]

Aftermath

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On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved and signed The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, which later became known in the United States as the Declaration of Independence. Tilghman voted for the declaration as a member of the Maryland delegation, but left Philadelphia before the signing.

Matthew Tilghman continued to represent Talbot County in the Lower House of the general Assembly of Maryland. He was Speaker of the House for the Assemblies of 1773, 1774, and 1775.[22] After the passage of the Boston Port Bill by the British Parliament in 1774, a convention was held in Annapolis as a first step in a formal opposition to the act. Tilghman was one of four men appointed to represent Talbot County in the convention, and he was chosen as chairman when the convention was organized. He then became a Maryland delegate in the First Continental Congress, which met beginning in September 1774. He was also chosen to be part of the delegation to the Second Continental Congress that met during May 1775 at Philadelphia.[23] He was also involved in forming a new government State of Maryland, and became one of the state Senators for the Eastern Shore of Maryland—which caused him to leave the Second Continental Congress before he could sign the Declaration of Independence. He resigned from all government activities in 1783 after the end of the American Revolutionary War, and died May 5, 1790.[24]

Notes

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ Talbot Court House was the name of the village that surrounded Talbot County's courthouse beginning in 1712. An Act from 1785 named the town Talbot, but another Act from 1788 changed the town's name to Easton. It is believed that the name Easton evolved from "East Town", since the community was once the seat of Maryland government for the state's territory east of Chesapeake Bay (a.k.a. Maryland's Eastern Shore).[12]
  2. ^ Sharf also wrote that Talbot County had the earliest response.[13] That cannot be true because at the top of the same Maryland Gazette page that contained the Talbot Court House statement is a similar (although longer) resolution released by Chester Town, Maryland that is dated earlier—May 19, 1774.[14]
  3. ^ The Chester Town statement complains about the taxation of tea, but it does not mention Boston. Local lore, unsubstantiated, says that the Chester Town Resolves were drafted in response to the Boston Tea Party, and a Chestertown Tea Party mimicking the Boston Tea Part occurred at that time when tea was thrown into the Chester River.[17]
  4. ^ Residents of Maryland's Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay were a mixture of revolutionaries, loyalists, and neutralists. They typically "rejected outside influences" of all types, and some believed that a cause concerning Boston did not have to be a cause of Maryland.[20]

Citations

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  1. ^ Hall 1902, p. 29
  2. ^ Samuel Dunn and Robert Sayer (1774). A Map of the British empire in North America (Map). London: Robert Sayer. Retrieved September 3, 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g "The Boston Tea Party". American Battlefield Trust. Retrieved August 28, 2024.
  4. ^ Knollenberg 1975, p. 42
  5. ^ Knollenberg 1975, pp. 2, 14
  6. ^ Knollenberg 1975, pp. 32–33
  7. ^ Knollenberg 1975, p. 61
  8. ^ Knollenberg 1975, p. 95
  9. ^ Knollenberg 1975, p. 102
  10. ^ Knollenberg 1975, p. 90; "The Boston Tea Party". American Battlefield Trust. Retrieved August 28, 2024.
  11. ^ a b c d e "Talbot County Commemorates the 250th Anniversary of the Talbot Resolves". Star-Democrat (Easton, Maryland). Adams Publishing Group. May 29, 2024. Retrieved September 3, 2024.
  12. ^ "History of Easton, Maryland". Town of Easton, Maryland. Archived from the original on September 4, 2024. Retrieved September 3, 2024.
  13. ^ a b Scharf 1879, p. 148
  14. ^ a b c "Chester Town, May 19, 1774 - To the Printers of the Maryland Gazette (top of page 3)". Maryland Gazette. Anne Catharine Green and Son. June 6, 1774. Archived from the original on September 4, 2024. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
  15. ^ Preston, Dickson (May 22, 1974). "Talbot Yesterday - Were there any Talbot Resolves?". Star-Democrat (Easton, Maryland). In 1958, a Baltimore writer and lecturer named Neil H. Swanson came across the Talbot statement. He appears to have been the first to call it the "Talbot Resolves".
  16. ^ "Talbot Court House, May 24, 1774 (bottom of page 3)". Maryland Gazette. Anne Catharine Green and Son. June 6, 1774. Archived from the original on September 4, 2024. Retrieved September 2, 2024.
  17. ^ "Chestertown Tea Party: Fact or Fiction". Edward H. Nabb Research Center - Salisbury University. Retrieved September 6, 2024.
  18. ^ Tilghman & Harrison 1915a, p. 178
  19. ^ Tilghman & Harrison 1915, p. 61; Weeks, Bourne & Maryland Historical Trust 1984, p. 78
  20. ^ Neville 2009, p. 140
  21. ^ Weeks, Bourne & Maryland Historical Trust 1984, p. 78
  22. ^ Tilghman & Harrison 1915a, p. 424
  23. ^ Tilghman & Harrison 1915a, pp. 426–427
  24. ^ Tilghman & Harrison 1915a, p. 428; "Tilghman, Matthew 1718-1790". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Library of Congress. Retrieved August 18, 2024.

References

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