The Provincial Assembly did indeed meet at Salem, but solemnly resolved that it was expedient, at once, to call a General Congress of all the Colonies, to meet the unexpected disfranchisement of the people, and appointed five delegates to attend such Congress. All the Colonies except Georgia, whose governor prevented the election of delegates, were represented.
This body, known in history as the First Continental Congress, assembled in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, on the fifth day of September, 1774. Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was elected president, and Charles Thompson, of Pennsylvania, was elected secretary. Among the representative men who took part in its solemn deliberations must be named Samuel Adams and John Adams, of Massachusetts; Philip Livingstone and John Jay, of New York; John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania; Christopher Gadsden and John Rutledge, of South Carolina; Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and George Washington, of Virginia.
During an address by Lord Chatham before the British House of Lords, he expressed his opinion of the men who thus boldly asserted their inalienable rights as Englishmen against the usurping mandates of the Crown, in these words: “History, my lords, has been my favorite study; and in the celebrated writers of antiquity have I often admired the patriotism of Greece and Rome; but, my lords, I must declare and avow, that in the master states of the world, I know not the people, or senate, who, in such a complication of difficult circumstances, can stand in preference to the delegates of America assembled in General Congress at Philadelphia.” This body resolved to support Massachusetts in resistance to the offensive Acts of Parliament; made a second “Declaration of Rights,” and advised an American association for non-intercourse with England. It also prepared another petition to the King, as well as an address to the people of Great Britain and Canada, and then provided for another Congress, to be assembled the succeeding May. During its sessions, the Massachusetts Assembly also convened and resolved itself into a Provincial Congress, electing John Hancock as president, and proceeded to authorize a body of militia, subject to instant call, and therefore to be designated as “Minute Men.” A Committee of Safety was appointed to administer public affairs during the recess of the Congress. When Captain Robert Mackenzie, of Washington’s old regiment, intimated that Massachusetts was rebellious, and sought independence, Washington used this unequivocal language in reply: “If the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, I add, as my opinion, that more blood will be spilled than history has ever furnished instances of, in the annals of North America; and such a vital wound will be given to the peace of this great country, as time itself cannot cure, or eradicate the remembrance of.”
Early in 1775 Parliament rejected a “Conciliatory Bill,” which had been introduced by Lord Chatham, and passed an Act in special restraint of New England trade, which forbade even fishing on the banks of Newfoundland. New York, North Carolina, and Georgia were excepted, in the imposition of restrictions upon trade in the middle and southern Colonies, in order by a marked distinction between Colonies, to conserve certain aristocratic influences, and promote dissension among the people; but all such transparent devices failed to subdue the patriotic sentiment which had already become universal in its expression.
At that juncture the English people themselves did not apprehend rightly the merits of the dawning struggle, nor resent the imposition by Parliament, of unjust, unequal, and unconstitutional laws upon their brethren in America. Dr. Franklin thus described their servile attitude toward the Crown: “Every man in England seems to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign; seems to jostle himself into the throne with the King; and talks of ‘our subjects in the Colonies.’”
The ferment of patriotic sentiment was deep, subtle, intense, and ready for deliverance. The sovereignty of the British crown and the divine rights of man were to be subjected to the stern arbitrament of battle. One had fleets, armies, wealth, prestige, and power, unsustained by the principles of genuine liberty which had distinguished the British Constitution above all other modern systems of governmental control; while the scattered two millions of earnest, patriotic Englishmen across the sea, who, from their first landing upon the shores of the New World had honored every principle which could impart dignity and empire to their mother country, were to balance the scale of determining war by the weight of loyalty to conscience and to God.
CHAPTER III.
THE OUTBREAK OF REPRESSED LIBERTY.
British authority, which ought to have gladly welcomed and honored the prodigious elasticity, energy, and growth of its American dependencies, as the future glory and invincible ally of her advancing empire, was deliberately arming to convert a natural filial relation into one of slavery. The legacies of British law and the liberties of English subjects, which the Crown did not dare to infringe at home, had been lodged in the hearts of her American sons and daughters, until resistance to a royal decree had become impossible under any reasonable system of paternal care and treatment. Colonial sacrifices during Indian wars had been cheerfully borne, and free-will offerings of person and property had been rendered without stint, upon every demand. But it seemed to be impossible for George the Third and his chosen advisers to comprehend in its full significance, the momentous fact, that English will was as strong and stubborn in the child as in the parent.
Lord Chatham said that “it would be found impossible for freemen in England to wish to see three millions of Englishmen slaves in America.”
Respecting the attempted seizure of arms rightly in the hands of the people, that precipitated the “skirmish,” as the British defined it, which occurred at Lexington on the nineteenth day of April, 1775, Lord Dartmouth said: “The effect of General Gage’s attempt at Concord will be fatal.”