School History of North Carolina : from 1584 to the present time

by John W. Moore

5. How did Governor Martin act concerning the Legislature? What declaration was made by him?

6. Where did the next Assembly meet, and what was done with it?

7. What letters were received during the session? What was done with the proposition?

8. Who composed the Committee of Correspondence? What is said of these men?

CHAPTER XXIII.

FIRST PROVINCIAL CONGRESS.

A. D. 1774.

1774. By this time the propriety of holding a general or Continental Congress, composed of delegates or representatives duly chosen by the several colonies, had suggested itself to men of sagacity in every portion of the country. Wherever made, the suggestion at once found a lodgment in public favor, and by the time summer had come it was a generally accepted fact that such a congress would be held, and the time and place of its session pretty well agreed upon. During the month of June, 1774, each colony, through its Committee of Correspondence, was invited to send delegates to a Continental Congress, to be held in Philadelphia during the coming September.

2. From its first agitation, the project of a Continental Congress, to consider the best ways and means of redressing the grievances of the colonists, was exceedingly distasteful to Governor Martin, for he regarded it as a most efficient way to organize rebellion. He resolved that he would prevent North Carolina from participating in such a Congress, as Governor Tryon had prevented her from participating in a similar one in 1765. To this end he determined that during the continuance of the existing disturbed condition of the colonies no Legislature should meet in North Carolina, thinking thereby to prevent the due election of delegates from the province.

3. To this fixed purpose on the part of Governor Martin, made known to John Harvey through Mr. Biggleston, the Governor's Private Secretary, the Congress held at New Bern in August, 1774, owed its existence. When Mr. Biggleston told him the Governor did not intend to call another Legislature "until he saw a chance to get a better one," Harvey replied, "then the people will convene one themselves." Accordingly, about the first of July, in accordance with a plan agreed upon three months before between Willie Jones of Halifax, Samuel Johnston of Chowan and Edward Buncombe of Tyrrell, Harvey, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, issued handbills calling upon the people to elect delegates to a Provincial Congress, as it was called, to assemble in New Bern on the 25th of August, to express the sentiments of the people on the acts lately passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, and to appoint delegates to represent the province in a Continental Congress. The handbills of this bold Speaker also invited the people to invest the deputies whom they might send to New Bern "with powers obligatory on the future conduct of the inhabitants."