By the late summer and early fall of 1775, the regulation of American trade under the association of the previous year preempted a heavy share of debating time in the Continental Congress. According to the terms of the association, imports from Great Britain and Ireland were to cease after 1 December 1774, while exportation of goods from the colonies was to end in September 1775.1 The problems of establishing a system of enforcing nonexportation were complicated by the passage of Parliament’s Restraining Acts in March and April 1775.2 On 12 July 1775, John Jay was named to the committee charged with devising “ways and means to protect the trade of the colonies.” This committee reported on 21 July, but no action was taken on the problem before Congress adjourned for five weeks on 1 August.3

This adjournment delayed action on a trade issue of special interest to Jay’s constituents in New York. While the association had forbidden the importation of any English goods after 1 December 1774, the agreement placed special restrictions on East India tea. Tea belonging to the East India Company could neither be imported into the colonies nor be used or purchased in the provinces after 1 December 1774. No tea whatever was to be sold or used in the American colonies after 1 March 1775.4 Thus New York merchants trading with the Dutch were left with large quantities of tea that they could not sell under the terms of the association.

At the end of July 1775, Congress received appeals to relax the prohibition on the tea trade. On 28 July, the New York Provincial Congress wrote the colony’s delegates to propose a plan for new regulations on this commodity: merchants who had imported tea from Holland would be allowed to sell their stocks at a fixed price determined by the provincial congress, with a tax of one shilling per pound to provide the province with revenue, give merchants relief, and allow those who traded with Holland to use the proceeds of the sales to import military supplies. An additional virtue of the proposal, as the provincial congress saw it, was that it would remove any “temptation to a clandestine sale.”5 On 31 July the Continental Congress heard petitions from the merchants of New York and Philadelphia who sought permission to sell their stores of tea.6 No action was taken on this matter before the congressional adjournment.

The New York Congress sat through August without any word on the question of tea. On 1 September, the day before the provincial body adjourned, another appeal went out to the colony’s delegation in Philadelphia, which is printed below.7

The question of trade policy, left unsettled before the August adjournment, demanded Congress’s attention when sessions resumed in September 1775. On 22 September, John Jay was named to a new committee charged with considering American commerce. The committee report, in Jay’s hand, was submitted on 2 October. Basically this report merely recommended continuing the “regulations respecting Imports and Exports” imposed by the First and Second Congresses. Some modifications were suggested for allowing concessions to Ireland and Bermuda, especially for trade that would bring scarce commodities such as salt, and other sections looked toward the encouragement of “internal Commerce.” However, Jay’s report did not touch on the central issue of whether those colonies not mentioned in the Restraining Acts should be allowed to carry on trade denied to the provinces cited by Parliament.8

Debate on the trade resolutions ran from 2 to 5 October and was resumed a week later, continuing to the end of the month. Discussion eventually narrowed down to the question of shutting customhouses in all provinces to “remove jealousies and divisions” between those affected by the Restraining Acts and those that were still free of such restrictions.9 The delegates weighed the wisdom of this procedure, which would have shut all provincial ports, as well as Jay’s proposal that the colonies channel their trade through those ports that were still free of the Restraining Acts. Jay, opposing Richard Henry Lee’s motion that all customhouses be shut down, reminded his colleagues that he had always opposed nonexportation and argued that closing the customhouses “should be the last business we undertake.” He compared closing the available ports to “cutting the foot to the shoe, not making a shoe for the foot.” “Let us,” he urged, “establish a system first,” and deemed it as foolhardy as making the right arm sore because the left arm was. Just “because the Enemy have burned Charleston,” he queried sarcastically, “would Gentlemen have Us burn New York.”10

While the provinces waited for the Congress to “establish a system,” local trade problems multiplied. When the New York Provincial Congress reconvened on 4 October, there were still no “directions” from Congress on the sale of tea. That day a merchant presented a scheme “to load 500 barrels of flour to Hispaniola, and to bring in return five tons of gunpowder.” This, too, prompted a request for “directions” from Philadelphia, and a letter on the subject was dispatched.11 New York, as one of the colonies that had not been affected by the Restraining Acts, was uncertain as to what trade should be undertaken in view of the limitations placed on other provinces. On 13 October the New York Provincial Congress asked Congress for still more “directions,” this time as to “whether the inhabitants of this Colony ought to be prevented from exporting provisions or other articles to any places whatsoever, except those interdicted by the general association of the Congress.”12

In the letter to McDougall, 17 October, below, Jay professed bewilderment at New York’s confusion over Congress’s interpretation of the Continental Association. However, the individual colonies had good ground to seek guidance on points that divided the Congress itself and were never fully resolved in the last winter before independence.13