The Continental Association

Signers of the Continental Association agreed to immediately cease purchasing or drinking from the East India Company, whose bailout had launched the Tea Crisis. They agreed not to import any goods from Great Britain, Ireland, or its colonies, beginning on December 1, 1774. At the urging of Virginia’s delegates, the Association delayed a ban on exports September 10, 1775, allowing some colonists, including tobacco and rice planters, time to sell the crops they had already planted. Finally, merchants agreed not to raise prices “to take Advantage of the Scarcity of Goods that may be occasioned by” the Association.¹

This system of immediate nonimportation and gradual nonexportation suited the Virginia gentry. Deeply in debt from decades of importing expensive consumer goods, planter elites needed a break from the expenses of keeping up with their neighbors. Moreover, the price of tobacco had fallen dangerously low. They hoped that a looming ban on exports would temporarily drive up tobacco prices. Finally, by banning the importation of enslaved people, the Association also increased the value of the enslaved human beings whom elite planters already held as chattel property.²

While a few colonists demanded radical steps, like rejecting Parliament’s authority completely, most protesting colonists saw a boycott as a moderate response. There was nothing illegal or disloyal, after all, about a group (or “association”) of colonists agreeing to limit their own consumption and purchasing. Leaders explained that an effective boycott would get the attention of British leaders. Some dreamed that it would be so disruptive that British leaders would be forced to meet American demands. But only if it was strictly enforced.³

Colonists had previously used boycotts to protest imperial policies. But these had failed, largely because of weak enforcement.⁴ But the Continental Association laid out a system of local committees to enforce its terms. If a committee learned that someone had violated the Continental Association, they published that person’s name in a local newspaper so that the Association’s signatories could “break off all Dealings with him, or her.” Anyone who consumed tea, imported goods from Britain, raised prices, or even criticized the Association, could be declared an enemy to the revolutionary cause and effectively ostracized from society.⁵

During the eighteenth century, Britain and its colonies experienced a consumer revolution. Middle-class people began to consume more non-essential goods, often dressing like gentlemen and ladies.⁶ The Continental Association rejected this trend. Its signatories promised to “encourage Frugality Economy, and Industry” while discouraging “Extravagance,” including horseracing, gambling, cockfighting, theatrical performances, and elaborate funeral rituals. They even agreed to “use our utmost Endeavours to improve the Breed of Sheep” and grow their numbers to create more wool-based homespun textiles.

Many commentators blamed women and effeminate men (called “macaronis”) for caring too much about fashion.⁸ Weeks after the Continental Association passed, the Virginia Gazette published an essay titled “On Pride,” which mocked the pretensions of wealthy women: “Her Head is metamorphosed into a Pyramid of Wool, Flower, and Grease, and all the rest of her delicate Frame made showy as a Peacock.” Some writers went further, redefining austerity as a masculine trait. One Virginia Gazette writer explained that “Virtue is always connected with Plainness and Simplicity, Effeminacy always with luxurious Refinement.”

Yet even as they were blamed in print for luxurious habits, some women relished the chance to participate in the revolutionary conflict by limiting their household’s consumption. One group of Virginia women called on others to embrace “public virtue” and reject “luxuries of every kind.” They suggested that women replace tea with “some of those aromatic herbs with which our fruitful soil abounds.”⁹ Tea was an important part of eighteenth-century social life. For many women, this was a significant sacrifice. But since tea threatened to “fasten slavish Chains” upon the colonists, as the author of the poem “A Lady’s Adieu to her Tea Table” wrote, many women willingly changed their habits.¹⁰

Like earlier boycott movements, the Continental Association empowered women to join in the revolutionary movement. On October 25, 1774, 51 American women gathered in Edenton, North Carolina, to sign their own agreement to boycott British goods, an event sometimes known as the Edenton Tea Party.¹¹ Women also joined the boycott movement by visibly participating in textile creation at spinning bees. Newspapers carried numerous accounts of women gathering to spin wool, make cloth, and talk about politics.¹²

When the local committee came knocking on your door, you had two choices.¹³ You could sign the Association, or you could refuse. Even those who didn’t agree with the boycott often found it best to comply. A Loyalist woman named Christina Tice, for example, wrote to her husband that “I shall strictly comply . . . no rebel shall ever have the pleasure of knowing by my outward behavior my inward concern.”¹⁴ Social and economic pressure pushed some colonists to agree to join the Association.

Those who refused sometimes faced harsh punishment. Merchants and ship owners who defied the Association were threatened or attacked by mobs. Some were violently humiliated. They could be tarred and feathered, made to ride a rail, or even stripped naked.¹⁵ A mezzotint print titled The Alternative of Williams-Burg, published in London in early 1775, depicted Virginians signing a document under the threat of a bag of feathers and a barrel of tar hanging from a gibbet in the background labeled “A Cure for the Refractory.”

For some Loyalists, these mobs and committees had brought greater tyranny than anything that had come from London. In New York, Reverend Samuel Seabury wrote that he would prefer to be under the tyranny of a King rather than “a parcel of upstart, lawless Committee-men. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin.” A Loyalist poet asked his reader “where he e’er saw / Men legally punish’d for not breaking the law? / Tarr’d, feather’d, and carted for drinking Bohea [tea]? / And by force and oppression compell’d to be free?” ¹⁷

In some ways, the Continental Association was a failure. It did not provoke the economic disruption that revolutionaries expected, and so did not create much leverage for negotiations. But in other ways, it was very successful. Local committees were highly effective in limiting imports into the British colonies. In 1775, imports from Britain fell to about seven percent of their value in the previous year.¹⁸ Most important, though, was the process of carrying out the Association. At least 7,000 colonists, including over a thousand Virginians, served on local enforcement committees. Through these groups, the Continental Association brought the American Revolution into many households for the first time. ¹⁹

In the spring of 1775, Parliament responded to the Association by prohibiting most of the colonies from trading with other nations. The so-called Restraining Acts would have undoubtedly sparked further protest, but by the time news of them arrived in the colonies, violence had already broken out. With the Continental Association, ordinary people across the American colonies had begun to create a shadow government that offered a new source of political authority. As protests and organization spilled over into violence, questions arose. Would this be the start of an orderly new society? Or would these committees bring mob rule?