Bonds of Charity: Slavery, the Fairfax Resolves, and Aid to Boston

Abstract: In the months following the Boston Tea Party of 1773, British leaders closed Boston Harbor until such a time as patriots reimbursed the East India Company for its losses via the Boston Port Act. The Act served as a catalyst, unifying colonists throughout North America against Great Britain. As Bostonians found it increasingly difficult to feed their own, assemblies—such as those held at Fairfax, VA, in 1774—resolved to send food and financial aid to the beleaguered city. This charity disproportionately came from the hands of enslaved labor, employed on southern plantations and raised by slaveholders. Such aid not only materially aided Boston, allowing townsmen to continue protesting British legislation, but also forced British leaders' hands in North America, leading some to insist that harsher implementation of the Act, remained the only feasible option to break their revolutionary sentiments. Enslaved labor both created the conditions through which intercolonial union solidified, as well as the means for resisting British imperial policy on the eve of independence.