called a road, delivered at Frederick one hundred and thirtyseven barrels of flour as their remittance to the poor of Boston. Cheered by the universal sympathy, its inhabitants "were determined to hold out, and appeal to the justice of the colonies and of the world," trusting in God that "these things should be overruled for the establishment of liberty, virtue, and happiness in America."

George III. ranked "New York next to Boston in opposition to government." There was no place where a congress was more desired, and none where the determinations of the congress were more sure to be observed. The numerous emigrants from New England brought with them New England principles; the Dutch, as a body, never loved Britain. Of two great families which the system of manorial grants had raised up, the Livingstons inclined to republicanism, and, uniting activity to wealth and ability, exercised a predominant influence. The Delanceys-who, by taking advantage of temporary prejudices, had, four years before, carried the assembly-no longer retained the public confidence, and outside of the legislature their power was imperceptible.

After being severed from Holland, its mother country, New York had no attachment to any European state. All agreed in the necessity of resisting the pretensions of England; but differences arose as to the persons to be intrusted with the direction of that resistance, and as to the imminence and extent of the danger. The merchants wished no interruption to commerce; the Dutch Reformed church, as well as the Episcopalians, were not free from jealousy of the Congregationalists, and the large landholders were alarmed by the social equality of New England. The people of New York had destroyed consignments of the East India company's tea; but the British ministry bore their act without rebuke, striving by bland language to lull them into repose. The executive officers had for several years avoided strife with the assembly. The city had been the centre of British patronage, and friends had been won by the distribution of contracts, and sometimes by commissions in the army. The organs of the ministry were to promise on the part of the crown a spirit of equity, which its conduct toward the province seemed to warrant as sincere.

The lovers of peace, which is always so dear to a commercial community, revolted at the thought of an "appeal" to arms, caught eagerly at every chance of an honorable escape from a desperate conflict, and exerted themselves strenuously to secure the management of affairs to men of property. For this end, they relied on the ability of John Jay, a young lawyer of New York. Descended from Huguenot refugees, educated in the city at its college, of the severest purity of morals, an able writer, and a ready speaker, his superior endowments, his activity, and his zeal for liberty, were tempered by a love for order. He was both shy and proud, and his pride, though it became less visible, suffered no diminution from time. Tenacious of his purposes and his opinions, sensitive to indignities and prone to sudden resentments, not remarkable for self-possession, with a countenance not trained to concealment, neither easy of access nor prompt in his advances, he was alike without talents or inclination for intrigue, and but for his ambition, which he always subjected to his sense of right, he would have seemed formed for a life of study and retirement.

On the fourth of July 1774, it was carried in the committee of fifty-one that delegates should be selected to serve in the general congress. Sears, who was still foremost in the confidence of the mechanics, seconded by Peter van Brugh Livingston, a man of great intelligence, proposed John Morin Scott and Alexander Macdougall. Fitter candidates could not have been found; but they were both passed over by a great majority, and the committee nominated Philip Livingston, Alsop, Low, Duane, and Jay, all of whom as yet repressed the thought of independence. The mass of the inhabitants resolved to defeat this selection. On Wednesday, the sixth of July, many of them, especially mechanics, assembled in the Fields; and, with Macdougall in the chair, they recommended the Boston policy of suspending trade, and approved a general congress, to which, after the example of Virginia, they proposed to elect representatives by a colonial convention.

The committee of fifty-one, keeping steadily in view the hope of conciliation with England, disavowed the meeting in the Fields. A minority of nine, Sears, Macdougall, Van Brugh Livingston being of the number, in their turn disavowed the

committee from which they withdrew. The conservative party, on their side, offered resolutions which Jay had drafted, and which seemed to question the conduct of Boston in destroying the tea; but the people, moved by the eloquence of John Morin Scott, rejected them as wanting in vigor and tending to disunion.

In this way began the conflict of two parties which were to increase in importance and spread throughout the country. The one held to what was established and made changes only from necessity; the other welcomed reform and went out to meet it. The one anchored on men of property; the other on the mass of the people: the one, loving liberty, was ever anxious for order; the other, firmly attached to order which it never doubted its power to maintain, was mainly anxious for freedom.

During this strife in New York the inhabitants of South Carolina held in Charleston a meeting which continued through three days. The merchants, among whom were factors for British houses, agreed with the planters in the necessity of a congress, to which both parties, by way of compromise, referred the regulation of commerce. As the election of deputies was to be contested, the name of each voter was registered, and the ballot kept open till midnight on the seventh. It then appeared that the planters had elected Gadsden, Lynch, and John Rutledge, the boldest members of the congress of 1765, with Edward Rutledge and Middleton. The delegates elect were empowered to agree to a suspension of exports as well as imports. A general committee of ninety-nine was appointed, of whom the disproportionate number of thirty were taken from Charleston, and nearly all the rest from the parishes near the sea. In due time, the house of assembly, meeting at eight in the morning, just half an hour before the governor sent to prorogue them, confirmed these proceedings and ratified the choice of delegates to congress.

The convention of Pennsylvania, which, with Thomas Willing for its president, was but an echo of the opinion of Dickinson, recommended an indemnity to the East India company, dissuaded from suspending trade, and advised the gentler method of a claim of redress. The idea of independence they

disowned and abhorred. If Britain would repeal the obnoxious acts, they were ready to engage their obedience to the acts of navigation, and to settle an annual revenue on the king, subject to the control of parliament. They referred the choice of delegates to the proprietary assembly, in which Quakers and royalists had a majority; for Dickinson desired to maintain the proprietary government and charter.

These views, which were intended as instructions from the people to the men who might be chosen to represent them in congress, Dickinson accompanied with a most elaborate argument, in which the rights of the colonies were confirmed by citations from a long train of lawyers, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and divines, from the times of Sophocles and Aristotle to Beccaria and Blackstone. Tenderly susceptible to the ideas of justice and right, he refused to believe that a British ministry or king could be deaf to his appeals; and he shrunk from perilling the fortunes and lives of millions. His success. in allaying the impassioned enthusiasm of patriotism went beyond his intentions. The assembly of Pennsylvania, which was suddenly called together on the eighteenth of July, passed him over in electing their delegates to the continental congress, and preferred Galloway, their speaker, whose loyalty to the king admitted of no question and who was suffered to draw up his own instructions.

In New Jersey, Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, president of Princeton college, and "as high a Son of Liberty as any man in America," met the committee at New Brunswick; and with William Livingston labored to instruct their delegates that the tea should not be paid for. The matter was left to the general congress, to which William Livingston was chosen.

From New Hampshire, the members of its convention brought with them money, contributed by the several towns to defray the expenses of a representation in congress. The inhabitants of that province solemnized their action by keeping a day of fasting and public prayer. Massachusetts did the same; and Gage, who looked with stupid indifference on the spectacle of thirteen colonies organizing themselves as one people, on occasion of the fast issued a proclamation against "hypocrisy and sedition."

VOL. IV.-3

Meantime, New York had grown weary of dissensions. The persons nominated for congress gave in writing a satisfactory profession of their zeal for liberty; and, on the twentyseventh of July, the nomination was unanimously ratified by the inhabitants. Yet the delegation was lukewarm and divided, leaving Virginia to give the example of energy and courage.

Dunmore had issued writs for an assembly; but the delegates from the counties of Virginia none the less came together in convention. Illness detained Jefferson on the road, but he sent for inspection a paper which foreshadowed the declaration of independence. It was presented by Peyton Randolph, and printed by some of the delegates. Enumerating the grievances which affected all the colonies, it made a special complaint of a wrong to Virginia. "For the most trifling reasons," said he, "and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But, previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa; yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative, thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American states, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice." Of these words every heart acknowledged the justice. Moreover, the Fairfax resolves, in which George Mason and Washington had given their solemn judgment against the slave-trade, were brought by the Fairfax delegates before the convention; and, in August, that body came to the unanimous vote: "After the first day of November next we will neither ourselves import nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person, either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place."

On the affairs of Massachusetts the temper of the Virginians ran exceedingly high. "An innate spirit of freedom," such were the words of Washington, "tells me that the meas