Young Ladies in Town: About the Song

Following the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), the British government strayed from the previous policy of only loosely enforcing trade laws and regulations in its North American colonies. They sought to raise revenue from colonists to pay debts incurred by the war (see Brave Wolfe: About the Song). Colonists believed that Parliament had no authority to impose taxes on them because colonists had no vote in electing members of Parliament. Colonists responded to the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765 with protests and boycotts. Though Parliament repealed these measures, they issued the Declaratory Act, which asserted their right to make laws "to bind the colonies and people of America… in all cases whatsoever." (see American Taxation: About the Song).

In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, a series of new revenue laws proposed by Charles Townshend, the leading government minister. These duties placed indirect taxes on products imported from Britain, including glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea. The Townshend Acts further enraged colonists, who responded with well-organized resistance. The Sons of Liberty, a political organization founded to undermine British rule in colonial British North America, organized a boycott of British goods until the Townshend duties were repealed. Boston merchants persuaded traders in New York, Philadelphia, and other port cities to participate in the boycott.

The Daughters of Liberty, an organization of colonial women, held public displays of spinning and weaving to make cloth and clothing to support the boycott. A contemporary account reprinted in Frank Moore’s Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (1856) describes one such spinning bee at the house of “a distinguished minister, in Boston, where they amused themselves with spinning two hundred and thirty-two skeins of yarn, some very fine, which were given to the worthy pastor, several of the party being members of his congregation. The party was concluded with many agreeable tunes, anthems and liberty songs, with great judgment; fine voices performing, which were animated, in all their several parts, by a number of the Sons of Liberty.”

As a result of the boycott, imports from England declined by approximately 38% in 1769. On March 5, 1770, escalating tensions between colonists and British customs agents and soldiers led to the death of five Bostonians when British soldiers fired on a threatening mob. On the same day as the so-called Boston Massacre, Parliament voted to withdraw most of the Townshend duties, but they left in place the tax on tea.