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PART V.

MEMBER OF THE CONGRESS.

PART V.

CHAPTER I.

FIRST MEASURES.

DELEGATES to the Congress began to reach Philadelphia soon after Franklin's arrival. May the ninth, the four members from South Carolina landed from the Charleston packet, and had joyful welcome. The next day, approached in a body the delegates from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware; George Washington and Patrick Henry among them. There was no drilling in the public grounds of Philadelphia on that day. The officers of all the city companies, and nearly every gentleman who could get a horse, five hundred mounted men in all, rode six miles out of town to meet the coming members and escort them to the city. At the distance of two miles the cavalcade was met by the companies of foot and a band of music. All Philadelphia gathered in the streets, at the windows, on the housetops, to see the procession pass, and salute the delegates with cheers.* The day after, arrived the members from New England, New York, and New Jersey, whose whole journey had been an ovation. In the friendly manner of the time, the members all dined together a day or two after assembling. "Your health, was among the foremost," wrote Franklin to Burke. Congress met on the tenth of May; nearly the whole of its sixty-three delegates present. Few readers need to be reminded of the proceedings of that immortal body which adopted the New England army as its own; which elected George Washington commander-in-chief; which heard the news of the battle of Bunker Hill; which issued continental money; which accepted the supreme direction of colonial resistance. Most worthily has Mr. Bancroft

* Diary of Christopher Marshall, p. 28.

related its first unanimity, its subsequent hesitation, its firm determination to resist the ministerial measures, its reluctance to sever the tie which had bound the parts of the empire together, its extreme caution, its practical wisdom. We have to do with little more than Franklin's part in its deliberations and resolves.

It soon appeared that the proprietary party of Pennsylvania, represented by Mr. John Dickinson, was the clog upon the wheel, and that John Adams was the propelling force. Mr. Dickinson, besides possessing a great fortune, was subjected (so says John Adams) to domestic influences which amiable and timid men do not resist. The Quakers, Mr. Adams reports, had intimidated Mr. Dickinson's wife and mother, who continually distressed him with remonstrances. His mother said to him, "Johnny, you will be hanged; your estate will be forfeited and confiscated; you will leave your excellent wife a widow, and your charming children orphans, beggars, and infamous." Mr. Adams comments upon this with his usual robust candor: "From my soul I pitied Mr. Dickinson. I made his case my own. If my mother and my wife had expressed such sentiments to me, I am certain that, if they did not wholly unman me, and make me an apostate, they would make me the most miserable man alive."

Mr. Dickinson accordingly favored what his impetuous opponent styled "that measure of imbecility," a second petition to the king, to be conveyed to England by Governor Richard Penn. This was the first dividing question that came before Congress. Mr. Adams, and all the more ardent spirits opposed it as useless, and worse than useless. One day, after Mr. Adams had spoken against the petition, he met Mr. Dickinson in the State House yard, when a very disagreeable scene occurred. "He broke out upon me," Mr. Adams relates, "in a most abrupt and extraordinary manner, in as violent a passion as he was capable of feeling, and with an air, countenance, and gestures, as rough and haughty as though I had been a schoolboy and he the master: 'What is the reason, Mr. Adams, that you New England men oppose our measures of reconciliation? There now is Sullivan, in a long harangue, following you in a determined opposition to our petition to the king. Look ye! if you don't concur with us in our peaceful system, I and a number of us will break off from you in New England, and we will carry on the op position in our own way.' I own I was shocked with this magis

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