Robert M. Calhoon

The Removal of the Massachusetts General Court from Boston, 1769–1772

O N JUNE 14, 1769, Governor Francis Bernard ordered the Massachusetts General Court to leave its traditional seat in Boston and to reassemble in Cambridge for the remainder of its session. When Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, on March 8, 1770, summoned the Court to meet in Cambridge, he provoked a constitutional crisis in Massachusetts and instigated a controversy which lasted for more than two years.1 Hutchinson claimed that his royal instructions required him to remove the Court from Bostons turbulent influences. The Court, in turn, challenged the power of the crown to interfere in the provincial matter of calling, proroguing, and dissolving the assembly. It further questioned whether Hutchinson was actually bound by an explicit instruction and suspected him of harassing the Court out of whimsy. In the process of demanding the Courts return to

A Desperate Attempt to Fabricate Order@@@Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People.

Acknowledgments Introduction: Religion in the American Past 1. The European Religious Heritage 2. The Crisis of Christian Practice in America 3. Magic and the Occult 4. The Renewal of Christian Authority 5. Slavery and the African Spiritual Holocaust 6. The Plural Origins of American Revivalism 7. A Revolutionary Millennium? 8. Toward the Antebellum Spiritual Hothouse 9. Christian Power in the American Republic Conclusion: Lincoln and the Almost Chosen People Notes Index