By unanimous consent, Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was chosen president; to each province was given one vote; they proceeded in their deliberations with closed doors; and a committee, composed of two persons from each province, was appointed to state the rights of the colonies in general, together with every known instance in which these rights had been infringed by the mother-country, and the proposed means of redress. The conduct of Massachusetts, in her “conflict with wicked ministers,” was approved, and a continuance of supplies for her relief was voted. A letter of remonstrance was addressed to the governor, General Gage, who was erecting fortifications on Boston Neck, begging him to “desist from military operations, lest a difference altogether irreconcilable should arise between the colonies and the parent state.”
The committee appointed for that purpose drew up a document setting forth, in a string of resolutions, the rights of the colonies, which, being approved, was published as the well-known “Bill of Rights.” A suspension of all commercial intercourse with Great Britain was resolved upon, until the grievances of the colonies were redressed; an address to the king was voted, together with others to the people of Great Britain and British America. The non-importation agreement bound them, “under the sacred ties of virtue, honour, and love of liberty,” not to import or use any British goods after the 1st of December, 1774, particularly the articles, tea and molasses. Agriculture, the arts and manufactures, were to be promoted in America by all possible means; committees were appointed to see this agreement entered into, and all who violated it were to be regarded as enemies to their country. To the honour of this assembly it must be stated, that they bound themselves also not to be in any way concerned in the slave-trade.
The proceedings of this congress awoke, as might be expected, a still stronger spirit of animosity in England. In vain the congress deplored to the king “the apprehension of his colonists being degraded into a state of servitude from the pre-eminent rank of English freemen;” in vain they besought that “the royal indignation might fall on those designing and dangerous men, who, by their misrepresentations of his American subjects, had compelled them by the force of accumulated injuries to disturb his majesty’s repose;” in vain they prayed for “peace, liberty, and safety; wishing not the diminution of the royal prerogative, nor soliciting the grant of any new right in their favour;” in vain they concluded their petition by earnestly beseeching the king, “as the father of his whole people, not to permit the ties of blood, of law, and loyalty, to be broken.” In vain did Lord Chatham stand before the British senate as the eloquent advocate of America, declaring that the way must be immediately opened for reconciliation, or it would be soon too late. “His majesty,” argued he, “may indeed wear his crown, but the American jewel out of it, it will not be worth wearing. I say,” continued he, taking up the argument of American wrongs, “you have no right to tax the colonies without their consent. They say truly, representation and taxation must go together; they are inseparable. This wise people speak out. They do not hold the language of slaves; they tell you what they mean. They do not ask you to repeal your laws, as a favour; they claim it as a right—they demand it; and the acts must be repealed. Bare repeal, however, will not satisfy this enlightened and spirited people. You must go through with the work; you must declare that you have no right to tax them; thus they may trust you—thus they will have some confidence in you.”
In vain did the merchants of London and other commercial towns petition in favour of America. Dr. Franklin and other colonial agents were refused a hearing before the house. America was condemned. The two houses of parliament, by a large majority, assured the king that “the Americans had long wished to become independent, and only waited for ability and opportunity to accomplish their design. To prevent this, therefore, and to crush the monster in its birth, was the duty of every Englishman; and this must be done, at any price and at every hazard.” Such was the temper of parliament.
In the meantime, the colonies were not indifferent to the increasing difficulties of the times. Massachusetts already assumed a military aspect. The congress, which, spite of the opposition of the governor, continued to hold its sittings, seeing that the military stores were already seized by the governor, proceeded themselves to take measures for the defence of the province. £20,000 were voted for this purpose, and the collectors of taxes received orders no longer to forward their moneys to the government treasurer, but to a new one of their own appointment. Further, it was ordained that a number of the inhabitants should be enrolled as a militia of 12,000 men, ready to march at a minute’s notice; officers were chosen, and committees of supplies and safety held their regular sittings. Gage denounced their proceedings, but no notice was taken of his denunciations; “he had no support except in his own troops and a few trembling officials, while the zealous co-operation of an intelligent, firm, energetic, and overwhelming majority of the people, gave to the provincial congress all the strength of an established government.”[[14]]
In November, at the very time when the king and the British parliament were resolving to keep terms no longer with the colonies, Massachusetts sent agents to New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut, to inform them of her measures, and to solicit their co-operation in raising an army of 20,000 men, ready to act in case of need.
In the midst of all these growing internal excitements, and while the colonists were deeply occupied in the maintenance of their rights, the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia were again visited by the miseries of Indian warfare. It was at this time that the family of the famous chief Logan, an old and faithful friend of the whites, was murdered in cold blood; and this and other atrocities committed by the explorers of Ohio and Kentucky, led to the sorrows of the present Indian war. Daniel Boone, the hunter of the Kentucky plains, was placed in command of a frontier fort by Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, and a war of extermination was carried on against the Indians. At length, negotiations of peace were entered into, and it was on this occasion that Logan made his celebrated speech: “I appeal to any white man,” spoke the eloquent chief of the forest, “if he ever entered the cabin of Logan hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin; and such was his love for the whites, that his countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white men!’ I even thought to live with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresop, last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not sparing women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature! This called on me for revenge! I have fully glutted my vengeance! For my people, I rejoice at the beams of peace; but mine is not the joy of fear—Logan never felt fear. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!”
At the commencement of 1775, America very generally stood in a position of hostility to the mother-country. The congress of Massachusetts had held its third sitting; volunteers were in arms throughout the province, and every town had its committees of safety, correspondence and inspection. John Thomas, of Plymouth, and William Heath, a Roxbury farmer, were appointed generals of the Massachusetts army.
In Rhode Island, in consequence of the royal prohibition of the exportation of military stores to America, and the removal of armed ships from Narrangansett Bay, the people of Providence conveyed forty-four pieces of cannon thither from Newport; and when called upon by the British naval commander for an explanation, Governor Wanton, a stout patriot, bluntly replied, that they were removed to prevent their falling into his hands, and were intended to be used against any force which might molest the colony. In New Hampshire, John Sullivan a lawyer, and John Langdon, a merchant of Portsmouth, headed a party who entered the fort at that place, and possessed themselves of 100 barrels of powder, cannon and small arms. The convention of Maryland ordered the enrolment of militia, and voted £10,000 for the purchase of arms. In Pennsylvania, the public spirit was less unanimous. The provincial convention of that province expressed themselves less decidedly than suited the temper of the ardent patriots, one of the leaders of whom was Thomas Mifflin, a young Quaker, possessed of much energy of character, and remarkable powers of popular eloquence. Mifflin, however, was an exception to the general body of Quakers, who, whatever their original opposition to established forms, have ever been loyal and obedient to the powers that be; and now, in their yearly meeting held in Philadelphia at the commencement of 1775, they put forth their “testimony of abhorrence to every measure and writing tending to break off the happy connexion of the colonies with the mother-country, or to interrupt their just subordination to the king.” Very different was the spirit of the sects and their ministers in New England. Everywhere it evinced opposition to the king and the mother-country, whose attempts to force an established episcopal church, with a bishop at its head, upon the colonies, had only tended still more to increase that very spirit of resistance which had first sent their forefathers to these shores. The Presbyterians of every New England state were all staunch Whigs. The episcopal clergy and their congregations, wherever found, were Tories; so also were the landed proprietors and merchants, especially the more recent settlers. The Episcopalian and Tory party was more numerous in New York than in any other of the northern provinces. In Georgia they were also considerable, and the influence of Governor Wright prevented this province from joining the American Association; and in the southern provinces, the law of primogeniture, which still considerably prevailed, together with the institution of slavery, had given rise to a local aristocratic class, totally opposed in sentiment to the democracy of the north.
These were the elements upon which England depended to establish her power in the coming contest;—nor were these all; she depended, not only on the loyalty and attachment of the Episcopalians everywhere, but on the peace-loving principles of the Quakers, who were an influential portion of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina; she expected if not aid, at least no opposition from the numerous German settlers, who, established in large colonies, had not yet acquired the English language nor amalgamated with the British colonists; and at the same time she depended for aid upon the Scotch Highlanders, who abounded in New York and North Carolina, and who were at the same time ignorant and loyal.