The ''Boston Pamphlet'' was a 1772 pamphlet published in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

in the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

. Written by members of the

Boston Committee of Correspondence The committees of correspondence were, prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, a collection of American political organizations that sought to coordinate opposition to British Parliament and, later, support for American independe ...

, the pamphlet outlined the rights of British American colonists and indicated how recent British policies were in violation of those rights. Although called the "Boston Pamphlet" by contemporaries, it was officially known as ''The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of The Town of Boston, In Town Meeting assembled, According to Law''. The ''Boston Pamphlet'' had three sections of original material: "A State of the Rights of the Colonists", a "List of Infringements and Violation of Rights", and a "Letter of Correspondence" addressed to the other towns of the

Province of Massachusetts Bay The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a colony in British America which became one of the thirteen original states of the United States. It was chartered on October 7, 1691, by William III and Mary II, the joint monarchs of the kingdoms of ...

. Traditionally, authorship of the three sections was attributed to

Samuel Adams Samuel Adams ( – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, an ...

Joseph Warren Joseph Warren (June 11, 1741 – June 17, 1775), a Founding Father of the United States, was an American physician who was one of the most important figures in the Patriot movement in Boston during the early days of the American Revolution, ...

, and Benjamin Church, respectively, but historian Richard Brown argued that solitary authorship of any section was unlikely, and that each part was probably the group effort of a committee. A fourth section contained correspondence between Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the town of Boston. At issue was the decision of the British government to henceforth pay the salaries of the governor, lieutenant governor, and judges of Massachusetts, which were previously paid by the

Massachusetts House of Representatives The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from 14 counties each divided into single-member ...

. Colonists were alarmed because this was a step away from responsible government, effectively making their leading officials independent of the electorate. In 1773, the Boston Committee of Correspondence printed 600 copies of the pamphlet and distributed them throughout the colony.Middlekauff, ''Glorious Cause'', 223. Dozens of Massachusetts towns responded by passing similar resolves and forming their own committees of correspondence, which helped promote colonial unity in the evolving crisis that led to American independence.

Notes

References

*Alexander, John K. ''Samuel Adams: America's Revolutionary Politician''. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. . *Brown, Richard D. ''Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. . *Jensen, Merrill, ed. ''Tracts of the American Revolution, 1763-1776.'' Indianapolis: Bobs-Merrill, 1967. * Middlekauff, Robert. ''The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789''. Revised and expanded edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

External links

Complete text at "American in Class" from nationalhumanitiescenter.org
{{American Revolution origins, state=expanded 1772 in Massachusetts Massachusetts in the American Revolution American political philosophy literature 1772 books Pamphlets Samuel Adams