The Day Sandwich Went All In On Independence
- Robert Thomson
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
In July, we’ll celebrate the 250th anniversary of some bold talk. The representatives of the United States of America assembled to declare “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”
Several weeks earlier, the people of Sandwich had assembled to declare that they were ready.
Sandwich’s declaration is inscribed on page 71 of “Records: 1768-1796,” a commonplace title that hides revolutionary sentiments.
The handwritten text on page 71 reads: “At a Legal Meeting of the Town of Sandwich June the 21st 1776, Capt. Simeon Fish, Moderator: Voted that should the Honorable Congress of the United Colonies for the Safety of those Colonies declare them Independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain we will Solemnly engage with our Lives & Fortunes to Support them in the Measure.”
The script isn’t as elegant as that on the July 4 document people line up to see at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Our town’s declaration has some ink smudges and inserts. But it’s attention-getting, nonetheless.
Town Clerk Taylor White brought the “Records” book to the Sandwich Public Library for a late-May history program sponsored by the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives.
I had seen a photo of the Sandwich declaration with an article by FOSTA’s Kaethe Maguire, published in the Enterprise on March 8, 2024 ( Living in Sandwich at the Time of Rebellion Against British Rule).
Her article, encompassing local dramas between 1769 and 1776, reminded me of reflections by John Adams in an 1818 letter: “But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do We mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.”
I read that letter years ago and have been looking ever since to understand what a signer of the Declaration of Independence was telling us. The fading ink in “Records” scribbles out an answer. If we want to find the American Revolution, we need to look in places like Sandwich.
One thing readers may spot immediately in the Sandwich declaration is the phrase “our lives and fortunes.” Sounds familiar, right?
Soon after Sandwich passed its resolution, Thomas Jefferson would share a draft of his own that concluded: “And for the support of this declaration . . . we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our sacred honor.”
Jefferson wasn’t cribbing from Sandwich’s town meeting. The phrase “lives and fortunes” had currency in the American colonies.
Pledges with that phrasing show up frequently in the records of the revolutionary Committees of Correspondence and Massachusetts town meetings of the 1770s. To put it in modern talk, they were saying, “I’m all in.” In those times, they said that a lot.
Those of us who attend town meetings in the modern era think it’s a big deal to click the “yes” button to vote for a hundred million dollar budget. Our revolutionary predecessors would tell us we have no idea what a big vote is.
The glory of the Sandwich declaration isn’t that it was cutting edge. The true glory is that it was mainstream.
With its long history of self-government through town meetings and its own Committee of Correspondence, Sandwich was part of the revolutionary network across Massachusetts and among the colonies.
Put yourself in the moment. You’re about to tell your legal ruler to go pound sand. First of all, that’s treason. Next of all . . . well, what is next of all? Can you trust the people who are going to run your new country? Can you trust the people who run your little town?
If you’re going to say “yes” to the big question, the answer to the follow-up questions had better be “yes.”
Boston took the lead, creating a Committee of Correspondence in November 1772. The committee shared its grievances about Parliamentary tyranny with the other Massachusetts towns. They would strengthen each other’s resolve.
On Jan. 26, 1773, Sandwich Town Meeting “Resolved that it is the opinion of this Town that our Rights...as stated by the respectable Town of Boston in their pamphlet are derived to the Colonies in general and to this Province in particular from the Laws of Nature, the English Constitution and the Province Charter. And that no power under Heaven has a right to deprive us of them.”
In that excerpt from town meeting records, available online in a transcribed version on the Sandwich Town Archives homepage, town leaders express a clear sense of what was going on in their world, as well as confidence in their right – and their ability – to govern themselves.
There is also dissent. Several people ask that their objections to majority votes be noted in the town meeting minutes.
But the resolves sharpen. An account of a March 1774 Sandwich Town Meeting includes this: “Voted that the Act of Parliament imposing a Duty on Teas imported into America is a Tax upon us without our consent and therefore unconstitutional.”
In September 1774, Sandwich Town Meeting discussed the Parliamentary punishments known as the Intolerable Acts, which centralized royal power and restricted town meetings: “should we tamely submit to them, we could not answer it to God, our own consciences or to our fellow men and posterity, and therefore we are resolved that we never will submit.”
A note of caution: If you wish our town meetings were as zesty as those town meetings, ease up. Yes, at meeting after meeting in the modern era, we talk about what to do with our wastewater. Meeting after meeting in their time, they talked about what to do with the herring catch.
But it would be hard to top the grit of our predecessors when pushed by outside forces. In May 1775, they focused on the conduct of military governor Thomas Gage and joined the new Provincial Congress in condemning his recent actions.
In particular, they were aggrieved that “a detachment of the Troops under his command, has of late been by him ordered to the Town of Concord to destroy the public stores.”
By spring 1776, there would be no more royal governors. But what would there be? In May, the Continental Congress urged the colonies to establish new governments. In Massachusetts, that was more a matter of remodeling than of reinvention.
But the Continental Congress, unsure of its own authority in taking the next big step, asked the colonies to weigh in. In Massachusetts, the Provincial Congress forwarded the question to the town meetings.
Sandwich and the others again were ready with their answer: We’re all in.
There are “Records” of revolution all over Massachusetts. They reside in communities like Sandwich that not only wanted to govern themselves, but also knew they could do it.
Robert Thomson is a member of the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives, a dedicated, all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to supporting and promoting the archives’ collections and the rich, diverse history of the town of Sandwich.
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