just which does not recognize the fact that in no colony was there a large
majority in favor of resistance, and in some the patriots were undoubtedly
in a minority. The movement, started by a few seceders, carried with it a
large body of men who were sincerely convinced that the British government
was tyrannical. The majorities thus formed, silenced the minority,
sometimes by mere intimidation, sometimes by ostracism, often by flagrant
violence. One kind of pressure was felt by old George Watson of Plymouth,
bending his bald head over his cane, as his neighbors one by one left the
church in which he sat, because they would not associate with a "mandamus
councillor." A different argument was employed on Judge James Smith of New
York, in his coat of tar and feathers, the central figure of a shameful
procession.
[Sidenote: Early organization.]
Another reason for the sudden strength shown by the Revolutionary movement
was that the patriots were organized and the friends of the established
government did not know their own strength. The agent of British influence
in almost every colony was the governor. In 1775 the governors were all
driven out. There was no centre of resistance about which the loyalists
could gather. The patriots had seized the reins of government before their
opponents fairly understood that they had been dropped.
[Sidenote: Feeling of common interest.]
Another influence which hastened the Revolution was a desire to supplant
the men highest in official life. There was no place in the colonial
government for a Samuel Adams or a John Adams while the Hutchinsons and
the Olivers were preferred. But no personal ambitions can account for the
agreement of thirteen colonies having so many points of dissimilarity. The
merchants of Boston and New Haven, the townsmen of Concord and Pomfret,
the farmers of the Hudson and Delaware valleys, and the aristocratic
planters of Virginia and South Carolina, deliberately went to war rather
than submit. The causes of the Revolution were general, were wide-spread,
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