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Grievance #4 of the Declaration of Independence

What if your government made it harder for leaders to even meet?

In Grievance 4 of the Declaration of Independence, @SavyPolitics from Utah Valley University explains how royal governors sometimes required colonial legislatures to meet in remote locations instead of their usual capitals.

On the surface, it might seem minor. But the impact was real. Meeting far from population centers made it harder to access records, communicate with constituents, and even gather enough members to function.

Colonists believed this wasn’t random. They saw it as a tactic to pressure legislatures into going along with British policies, especially during moments of political tension. Even if it didn’t happen often, it revealed something bigger: a distant government could manipulate how local power operated.

This is Part 4 of our 27-part series breaking down every grievance that led to the American Revolution, building toward Independence Day.

0:00 Okay, not all grievances in the

0:01 Declaration of Independence were created

0:03 equal. For example, one of those

0:05 grievances is that royal governors

0:07 acting in the king’s name would

0:08 sometimes order colonial legislatures to

0:11 meet in remote, distant locations

0:13 instead of in the usual state capitals.

0:15 Now, this did pose a problem. It made it

0:17 difficult for those legislatures to

0:18 access public records or to consult

0:20 constituents or maybe even to maintain a

0:22 quorum. So, what was the goal here?

0:25 Well, the colonists assumed it was to

0:26 pressure legislatures into accepting

0:29 policies favored by the Crown. So, this

0:32 is dirty politics, but how commonly was

0:34 it used as a tactic to pressure

0:36 legislatures? Well, actually wasn’t that

0:38 common, but when it was used, it was

0:41 during periods of intense political

0:43 strife between colonial legislatures and

0:46 the Crown. For example, Governor Thomas

0:47 Gage of Massachusetts ordered the

0:49 Massachusetts Colonial Assembly to meet

0:52 all the way in Salem instead of in

0:54 Boston during that that period when

0:56 Boston was in intense political strife

0:59 in the lead up to the American

1:01 Revolution. But, even if it didn’t

1:03 happen on a consistent basis, it was the

1:05 principle of the thing that the

1:07 colonists were objecting to. Even

1:09 occasional manipulation of legislative

1:12 bodies demonstrated that they could be

1:14 controlled by a distant authority on the

1:16 other side of the ocean.

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