Formation of Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence

Background. After the Boston Massacre of March 5, 1770, Patriot leaders in Boston used hostility toward the harsh British military occupation to justify a more ongoing approach to resistance. Adams's earlier 1768 Massachusetts Circular Letter had prompted the British occupation of Boston, and by 1770 the collapse of the non-importation boycott had weakened his cause in Massachusetts.

Formation of the Committee. In October 1772, Massachusetts colonists established the first long-standing committee of correspondence with the approval of a town meeting; the passages supply only the month, with no exact day. The following month, in November 1772, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and Mercy Otis Warren formed a committee responding to the Gaspée Affair and to the British decision to pay royal governor and judges' salaries from the Crown rather than the colonial assembly, stripping the colony of its means of holding public officials accountable. No exact day for either development is supported by the supplied passages.

Purpose and Operation. Adams and his colleagues devised the committee of correspondence system in 1772 to coordinate resistance to what Adams saw as British attempts to violate the British Constitution at the colonies' expense. Towns of Massachusetts would consult with each other via messages sent through a network of committees that recorded British activities and protested imperial policies, linking like-minded Patriots throughout the Thirteen Colonies.