County decree supported Colonial efforts

Approximately 250 years ago, some of Charles County’s earliest patriots rallied behind Boston’s efforts in the Revolutionary War.

“The resolutions in the summer of 1774, including the Charles County Resolves, were a crucial step in securing our freedom and independence. All these resolutions were local, yet very important events,” Kevin Nietmann, secretary of the Thomas Stone Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, said at a special event on Saturday.

Members of the Sons of the American Revolution assembled at the Port Tobacco Courthouse Sept. 21 to commemorate the passage of the Charles County Resolves, which were decrees to protest Britain’s harsh treatment of the people of Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party, according to David Lassman of the National Park Service.

The resolves proclaimed that imposing British laws on Americans without their consent violated “the privileges of a free people and the natural rights of mankind.” The series of British laws passed in response to the Tea Party were collectively known as the “Coercive Acts,” Lassman said.

These acts closed the Boston harbor to trade, allowed the quartering of British troops in empty buildings in port cities, and allowed for those accused of capital crimes in the colonies to be tried in Britain to protect soldiers from American justice.

Colonists saw allowing capital crimes to be tried in Britain as a way of protecting British soldiers like the ones who killed colonists during the Boston Massacre of 1770, leading some to call it the “Murder Act.”

The Coercive Acts and the Resolves that responded to the acts were steps on the way to revolution, Lassman explained.

“There were many resolves in the summer of 1774 besides the one we are commemorating in Charles County. Similar proclamations were made in Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Virginia in multiple counties,” Lassman said. “It was the sum of these resolutions and the actions taken that were called for in the documents including establishing committees to support setting the Colonies on a revolutionary footing and providing a vital link to other locales in Maryland.”

“The resolves were careful, fair and judicious,” Lassman said.

At the Sept. 21 event, Lassman took to a podium to tell attendees about the state of Maryland near the Revolutionary War.

He told of the Annapolis Tea Party and how different it was from the Boston Tea Party, with Marylanders building gallows at the house of the owner of a tea ship before forcing him to burn it.

It contrasted with the Boston Tea Party, where Lassman said that those men were under specific instructions to only damage tea. Patriots sent replacements and compensation for damages done.

Mike Mazzeo of the Thomas Stone Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution read the Charles County Resolves at the ceremony, which held the promises made by Charles figures to break away from Britain commercially.

One line reads, “That if the said act of parliament is not repealed by the 31st day of October, in the year 1775, that then the inhabitants of this county will join with the several counties of this province, and the principal colonies in America, to break off all commercial connection with Great-Britain and the West-Indies.”

“Ultimately, much of our history is local,” Nietmann said. “This is particularly true of the Colonial period when the population was much smaller and more dispersed than today. Important events, even history-changing ones, have often been small and local in our history.”

Sons of the American Revolution is the largest male lineage organization in the United States and consists of 50 state-level societies with more than 590 local chapters, several international societies and over 37,000 members.

Prominent Sons of the American Revolution members include sixteen U.S. presidents, U.S. senators and representatives and local business and community leaders, according to Nietmann.