Imported before Nonimportation Agreement

September 2

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

South-Carolina and American General Gazette (September 2, 1774).

“A Non-importation Agreement will undoubtedly soon take Place here.”

A week in advance of an auction to be held on September 9, 1774, Samuel Gordon took to the pages of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette to promote the various items up for bids.  The sale would include “MUSLINS plain & flowered; Fine Humhums, … fashionable Silks for Gowns, Silk and Satin Cloaks, Bonnets and Hats elegantly trimmed, Silk and Satin Petticoats, Womens Silk Hose, and Shoes, [and] Sash and other Ribbons.”  In addition, Gordon listed “Table Cloths, Table Knives and Fork, [and] some blue and white and enamelled Table China.”  He concluded with “&c.” (an abbreviation for et cetera) to indicate that consumers could acquire a variety of other wares at the auction.

Gordon appended a nota bene to his notice: “As a Non-importation Agreement will undoubtedly soon take Place here, the Ladies may not, for some Years, have the same Opportunity of supplying themselves cheap, with any of the above necessary Articles.”  The auctioneer referred to measures under consideration in response to the Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, and the other Coercive Acts passed by Parliament in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party.  Throughout the colonies, patriots came to the defense of Massachusetts, rallying to determine common measures to address infringements on their liberty and rights as English subjects.  At the moment that Gordon published his advertisement, delegates were already arriving in Philadelphia for what would become known as the First Continental Congress.  Their deliberations would result indeed result in the Continental Association, a trade boycott intended as political leverage.  Colonizers had previously adopted similar nonimportation agreements in response to the Stamp Act and the duties on certain goods levied in the Townshend Acts.

Gordon encouraged readers to draw on their memories of the conditions during those boycotts or imagine what would likely happen when another nonimportation agreement went into effect.  He stoked fear and anxiety that goods would become scarce and, as a result, much more expensive.  Colonizers needed to acquire textiles and housewares while they were available and while they were affordable.  To facilitate that, he offered credit until January for purchases that exceeded fifty pounds.  That suggests that even though he addressed “Ladies,” the colonizers so often accused of the vice of luxuriating in consumption in newspaper editorials of the era, that he actually anticipated that it would be merchants and retailers, most of them men, who would make bids and purchase this merchandise with the intention of selling it once again.  Still, readers considered Gordon’s warning as they perused the many other advertisements for imported goods in the newspaper.  The auctioneer committed to print what many colonizers were likely thinking about their prospects for purchasing goods in the coming months and years.

January 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Jan 1 1770 - 1:1:1770 Boston-Gazette
Boston-Gazette (January 1, 1770).

“Imported from LONDON (before the Non-Importation Agreement took Place).”

Cyrus Baldwin hoped for prosperity in the new year, greeting 1770 with an invitation for prospective customers to visit his shop at “the Sign of the Three Nuns and Comb” on Cornhill Street in Boston. His advertisement listed a variety of items in stock, including textiles (“Shalloons, Tammies, Durants” and others), tea, coffee, and “other Articles too many to be here enumerated.” Baldwin made clear that he offered choices to consumers.

He also made clear that he abided by the nonimportation agreement adopted by Boston’s merchants and traders in protest of the duties imposed on imported paper, glass, lead, paint, and tea by the Townshend Acts. Like other eighteenth-century retailers, he noted that his goods were “Imported from LONDON,” but he carefully clarified that they had arrived in the colonies “before the Non-Importation Agreement took Place.” Usually advertisers emphasized how recently their merchandise arrived from London and other English cities, but in this case Baldwin realized that many prospective customers would find items imported more than a year ago more attractive and more politically palatable.

It made sense for Baldwin to take this approach. His advertisement appeared at the bottom of the center column on the first page of the January 1, 1770, edition of the Boston-Gazette. Edes and Gill, the noted patriot printers of that newspaper, set the tone for the entire issue with the first item in the first column: “A LIST of the Names of those who AUDACIOUSLY continue to counteract the UNITED SENTIMENTS of the BODY of Merchants thro’out NORTH-AMERICA, by importing British Goods contrary to the Agreement.” This was a regular update that ran in several newspapers printed in Boston. The article accused six merchants and shopkeepers in Boston and another in Marlborough of preferring “their own little private Advantage to the Welfare of America,” labeling them “Enemies to their Country” and promising to view those who “give them their Custom … in the same disagreeable Light.”

Baldwin wanted that neither for himself nor his customers. He needed to make a living, but he did not wish to run afoul of the committee that oversaw the nonimportation agreement or his fellow colonists. To further demonstrate his compliance, he informed prospective customers that he sold “Red Drapery Baize manufactured in this Country, superior in Quality to those imported from England” in addition to goods that arrived from London many months earlier. The imperial crisis continued as a new year and a new decade began. In addition to news items and editorials, many advertisements for consumer goods and services captured the political tensions of the period.