In the beginning of 1765 the British parliament followed up the declaratory resolution of the preceding year by passing an act for raising a revenue by a general stamp-duty through all the American colonies. The Assemblies of Massachusetts and Virginia protested against the act as unconstitutional. On the 7th of October a Conereaa, consisting of twenty-eight delegates, from the Assemblies of Massa chusetts, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Delaware counties, Mary land, and South Carolina, met in the city of New York. The results of its deliberations were, a petition to the king, a memorial to each House of Parliament, and a recommendation to the colonies to appoint special agents to solicit redress of grievances. The Stamp Act was never enforced ; and in 1766 it was repealed by parliament flat the repeal was accompanied by • declaratory act, asserting the right and power of the British Legislature to bind the colonies in all cases what ever ; and in conformity with this declaration an act was paned in 1767, imposing a duty on paper, glees, painteri-colours, and tem, to be paid by the colonists in the colonies. This act was met on the part of the Americans with the same determined spirit of resistance as the Stamp Act. The Assembly of Massachusetts addressed, in February 17es3, a circular letter to the burgesses and representatives of the people throughout the colonies, requesting them to unite to obtain redress. The colonial legislatures generally expressed their approval of this letter and were consequently dissolved. The members of the Massachusetts Assembly, on being dissolved by the governor, re assembled cruder the name of a Convention, and continued to sit and act as a legislature in defiance of his authority. When the new colonial legislatures met, in 1769, they proved as intractable as their predecessors. In 1770 Lord North, who lied succeeded the Duke of Grafton as premier, prepared • bill to repeal so much of the act of 1767 as Imposed duties on glue, paper, and paintere-colours, and to continue that part which imposed a duty on ten. Such an alteration could have no effect on the sentiments of the colonists, who objected to the right of the British parliament to tax them, not to the amount of the tax.
From the meeting of the Congress of 1765 till 1774, the authorities were able to carry into effect none of the parliamentary or ministerial measures throughout the thirteen colonies, except where soldiers were present to enforce them. But the resistance was everywhere local, spontaneoue, unpreconcerted, though none the less resolute. In 1771 the Regulators of North Carolina shut up the courts of justice, and were only put down after a pitched battle. Iu 1772 the colonists of Rhode Island captured the armed government schooner Onspee. In 1773 the citizens of Boston throw the cargoes of tea, which had been brought into their harbour notwithstanding their non-impertation resolutions, into the sea. Every attempt on the part of the govern ment officers to enforce the obnoxious laws called forth petitions, pro taste, and remonstrance. from the colonial legislatures; and when these bodies were di•solved, their members met as congresses or con ventions without the authority of the governor., and transacted business as before. The destruction of the tea in Boston in 1773 was punished in 1774 by an act of parliament ordering the port to be shut up. The enfereemeut of this act converted the community of Boston into martyrs for American liberty. At Philadelphia • suliacrip tion was set on foot for the poorer inhabitants; the Assembly of Vir ginia proclaimed a solemn fast to be observed on the day the port was closed ; the neighbouring ports offered the use of their stores and wharfs to the merchants of Boston. Boston became a central point
towards which the sympathies of all America converged—the nucleus of a combination of all the colonies. Committees of correspondence already existed in most of them. The first had been appointed at a town-meeting in Boston in 1772- another by the House of Burgesses of Vireinla in 1773. In June 1774 the Massachusetts House of Repre sentatives appointed a committee of five persons to meet committees or delegates from the other provinces at Philadelphia on the 1st of September. The colonies represented on this occasion were—New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. On the 14th the deputies from North Carolina arrived. This first Con tinental Congress continued to sit for eight weeks. During that period it prepared and published—I. A Declaration of flights, enu merating the acts by which they had been violated, and declaring a repeal of these acts indispensable to the restoration of harmony between Great Britain and the colonies. 2. A loyal address to the king. 3. An address to the people of Great Britain. 4. Letters to the people of Canada, to the colonies of St. John's, Nova Scotia, and Georgia, and the Floridan, inviting them to unite in the common cause of British America. 5. A memorial to the people of British America.
ThS resolutions of the Continental Congress received the sanction of the thirteen provincial congresses and colonial assemblies, with the exception of that of New York.
A second Congress met at Philadephia on tho 10th of May, but before that time hostilities had been commenced by the battle of Lexington in Massachusetts. The intimation of this collision to Con gress called forth a declaration that hostilities had already commenced, and that the colonies ought to be placed in a state of defence. On the 27th of May it was voted that 20,000 men should be immediately equipped, and George Washington appointed general and commander in-chief; articles of war were framed, and the organisation of the higher departments of the army commenced ; bills of credit were issued to defray the expenses of the war, and ttlie Twelve United Colonies' pledged for their redemption : in short, all the functions of an independent legislature were now assumed, and from this time continued to be carried on. Before the second Congress dissolved Georgia had elected delegates ; and the members of Congress despair ing of any of the mainland colonies wrested from the Trench and Spaniards joining their standard, had forbidden all exportations to Quebec, Nova Scotia, and East and West Florida, and prohibited the supply of provisions to British fisheries on the American coast. Thus, before the adoption of the Declaration of Independeuce, the United Colonies had already all the essentials of their future general govern ment as well as states' governments. The want of a chief magistrate was supplied by appointing an Executive Committee of twelve, one third of whom were to retire every year by rotation. The Declaration of Independence, framed by a committee of five persons), including John Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin, appointed by the third Congress for the purpose, was finally adopted by the delegates on the 4th of July, 1776; a day which has ever since been kept by the Americans as a public festival.