[Footnote 1: John Adams's Diary, August 31, 1774, quoting Lynch.]
The Boston Tea Party was as sensational as if it had sprang from the brain of a Paris Jacobin in the French Revolution. It created excitement among the American Colonists from Portsmouth to Charleston. Six more of the Colonies enrolled Committees of Correspondence, Pennsylvania alone refusing to join. In every quarter American patriots felt exalted. In England the reverse effects were signalized with equal vehemence. The Mock Indians were denounced as incendiaries, and the town meetings were condemned as "nurseries of sedition." Parliament passed four penal laws, the first of which punished Boston by transferring its port to Salem and closing its harbor. The second law suspended the charter of the Province and added several new and tyrannical powers to the British Governor and to Crown officials.
On September 5, 1774, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. Except Georgia, every Colony sent delegates to it. The election of those delegates was in several cases irregular, because the body which chose them was not the Legislature but some temporary body of the patriots. Nevertheless, the Congress numbered some of the men who were actually and have remained in history, the great engineers of the American Revolution. Samuel Adams and John Adams went from Massachusetts; John Jay and Philip Livingston from New York; Roger Sherman from Connecticut; Thomas Mifflin and Edward Biddle from Pennsylvania; Thomas McKean from Delaware; George Washington, Patrick Henry, Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and Richard H. Lee from Virginia; and Edward and John Rutledge from South Carolina. Although the Congress was made up of these men and of others like them, the petitions adopted by it and the work done, not to mention the freshets of oratory, were astonishingly mild. Probably many of the delegates would have preferred to use fiery tongues. Samuel Adams, for instance, though "prematurely gray, palsied in hand, and trembling in voice," must have had difficulty in restraining himself. He wrote as viciously as he spoke. "Damn that Adams," said one of his enemies. "Every dip of his pen stings like a horned snake." Patrick Henry, being asked when he returned home, "Who is the greatest man in Congress," replied: "If you speak of eloquence, Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina is by far the greatest orator; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on that floor." The rumor had it that Washington said, he wished to God the Liberties of America were to be determined by a single Combat between himself and George. One other saying of his at this time is worth reporting, although it cannot be satisfactorily verified. "More blood will be spilled on this occasion, if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America." The language and tone of the "Summary View"—a pamphlet which Thomas Jefferson had issued shortly before—probably chimed with the emotions of most of the delegates. They adopted (October 14, 1774) the "Declaration of Rights," which may not have seemed belligerent enough for the Radicals, but really leaves little unsaid. A week later Congress agreed to an "Association," an instrument for regulating, by preventing, trade with the English. Having provided for the assembling of a second Congress, the first adjourned.
As a symbol, the First Congress has an integral importance in the growth of American Independence. It marked the first time that the American Colonies had acted together for their collective interests. It served notice on King George and Lord North that it repudiated the claims of the British Parliament to govern the Colonies. It implied that it would repel by force every attempt of the British to exercise an authority which the Colonists refused to recognize. In a very real sense the Congress thus delivered an ultimatum. The winter of 1774/5 saw preparations being pushed on both sides. General Thomas Gage, the British Commander-in-Chief stationed at Boston, had also thrust upon him the civil government of that town. He had some five thousand British troops in Boston, and several men-of-war in the harbor. There were no overt acts, but the speed with which, on more than one occasion, large bodies of Colonial farmers assembled and went swinging through the country to rescue some place, which it was falsely reported the British were attacking, showed the nervous tension under which the Americans were living. As the enthusiasm of the Patriots increased, that of the Loyalists increased also. Among the latter were many of the rich and aristocratic inhabitants, and, of course, most of the office-holders. Until the actual outbreak of hostilities they upheld the King's cause with more chivalry than discretion, and then they migrated to Nova Scotia and to England, and bore the penalty of confiscation and the corroding distress of exile. In England during this winter, Pitt and Burke had defended the Colonies and the Whig minority had supported them. Even Lord North used conciliatory suggestions, but with him conciliation meant that the Colonies should withdraw all their offensive demands and kneel before the Crown in penitent humiliation before a new understanding could be thought of.
Meanwhile Colonel Washington was in Virginia running his plantations to the best of his ability and with his mind made up. He wrote to his friend Bryan Fairfax (July 20, 1774):
As I see nothing, on the one hand, to induce a belief that the Parliament would embrace a favorable opportunity of repealing acts, which they go on with great rapidity to pass, and in order to enforce their tyrannical system; and on the other, I observe, or think I observe, that government is pursuing a regular plan at the expense of law and justice to overthrow our constitutional rights and liberties, how can I expect any redress from a measure, which has been ineffectually tried already? For, Sir, what is it we are contending against? Is it against paying the duty of three pence per pound on tea because burthensome? No, it is the right only, we have all along disputed, and to this end we have already petitioned his Majesty in as humble and dutiful manner as subjects could do[1]….
And has not General Gage's conduct since his arrival, (in stopping the address of his Council, and publishing a proclamation more becoming a Turkish bashaw, than an English governor, declaring it treason to associate in any manner by which the commerce of Great Britain is to be affected) exhibited an unexampled testimony of the most despotic system of tyranny, that ever was practised in a free government? In short, what further proofs are wanted to satisfy one of the designs of the ministry, than their own acts, which are uniform and plainly tending to the same point, nay, if I mistake not, avowedly to fix the right of taxation? What hope then from petitioning, when they tell us, that now or never is the time to fix the matter? Shall we after this, whine and cry for relief, when we have already tried it in vain? Or shall we supinely sit and see one province after another fall a prey to despotism?[2]
[Footnote 1: Ford, II, 421-22.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., 423-24.]
In the early autumn Washington wrote to Captain Robert MacKenzie, who was serving in the Regular British Army with Gage at Boston: