Committee of Correspondence

American  

noun

American History.

1. an intercolonial committee organized 1772 by Samuel Adams in Massachusetts to keep colonists informed of British anticolonial actions and to plan colonial resistance or countermeasures.

2. (sometimes lowercase)  any of various similar organizations formed for the same purpose during the late colonial period.

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Etymology

Origin of Committee of Correspondence

An Americanism dating back to 1760–70

Example Sentences

As almost every school child in this country once learned, Paul Revere, who was employed by the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety as “an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of important documents as far away as New York and Philadelphia,” played a key role in the American Revolution.

From Salon

I was managing the Committee of Correspondence feature, and the topic was “Does Microsoft Play Fair?”

From Slate

The very first issue featured “Committee of Correspondence,” in which a group of policy wonks discussed the issues of the day in a series of emails that were then posted to the site.

From Slate

And beer plays a very key role in "Sons of Liberty"; early patriots spend far more time hoisting a pint than they do, say, writing innumerable political essays for Boston's five newspapers or organizing and running town meetings, or forming the committee of correspondence system that led to the creation of the Continental Congress.

From Los Angeles Times

At that first Congress, Charles Thomson was unanimously elected its secretary despite being the leader of Philadelphia’s Committee of Correspondence and a man whose radicalism was so overt that John Adams would soon label him “the Samuel Adams of Philadelphia.”

From Scientific American