"For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world."

“ For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.”

Sometimes keeping it short says it all. At only 11 words, this grievance is the second shortest of the 27 listed in the Declaration of Independence (the shortest being the next one in the list, “For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent”). Jefferson and his fellow editors seem to have noticed that the shorter, the better, since these two grievances remained untouched(1) throughout all of the revisions during the summer of 1776.

This complaint about trade is driven by two groups of Acts by Parliament: The Navigation Acts, stretching back into the mid 1600s, and the Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts, passed in 1774 as a response to the Boston Tea Party.

Revolutionary-era waterboarding.
Colonial merchants weren't big fans of tax collectors. Here they are depicted tarring and
feathering one and forcing him to drink tea. 

The Navigation Acts, unlike many of the Acts and Proclamations we learn about as part of Revolutionary reasons, is more an example of death by 1,000 paper cuts.  Dating back to the 1650s, the acts sought to keep the British mercantile system humming like a well oiled machine while also challenging Dutch international trade. For instance, the first act established that any ship carrying goods to England be transported in English vessels. Fair enough -- such laws were a) largely unenforced and b) benefitted the colonies anyway.

But politics, after all, is a study in the effect of unintended consequences. The next Navigation Act, passed in 1660, forbade the importing into or exporting from the colonies of specific items (tobacco, sugar, cotton, wool among them), unless it was carried on a British ship. Eventually, in 1672, this rule was even applied to trade between colonies. The colonies were now in a situation where even trade amongst friendly colonies started to become difficult. That is, if it were enforced.

It isn’t until 1733 that we start to see some annoyance. That year Parliament passed the Molasses Act, placing high duties on molasses and sugar from the French West Indies. Britain was doing what Britain normally did in the colonial era -- protecting their sugar plantations in the British West Indies. And colonial merchants, they did what was normal for them in promoting their self interest -- they bribed customs officials to look the other way. Even so, it was still a thorn in a merchant’s side. “You hint to me that the molasses affair will soon be settled, which will certainly give me great pleasure,” wrote Boston merchant John Rowe to his brother, Jacob, later complaining the the high duty prohibits him from paying back loans.(2)

By the time John Rowe wrote his letter in 1761, Britain had moved beyond just protecting a trade system -- the country was actively looking for sources of revenue. Thinking that colonists would be more agreeable to a tax were it lower, Parliament decided to cut the tax on molasses in half, from six pence to three. Yet merchants had been paying less just by bribing officials for three decades - Britain was going to need to do much better than that! Even Ben Franklin was in conversation to lower the duty to 1 pence.(3) Further, by this time Britain had moved from passive to aggressive in enforcement: in 1756 a British governor broke into Philadelphia warehouses trying to find smuggled contraband, and in 1760 the British navy seized molasses cargo worth 100,000 pounds.

Truth be told, the impact of the Navigation Acts on the country as a whole were not significant. Some industries, such as indigo in South Carolina or lumber from North Carolina, even benefitted thanks to the high duties placed on foreign imports that competed with colonial industries. But by the 1760s, the colonial economy was in recession, and merchants were looking for ways to make money. The Navigation Acts forced 3/4s of colonial exports to go through Britain. Shipping costs to international markets were higher, and colonists could not do business with neighboring Spanish or French colonies (at least, not legally).

By the 1770s, the Navigation Acts and Coercive Acts set up so many rules and restrictions on commerce that merchants were vocal in the opinion that Britain wanted to ruin colonial business completely. “Nothing will save us but an entire stopping of trade, to both England and the West Indies… and that must be determined both speedily and absolutely,” John Andrews, a Boston merchant, wrote in May 1774. “I sincerely believe [Parliament] intend to carry out their threats, which are to make the town a desolate wilderness and the grass to grow in our streets.”(4)

1. Jefferson, Thomas, Julian Parks Boyd, Lyman H. Butterfield, Mina R. Bryan, Alfred L. Bush, and Lucius Wilmerding. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.

2. Rowe, John, and Edward Lillie Pierce. Letters and Diary of John Rowe: Boston Merchant, 1759-1762, 1764-1779. WB Clarke Company, 1903. 217.

3. To Benjamin Franklin from Richard Jackson, 12 November 1763,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified July 12, 2016, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-10-02-0198.

4. Charles Sellers, et al., A Synopsis of American History: Through Reconstruction Chicago: Ivan R Dee, 1992.