ed into a
kind of general law to be enforced upon all alike by boycott and
confiscation of property.

The Association of the First Congress created a revolutionary government
and gave birth to the Loyalist as distinct from the conservative party.
Radicals and conservatives had differed in respect to the theoretical
basis of colonial rights and the most effective methods of securing
redress. But the authority now assumed in the name of Congress raised
the ultimate question of allegiance. Of the pamphleteers and preachers
who now denounced the Association as a revolutionary measure, Samuel
Seabury perceived the issue most clearly and stated it most effectively:
"If I must be enslaved, let it be by a King at least, and not by a
parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen." Whether to submit to the king
or to the committee--this was, indeed, the fundamental question during
those crucial months from November, 1774, to July, 1776. For extremists
on either side, the question presented no difficulty; for conservatives
like Hutchinson, who had long since lost all sympathy with prevailing
measures of resistance, or for radicals like Samuel Adams and Patrick
Henry, who pressed eagerly forward toward independence. But in 1774 the
great majority of thinking men, abhorring the notion of war or
separation from England, were yet convinced that strong protest, and
even a kind of forcible resistance, was justified in order to maintain
their just rights. These men sooner or later found themselves "between
Scylla and Charybdis ": compelled to choose what was for them the lesser
evil; to acknowledge the authority of Parliament in spite of laws which
they regarded as oppressive and unconstitutional, or to identify
themselves with the cause of Congress however ill-advised they may have
thought its action. Those men who wished to take a safe middle ground,
who wished neither to renounce their country nor to mark themselves as
rebels, could no longer hold together, and the conservative party
disappeared: perhaps one half chose sooner or later to submit to British
authority; the other half, either with deliberation or yielding
insensibly to the pressure of events, went with their country.

That a majority of conservatives refused to meet this issue until after
the battle of Lexington, and many not until the Declaration of
Independence "closed the last door of reconciliation," was largely due
to the widespread belief that if the colonies took a bold