Royal Government in America

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Royal Government in America

ROYAL GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA. The English settlement of North America was undertaken by groups of private individuals; the colonies were only gradually brought under the control of royal government. By 1763, nine of the thirteen colonies that would rebel in 1775 had royal governors. Pennsylvania and Maryland remained in the hands of their proprietors, and Connecticut and Rhode Island continued to elect their own governors under their seventeenth-century charters. Massachusetts was anomalous, with a royally appointed governor operating under a revised charter of 1692, until its privileges were wiped out by the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, one of the so-called Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts.

Every colony had an elected assembly. The eight royal colonies had a governor and council (the upper house of the legislature) appointed by the crown and an assembly (lower house) chosen by a larger and more broadly based white male electorate than anywhere in Britain. The governor, as executive head of the legislature and the king's chief representative, was expected to execute the instructions he received from London, usually from the Board of Trade. The colonial assemblies waged a century-long struggle to limit his authority. After 1680 the assemblies had authority to initiate all colonial laws. The governor either vetoed the laws or sent them to the Privy Council, which had authority to accept or cancel (disallow) them. The assemblies also gained the all-important right to make financial appropriations and supervise actual expenditures; thereby, they got the whip hand on the governor and the provincial judges by controlling their salaries. The imperial government tried to make the assemblies establish fixed annual salaries, but the assemblies fought off all of the crown's efforts to establish a fixed civil list in the colonies, which would have given the governor a powerful patronage weapon. The assemblies were particularly successful in gaining ground against the governor during wartime, when they could bargain harder for additional power against a governor whose top priority was to have money available to pay for pressing military needs.

Sometimes the imperial government helped its governors, as when it succeeded after 1761 in establishing the governor's right to appoint judges "during the pleasure of the Crown," whereas the assemblies had fought to permit them to retain office "during good behavior." (Resentment over this point is reflected in the Declaration of Independence.) But London could also undercut its representative. After 1763 the secretary of state for the American colonies began appointing an increasing number of imperial officials, including the naval officer responsible for enforcing the Navigation Acts, an innovation that further reduced the patronage the governor controlled.

Royal governors acted as mediators between the demands of the imperial government in London and the needs and desires of the colonial oligarchs. Many royal governors were intelligent, clever politicians who understood that ingratiating themselves with the local leaders was the best way to persuade them to adhere to imperial controls. When there was a congruence of interest between London and the colony, the job of being a royal governor could be relatively pleasant. More often, however, the royal governor was obliged by his superiors to impose rules and regulations that local leaders resented or resisted. When that happened, a royal governor would need all the talents and powers he could muster to chivvy, cajole, and if necessary, coerce the colony into compliance. Successful royal government required the governors—indeed all imperial officials—to be honest, disinterested, and savvy politicians. Unfortunately for the prestige and, ultimately, the survival of royal government in America, the job of royal governor could also be extremely lucrative, and it attracted too many men who were venial, grasping, and contemptuous of the Americans they were supposed to govern effectively.

The only colonial governor who wholeheartedly supported the Revolution and remained in office was Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut. Joseph Wanton Sr. of Rhode Island was deemed by the assembly to be a lukewarm supporter of resistance and was replaced by Nicholas Cooke. Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts had already given way to a military government led by Major General Thomas Gage; the former governor died in exile in London. William Tryon, who served as royal governor in North Carolina and New York, returned to his former life as an army officer, became the senior general officer of the Provincial (Loyalist) troops, and commanded several significant raids to suppress the rebels. William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, was the last royal governor of New Jersey, and he too was prominent in trying to organize Loyalists to fight the rebels. Governors Josiah Martin, who succeeded Tryon in North Carolina, Sir William Campbell of South Carolina, Sir James Wright of Georgia, and John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, of Virginia were all forced early in the war to flee for their own safety. Their overly optimistic reports of potential Loyalist support in the South led the British to send Major General Henry Clinton on an ill-fated expedition against Charleston, South Carolina, in the summer of 1776.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Background of the American Revolution. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1924.

――――――. The Colonial Period of American History. 4 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1934–1938.

Bailyn, Bernard. The Origins of American Politics. New York: Knopf, 1968.

Beer, George L. British Colonial Policy, 1754–1765. New York: Macmillan Company, 1907.

Labaree, Leonard W. Royal Government in America: A Study of the British Colonial System before 1763. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1930.

Gipson, Lawrence H. The British Empire before the American Revolution. 15 vols. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967–1970.

Greene, Evarts Boutell. The Provincial Governor in the English Colonies of North America. New York: Longmans, Green, 1898.

Greene, Jack P. The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963.

Marshall, Peter J., ed. The Oxford History of the British Empire. Vol. 2: The Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Osgood, Herbert L. The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century. 4 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1924.

revised by Harold E. Selesky

Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History