been left for posterity to determine, but the crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom shall make us tame and abject slaves."
Delegates from the several counties assembled at Williamsburgh, on the 1st of August. They were six days in session, and appointed Washington, Randolph, Henry, and others, as delegates to represent Virginia in the General Congress.
Strong expressions of determined opposition to the port bill, and assurances of support to the disfranchised citizens of Boston, were made wherever the act became known. At New York there was a considerable struggle between the friends of the administration and the friends of liberty, but the latter at length prevailed by the influence and management of those patriotic individuals, who had on several occasions manifested great activity and zeal in their opposition to the obnoxious measures of the ministry. Addresses were also sent from Connecticut, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, and other colonies, to the committee in Boston, assuring them of support, and declaring that they considered the cause of Boston as the common cause of the country.[1]
The General Court met, May 25th, not without heavy foreboding as to what was before them. General Gage's first official act did not tend to remove their apprehensions, for he went to the very extent of his authority under the charter, in rejecting thirteen out of the twenty-eight elected counsellors. But the Representatives of the people did not lose heart: they persevered in the work which they had in hand. The governor adjourned the court to Salem, an offensive act on his part; but the members remained steadfast to their purpose. They adopted
- ↑ In an able article in the New York Review for April, 1839, on "The Congress of 1774," there is collected from the American Archives, a summary of the earliest dates in which, in each colony, the subject of a General Congress was acted upon by any public assemblage:—
1774 "By a town-meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, May 17. By the committee of a town-meeting in Philadelphia, " 21. By the committee of a town-meeting in New York " 23. By the Members of the dissolved House of Burgesses of Virginia, and others at Williamsburgh, May 27. By a county-meeting in Baltimore, " 31. By a town-meeting in Norwich, Con- necticut, June 6. By a county-meeting in Newwark, New- Jersey, " 11. By the Massachusetts House of Repre- sentatives, and by a town-meeting in Faneuil Hall, the same day, " 17. By a county-meeting in Newcastle, Delaware, " 29. By the committee of correspondence in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 6. By a general province-meeting in Charleston, S.C., July 6,7,8. By a district-meeting at Wilmington, N.C., July 21. "A comparison of these dates will at once show how strong was the instinct of union, which, at this period, pervaded the country, and how prompt the colonies were in adopting that principle of combination which served as the direct antagonist to the policy of the British ministry, designed as it was, by confining its obnoxious measures to one colony, to diminish the probability of a united resistance. In looking to these dates, it should also be remembered that the colonial action, in some instances, was independent of that of an earlier date in other colonies. In Virginia, the recommendation of a Congress was adopted two days before the intelligence was received of a similar measure, several days earlier, both in Philadelphia and in New York."
