Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register

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Chapter 11: civil History.

American Revolution.

-- resolves by the General Court. -- action of Cambridge in Town meeting. -- riots in Boston. -- Cambridge disapproves riots, and at first refuses, but afterwards consents, that compensation be made from the public treasury. -- Representative instructed to oppose the election of any person to the Council who already held office of emolument under the government; and to have the people admitted to hear the debates of the house. -- duties imposed on tea and other articles. -- action of the General Court, and its dissolution. -- Convention of delegates. -- Committees of Correspondence. -- action of the Town, and instruction to Representative. -- Report concerning grievances. -- response to Boston by the Committee of Correspondence. -- Town meeting; earnest protest against the importation of tea, as an encroachment upon political rights, and denunciation of all offenders and their abettors as public enemies. -- destruction of tea in Boston Harbor. -- Boston Port Bill. -- donations to Boston. -- Councillors appointed by mandamus. -- Powder removed from the Magazine. -- concourse of people in Cambridge. -- resignation of Judge Danforth, Judge Lee, and Col. Oliver. -- Sheriff Phips promises that he will not act officially under the New establishment. -- Gen. Brattle's Letter and explanation. -- Provincial Congress. -- preparations for resistance by force of arms. -- Cambridge pledges persons and estates to maintain a declaration of Independence. -- privations during the War. -- New General Court organized. -- Constitution of 1778 rejected. -- constitutional Convention meets at Cambridge. -- Constitution adopted. -- Shays' Rebellion. -- Letter from the disaffected, and reply. -- Constitution of the United States approved. -- Loyalists or tories, described by Madam Riedesel; their estates confiscated; proposition to permit their return; Cambridge objects, and instructs its Representatives.

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In this history of a single town, it is not proposed to enumerate all the causes of the American Revolution, or the various events which occurred during its accomplishment; but some of those causes and events will be mentioned, with which the town of Cambridge had more or less intimate connection. One very prominent question at issue, in the commencement of the Revolutionary struggle, was whether or not the British Parliament had a legal right to impose taxes on the American provinces (which were not represented therein), without their consent. In the exercise of this pretended right of supremacy, among other methods for raising a revenue from the provinces, Parliament enacted a law, styled the Stamp Act, with a provision that it should take effect Nov. 1, 1765. With special reference to this Act, the American doctrine was affirmed, Oct. 29, 1765, by the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in fourteen resolutions, three of which were these:

III. Resolved, That no man can justly take the property of another without his consent; and that upon this original principle the right of representation in the same body which exercises the power of making laws for levying taxes, which is one of the main pillars of the British constitution, is evidently founded.

XII. Resolved, as a just conclusion from some of the foregoing resolves, That all acts made by any power whatever, other than the General Assembly of this Province, imposing taxes on the inhabitants, are infringements of our inherent and unalienable rights, as men and British subjects,

and render void the most valuable declarations of our Charter.

XIII. Resolved, that the extension of the powers of the Court of Admiralty within this Province is a most violent infraction of the right of trials by juries,—a right which this House, upon the principles of their British ancestors, hold most dear and sacred, it being the only security of the lives, liberties, and properties of his Majesty's subjects here.¹