Not since the time of British rule have rights in North America been so extensively trampled. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers left behind a blueprint for organizing patriots to peacefully stand up to such intrusions: the Committees of Correspondence.
Our goal is to rebuild the Founding Fathers’ system for uniting patriots in the common cause of liberty, and to use that system to peacefully reassert our rights.
Created by Sam Adams in 1772, the Committees of Correspondence system began when groups of patriots formed small, local, easy-to-start Committees in their respective towns and cities across the colonies. The Committees were an important part of American history, a principle factor in major events like the aforementioned Continental Congress, the Boston Tea Party, and Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride.
Committee Missions
Each Committee, which typically had between 3 and 21 members, had two missions:
- Meet regularly to draft and publish Proclamations to educate the general public of their rights, how they are being violated, and what remedies exist.
- Communicate regularly with other Committees, forming a loose patriot network for purposes of coordination and support.
By fulfilling these missions, the Committees of Correspondence galvanized support for the patriotic cause and united geographically dispersed patriots. They began to not only form at the town-level, but the colony-level and eventually the continental level as the Continental Congress.
Beyond their twin missions listed above, each Committee of Correspondence became caretakers of their respective communities.