Traditionally, authorship of the three sections was attributed to Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and Benjamin Church, respectively, but historian Richard Brown argued that solitary authorship of any section was unlikely, and that each part was probably the group effort of a committee.
[2] A fourth section contained correspondence between Governor Thomas Hutchinson and the town of Boston.
Colonists were alarmed because this was a step away from representative government, effectively making their leading officials independent of the electorate.
In 1773, the Boston Committee of Correspondence printed 600 copies of the pamphlet and distributed them throughout the colony.
[4] Dozens of Massachusetts towns responded by passing similar resolves and forming their own committees of correspondence, which helped promote colonial unity in the evolving crisis that led to American independence.