HISTORICAL ADDRESS 
 
 AT THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM B. REED. 
 
 1838. 
 
i 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE PHILOMATHEAN SOCIETY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 Thursday, November 1st, a. d. 1838, 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM B. REfcD. 
 
 PRINTED BY T. K. & P. G. COLLINS, 
 
 No. 1 LODGE ALLEY. 
 
 1838. 
 
-97 
 
 2, 
 
 H 5^ 
 
Friday Evening, Nov. 2, 1838. 
 Sir, 
 
 The Philomathean Society has conferred upon us the 
 agreeable duty of communicating to you the following extract 
 from the minutes of a meeting held on Friday evening, Nov 2d. 
 Resolved, " That the thanks of this Society be presented to 
 William B. Reed, Esq., for the elegant and appropriate address 
 delivered before us on Thursday evening, Nov. 1st, and that a 
 copy be requested for publication." 
 
 . Yours, very respectfully, 
 I. W. BIDDLE, 
 E. C. WATMOUGH, 
 E. A. THOURON, 
 HENRY E. MONTGOMERY, 
 
 Committee. 
 To William B. Reed, Esq. 
 
 Philadelphia, Nov. 3, 183S. 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 I place at your disposal a copy of ■ the address de- 
 livered before the Society. It is rather an historical essay than 
 an oration, but I trust not less acceptable to you on that account. 
 How successful my experiment has been it is not for me to say. 
 I wished to call your attention to the unexplored sources of 
 our own history, and if any portion of the intelligent audience I 
 had the honor of addressing, learned any thing new connected 
 with that history, the highest aim I had is attained. 
 I am, with great regard, 
 
 Your friend and fellow member, 
 
 WILLIAM B. REED. 
 To Messrs. Biddle, Watmough, 
 Thouron, and Montgomery, 
 
 Committee. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Relinquishing the path which my predecessors have 
 pursued, I invite your attention to a subject that com- 
 mends itself by its intrinsic interest, its patriotic associa- 
 tions, its moral and political value. It is a theme worthy 
 of more minute illustration than can now be given to it : 
 the origin of our Revolutionary Union — the recorded 
 and traditionary history of the acts and influences that 
 led to the convocation of the first Continental Congress, 
 which met in Philadelphia in the month of September, 
 1774. 
 
 I do not pause to vindicate this choice. I am address- 
 ing an American literary association. Should what I 
 have to say this evening fail to excite the interest which 
 less practical themes in abler hands might produce, to 
 me at least it will not be a matter of surprise. 
 Neglected history has few charms. But should any 
 word of mine give a new impulse to the patriotism of 
 those who hear me ; should any one of you, young gen- 
 tlemen, in following me through details of vast and 
 
abiding interest to the cause of civil liberty and social 
 riwht, find that he has learned a new fact or secured a 
 
 o 7 
 
 clue to some new inquiry connected with the history of 
 his country; should what may now be novelties to many 
 of you tend hereafter to give rational vigour to the prin- 
 ciple of loyalty in your bosoms, my aim will be attained, 
 and all the reward that I promise myself secured. Great- 
 er will be that reward if the course I venture to indicate 
 be hereafter followed, and the anniversary addresses de- 
 livered in these halls be made historical expositions, to 
 which the student may have recourse as valuable re- 
 pertories of facts rescued from the loose grasp of 
 uncertain tradition or the mouldy pages of neglected 
 history. 
 
 None know but those who have critically examined it, 
 how rich are the spoils of time which our history con- 
 tains. Few can realise its true, though unappreciated 
 value — how much it is neglected and how often prosti- 
 tuted. Yes, prostituted — for he prostitutes the classic 
 history of this soil who uses it for the poor purposes of 
 contemporary strife, or explores its treasures merely to 
 find new phrases of adulation to some leader whom ac- 
 cident or faction may have raised to temporary distinc- 
 tion. The jewels of the Revolution suit not the attire of 
 the day. The armour of our age of chivalry would sink 
 a modern ' hero' in the dust. The old Puritan wanderer 
 
who travelled through Scotland to visit the graves of the 
 Cameronian sufferers, was the incarnation of a noble 
 sentiment — a sentiment which, where it ripens into a 
 rule of conduct, makes the pride of ancestry a virtue. 
 Time with him had not weakened the memory or tradi- 
 tion of " a broken covenant and a persecuted kirk," and 
 it was his enthusiasm to travel from churchyard to 
 churchyard, seeking no other recompense than the con- 
 sciousness that he had arrested the hand of decay, and 
 preserved, till some other enthusiast might appear to re- 
 new them, the epitaphs of patriotism and valour. 
 
 Such a feeling of veneration, such pride of lineage I 
 invoke for the study of our American memorials. The 
 invocation will not be in vain. 
 
 The pride of Revolutionary ancestry — the sense that 
 the blood which flows in his veins is the blood of a patriot 
 of the Revolution, is an heritage that no American should 
 disdain. It is more than a privilege ; it is " a sonorous 
 memento" of fidelity to the cause of republican institu- 
 tions and popular sovereignty; of the citizen's loyalty to 
 the State; of hereditary obligation to patriotic duty and 
 unwavering confidence in popular capacity. 
 
 Such an impulse, if encouraged, may divert many 
 an active mind from unprofitable pursuits, and arouse 
 many a sluggish mind to action. If one tithe of 
 the misdirected talent that now runs to waste through 
 
the columns of the periodical press were applied to the 
 minute and philosophic illustration of different periods 
 of our annals, how vast a fund might be accumulated for 
 the use of the historian hereafter. If the undisciplined 
 fancy that seeks indulgence in writing bad tragedies and 
 silly novels could be taught to turn to this worthier 
 theme, how masculine and characteristic might our lite- 
 rature be made. If, instead of the literary confectionary 
 with which the public mind is poisoned, American books 
 on American topics, written in an American spirit, could 
 find publishers and patrons — if the press were made 
 to realise that its stereotyped praises might be better 
 used than in dignifying with the name of literature the 
 effusions, whether in poetry or prose, of presumptuous 
 sciolists and underbred travellers — gossips abroad and 
 coxcombs 'every where; — if, finally, the bounty of the 
 rich were occasionally to find an object in the endow- 
 ment of institutes or professorships where American his- 
 tory could be taught accurately and elaborately, might 
 we not hope to see a different result 1 Would we not be 
 sure to find the young men of the Republic, not as they 
 now too often are, doubting, from sheer ignorance, the 
 success of our experiment of self government, but con- 
 fident in popular capacity ; familiar, not with the merits 
 of foreign politics alone and imbued with their spirit, 
 but acquainted thoroughly with the theory of our own 
 
domestic institutions, learned from our own domestic 
 history ? 
 
 I have known young Americans with sympathies so 
 ludicrously misdirected that they kept a careful record 
 of election returns after a dissolution of parliament, and 
 exulted as for a domestic political triumph, on the defeat 
 of some obscure candidate in some obscure borough in 
 Great Britain. Yet these same individuals would not 
 blush to confess their ignorance of what the " Writs of 
 Assistance" were at the outbreak of the Revolution, or to 
 boast their better acquaintance with the merits of par- 
 liamentary reform than those of parliamentary taxation. 
 I have known others who knew little else of the Revolu- 
 tion than its stores of gossip and scandal. If in any 
 loyalist chronicle or tory pamphlet, a slanderous asper- 
 sion on a patriot of the Revolution be detected, it is ad- 
 duced as proof of destitution of public virtue in a cause 
 that boasts so much. If, in the heat of political discus- 
 sion during those times, suspicions of patriotism or pub- 
 lic virtue were honestly or dishonestly expressed, suspi- 
 cions and charges which time has dissipated, and which, 
 with all the impurities of mortality, should be buried in 
 the graves of their authors, these miserable resurrection- 
 ists of slander employ their energies in digging up what 
 should no more be seen or thought of, and are not 
 2 
 
10 
 
 ashamed to argue thence against the theory of our free 
 institutions. This is the prostitution of our history. 
 
 Let no one suppose that the study of our History is 
 easy, or that the materials are ready to the student's 
 hand. Far from it. Short as is the interval from our 
 own days to those of the Revolution it is scarcely con- 
 ceivable with how little of its detail we are familiar. 
 The elementary works that have been published are not 
 only superficial, but generally inaccurate. Memoirs, in 
 themselves most valuable, are few in number. The fact 
 that the best history of the colonies is by a Scotchman, 
 and of the Revolution, by an Italian, (the latter having 
 from necessity become a school book,) neither of whom 
 had ever seen the country he describes, shows how poor 
 is his reliance who depends for a precise knowledge of 
 our history on what has been already published.* If 
 any one will take a given era, or chapter in our annals, 
 such, for instance, as the one I propose cursorily to 
 illustrate, he will feel the difficulty to which I allude. In 
 our elementary works, the Congress of 1774, the Parent 
 of the Confederation and the Constitution, is disposed of 
 in a single page of vague panegyric ; and, perhaps, the 
 
 * M. Botta, and Mr. Grahame. The historical work of Mr. Grahame, 
 recently revised and enlarged, is not as well known in this country as 
 it should be. Not only is it a work of great research and accuracy, but 
 it is written in a style and with a spirit that ought to make it popular. 
 It is decidedly the best work on our colonial history. 
 
11 
 
 sum of it all is the eulogy of the elder Pitt, " that its acts 
 would have done honour to Greece and Rome in their best 
 days." In order to understand such subjects properly, 
 the treasures of hidden manuscripts must be explored; 
 original journals and records perused; dates and tradi- 
 tionary legends collated; the newspapers of the day 
 cautiously scrutinised — all this and much more the stu- 
 dent of our history has to do before he can pretend to dis- 
 cover the hidden truth of times so little distant. With- 
 out claiming to have investigated the subject as tho- 
 roughly as it should be; in fact, content with pointing out 
 a path for others to pursue, and suggesting to your minds 
 a subject worthy of elaborate illustration, I now recur to 
 the text I have selected. 
 
 It would be out of place here to speculate on the 
 varied causes which led to the rupture between Great 
 Britain and her colonies. Those which political philoso- 
 phy has indicated are familiar to you. The ultimate 
 causes of the convocation of the first deliberative body of 
 the United Colonies are all that I shall notice here. One 
 word, however, as to the combination of causes more 
 remote. To my mind the best solution of that great 
 result is simply this— that the time had come, and that the 
 period was reached, when, by a law of political nature, 
 the child was to leave the parent's tutelage and become 
 its own master. Other causes, or combinations of causes, 
 
12 
 
 will be inadequate when we bear in mind that, in point 
 of fact, at the time of the rupture, the load of actual 
 grievance was little heavier than it had been for a long 
 series of years before. I speak now not so much of the 
 violation of constitutional rights as of the burthen of sub- 
 stantial and injurious oppression. The Colonies had 
 unquestioned constitutional rights. These rights were 
 coincident with their birth, and so far were they from 
 being first violated when complaint was made, the most 
 flagrant violation of them was, from long acquiescence, 
 rarely mentioned. The Navigation Acts, more than a 
 century old when the Revolution began, by which the 
 trade of the Colonies with other countries than Great 
 Britain was prohibited, were an indefensible infringement 
 of colonial rights. They too involved an actual griev- 
 ance quite as hard to bear as any which were afterwards 
 imposed. The act imposing a Stamp Tax was passed in 
 1765. It was repealed in 1766 when the Declaratory Act 
 was passed, asserting the right of Parliament to impose 
 taxes on the Colonies. True to their awakened sense of 
 colonial right, the patriots resisted the Stamp Act, and 
 murmured at the Declaratory Act. In no part of the 
 Colonies was the discontent stronger than in Pennsyl- 
 vania; yet, as the historical student well knows, by the 
 twentieth section of the Charter to William Perm, there 
 
13 
 
 was an express reservation of a Parliamentary right of 
 taxation.* 
 
 The excitement produced by the Stamp Act having 
 in great measure subsided, it was called into new action 
 by the Revenue Bill of 1768. This imposed a duty on 
 certain articles imported into the Colonies, and was de- 
 signed to avoid the objection to the Stamp Act as a 
 measure of internal taxation. It is not easy to distin- 
 guish in point of constitutionality between such an Act 
 as this and the Navigation Acts of Charles 2d, for, if 
 Government could constitutionally prohibit all commercial 
 intercourse except with the mother country, might it not 
 by parity of reasoning derive a tribute from that very 
 trade or any branch of it? As finally modified, the Reve- 
 nue Bill was far less oppressive than the Navigation 
 Acts. Indeed it involved an exemption from previous 
 imposition; for, through the agency of the East India 
 
 * " And further, our pleasure is and by these presents, for us, our 
 heirs and successors, we do covenant and grant to, and with the said 
 William Penn, his heirs and assigns, that we, our heirs and successors, 
 shall at no time hereafter, set, or make, or cause to be set, any imposition, 
 custom, or other taxation, rate or contribution whatsoever, in and upon 
 the dwellers of the aforesaid province, for their lands, tenements, goods 
 or chattels, or in and upon any goods or merchandise within the said 
 province, or to be laden or unladen within the ports or harbours of the 
 said province unless the same be with the consent of the proprietary, or 
 chief governor and assembly, or by Act of Parliament in England." 
 
 The 14th Section of the Charter recognised the validity and obli- 
 gation of the Laws of Trade and Navigation. 
 
14 
 
 Company, tea was to be imported into the Colonies at a 
 less price than it had been before the obnoxious act was 
 passed. Prior to the act, the foreign duty in Great 
 Britain was one shilling per pound. By the act this duty 
 was removed by drawback on tea destined for America, 
 and in place of it a duty of 3d. a pound was substituted, 
 payable in the Colonies. 
 
 If then, at the beginning of the year 1774, the Colonies 
 had no new oppression to complain of, may we not look 
 elsewhere for causes for the state of things which then 
 existed? They may, I repeat, be summed up in this, 
 that the maturity of provincial growth was reached, the 
 fulness of time was come; and it follows that, had the 
 policy of the British Government, which led first to dis- 
 content, been wholly abandoned, the result would scarcely 
 have been different. Any one who will examine the 
 pamphlets and other publications of the colonial press (in 
 the interval) from 1704 to 1773, will be satisfied that the 
 day for palliatives was passed, and that disease past 
 remedy was wasting Imperial authority on this side of 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 In saying this, let me not for a moment be understood 
 as questioning the sincerity of the murmurs which burst 
 from colonial America, prior to this period. To say that 
 there was little actual grievance, few of those modes of 
 oppression which invade the pocket, or restrain the person 
 
15 
 
 of the citizen, is to pay a just tribute to the quick sense 
 of abstract right, which saw with instinctive precision 
 each approach of danger. The spirit of liberty, which 
 hovered over the Pilgrims to Plymouth, spread her wings 
 over the continent. The community of colonial America 
 had for a century been restless, it scarcely knew why 
 or under what influence, and when, after the peace of 
 1763, the gratitude of the mother country for the assis- 
 tance of the Colonies during a long and bloody war, ex- 
 hibited itself in the form of new and wanton impositions 
 on trade, the period of submission was reached. From 
 that time forward, the progress of discontent was never 
 for a moment stayed. It would be curious to trace the 
 varied forms it assumed. Colonial representation in 
 Parliament was an early suggestion, which, however, was 
 soon abandoned. In an original and unpublished letter, 
 in my possession, of as early a date as 1764, the follow- 
 ing language is held by one who, twelve years after- 
 wards, signed the Declaration of Independence. " I am 
 greatly concerned that the Colonies are likely to have 
 such incumbrances laid upon them. I believe they must 
 each of them send one or two of their most ingenious 
 fellows, and enable them to get into the House of Com- 
 mons, and maintain them there till they can maintain 
 themselves, or else we shall be fleeced to some purpose. 
 This must be the work of time. After the mother coun- 
 
If) 
 
 try shall have added one oppressive measure to another, 
 and after our colleges shall have thrown into the lower 
 Houses of Assembly, men of more foresight and under- 
 standing than they now can boast of, perhaps the time 
 may come; you who are ten years younger than I am, 
 will stand a fairer chance of seeing and being concerned 
 in it than I shall."* The idea of such a representation, 
 similar it would seem to that which Canada recently 
 had in Parliament, or, indeed, any representation, on 
 any basis, was soon abandoned, and accordingly we 
 find in one of the Fairfax Resolutions, and the address 
 of the Congress to the Colonies, in 1774, a distinct 
 repudiation of any such mode of redress as idle and im- 
 practicable. 
 
 The fever of the blood never seemed to remit, and the 
 symptoms of the certain result, however concealed then, 
 cannot now be mistaken. In October, 1771, Samuel 
 Adams wrote to Authur Lee then in England, " Many 
 are alarmed, but are of different sentiments with regard 
 to the next step to be taken. Some, indeed, think that 
 every step has been taken but one. The ultima ratio 
 
 would require prudence, unanimity, fortitude This is 
 
 the general appearance of things here, while the people 
 
 * This is an extract from a letter from Richard Stockton, of New 
 Jersey, to a young friend then studying law in the Temple, who also 
 acted a distinguished part in the drama of the Revolution. 
 
17 
 
 are anxiously looking for some happy event on your side 
 of the water. For my own part, I confess, I have no 
 great expectation thence. I have long been of opinion 
 that America herself, under God, must work out her own 
 salvation." ' As early as October, 1770, John Dickinson 
 wrote to Mr. Lee, " After what has taken place I scarce- 
 ly know how to write of my unfortunate countrymen. 
 Your observations are extremely just. We must owe 
 our political salvation to the body of the people. No 
 martyred saint ever beheld his butchers with more de- 
 spairing pity, than I do the whole apparatus of tyranny. 
 But to move great bodies strongly, there must be an 
 appearance of deliberation in one's conduct. I am truly 
 moderate. I wish only for ' placidam sub libertate quie- 
 tem,' and I am for attaining the blessing by the most gentle 
 means. My countrymen have been provoked, but not 
 quite enough. Thanks to the excellent spirit of admin- 
 istration, I doubt not but proper measures will be taken 
 to provoke them still more. Some future oppression will 
 render them more attentive to what is offered to them; 
 and the calm friend of freedom, who faithfully watches 
 and calls out on a new danger, will be more regarded 
 than if he endeavours to repeat the alarm, or an attack 
 that is thought to be in a great measure repelled. I do 
 not despair. Our mercenaries have been defeated, our na- 
 3 
 
18 
 
 tive troops stand firm. There is a spirit and a strength in 
 the landholders of this continent, sufficient to check the 
 violence of any infamously corrupt ministry, and that the 
 most daring of them may find perhaps sooner than he 
 expects." In April, 1774, before the Boston Port Bill 
 reached America, Samuel Adams made this solemn 
 declaration, the first sentence of which is worthy the 
 pen of Milton. " The body of the people are now 
 in council. They are united. They are resolute. And 
 if the British administration and government do not re- 
 turn to the principles of moderation and equity, the evil 
 which they profess to aim at preventing by rigorous 
 measures, will the sooner be brought to pass, viz. the 
 entire separation and Independence of the Colonies." 
 
 Thus spoke the ardent and the moderate of those days; 
 and looking to their language, transparent as it is to the 
 strong impulses that agitated their minds, do we err in 
 the belief that causes of greater efficacy were at work, 
 which the patriots themselves did not detect, and that re- 
 medies which they supposed might heal the wound, would 
 have been wholly inoperative? The return of govern- 
 ment to principles of moderation and equity would have 
 availed little. The repeal of every obnoxious act, from 
 the Peace of Paris, might have delayed but would not 
 have averted the catastrophe. 
 
 Speculative wrongs were soon to merge in subjection 
 
19 
 
 to unequivocal and unmitigated despotism. In the latter 
 part of December, 1773, the tea shipped by the East 
 India Company arrived in America. Its fate is well 
 known. At Boston it was destroyed, and at none of the 
 Atlantic ports was it allowed an entry. There was in 
 the conduct of the colonists throughout, a stern dignity 
 — a resolute defiance of metropolitan power, that is 
 worthy all admiration. Nor was it less admirable as 
 involving but in a single instance, where popular endu- 
 rance was too much tried, any overt act of violence. It 
 is a libel on the Revolution to say that, "it sprang 
 from a Boston riot." The "Boston riot" was the 
 spasm of an agonised frame, and it is a profanation of 
 history to cite it as authority for the violence of the 
 hour, or the defiance of law, which the demagogues of 
 the day may seek to excite or justify. Boston, in the 
 language of one of her sons, had been so long " galled 
 without and vexed within," that patience with her had 
 ceased to be a virtue.* 
 
 In the interval that elapsed after the return of the tea 
 ships, and before the news of the decision of Government 
 reached this country, the minds of the colonists were 
 wound up to the most extreme tension. None could tell 
 what form ministerial vengeance would take, or to what 
 
 * Josiah Quincy Jun. 
 
20 
 
 extent it would be urged. The quiet of that interval 
 was the boding quiet which precedes the convulsion of 
 nature. The air was still, not a leaf moved, not a sound 
 was heard. The sternest patriot could not disguise his 
 solicitude, the cautious and timid trembled, and were 
 silent. It was like the period of the preceding century- 
 described by that beautiful Puritan writer and heroine 
 Mrs. Hutchinson : " The land was then att peace, (it be- 
 ing toward the latter end of the reigne of king James,) 
 if that quiettnesse may be called a peace, which was 
 rather like the calme and smooth surface of the sea, 
 whose darke wombe is allready impregnated of a horrid 
 tempest." 
 
 The bolts of ministerial vengeance did not slumber 
 long, and in the short space of two months, no less than 
 three special penal statutes were matured and enacted by 
 the Imperial Parliament. They were directed at Boston 
 and Massachusetts. The first was the Port Bill, by which 
 the harbour of Boston was blockaded, its trade suspended, 
 its privileges as a commercial city of the Empire annulled, 
 and its Custom House removed to Marblehead. The 
 next was the act altering the Charter of the province of 
 Massachusetts Bay, so as more effectually to enforce the 
 will of the officers of the crown; and the last and worst, 
 " the Act for the more impartial administration of Jus- 
 tice," by which persons charged with felonies were to be 
 
21 
 
 removed to England for trial. These bills were passed 
 by a steady ministerial majority, and after more or less 
 opposition on the part of those who were known in Par- 
 liament as the friends of the Colonies. They filled the 
 new chapter of provocation. 
 
 On Tuesday, May 10th, intelligence of the Port Bill 
 reached Boston. On the 12th, by another arrival, it was 
 received in New York, and on the 17th it was first known 
 in Philadelphia. The instant and coincident action of 
 the different communities shows how close was the bond 
 of sympathy by which they were united. There was no 
 pause in the expression of resentment, and at the instant 
 when the beacon was fired at Boston, a light burst from 
 every headland, and showed that there were watchmen 
 who were watching the coming of the common danger 
 from one end of the continent to the other. I shall not 
 intrude on the province of history by narrating here the 
 action of the colonists at the various prominent points, 
 but pass hastily to the remedy which was suggested and 
 adopted. 
 
 At Boston redress was proposed in the form of imme- 
 diate agreements of commercial non-intercourse with 
 Great Britain and the West Indies, and a special agent, 
 Mr. Paul Revere, the father of one of our respected fel- 
 low citizens, was sent southward as far as Philadelphia 
 to solicit the concurrent action of the Colonies. And 
 
22 
 
 here I may be allowed to correct an error that has crept 
 into all the histories of the times with respect to the first 
 formal recommendation of the mode of redress which 
 was adopted. I mean the convocation of a General 
 Congress. 
 
 Prior to 1774, there had been many suggestions of 
 something like an union of the Colonies through their 
 representatives in Congress. In April, 1773, Samuel 
 Adams said — "Should the correspondence from Virginia 
 produce a Congress and then an assembly of states, it 
 would require the head of a very able minister to speak 
 with so respectable a body. This, perhaps, is a mere 
 fiction in the mind of a political enthusiast ; ministers of 
 state are not apt to be disturbed with dreams." In April 
 1774, Arthur Lee, writing from London, stated as his 
 opinion, " that there ought to be a Congress." These 
 were private suggestions. Such a measure had been 
 adopted with beneficial effect at the time of the Stamp 
 Act, and seemed to be the only one which commended 
 itself alike to the moderate and the zealous. The friend 
 of government could not object when he knew that the 
 alternative was open resistance in the form of obstruc- 
 tions to trade. The patriot could not withhold his ap- 
 proval to a plan which, however productive of short 
 delay, secured concert of action and effective sympathy. 
 Thus acceptable to all when once formally suggested, it 
 
23 
 
 was promptly acceded to, and history has thought the 
 inquiry worth attention, to whom belongs the credit of 
 having at this crisis formally revived the plan. All the 
 elementary writers that I have consulted, as well as the 
 most accurate biographers who have examined the sub- 
 ject, have concurred in assigning the credit of this great 
 measure to our sister city of New York. The careful 
 examination of original papers that I have had occasion 
 to make satisfies me that this is an error, and that the 
 plan of a Congress was not only not first suggested in 
 New York, but was not proposed there at all till the 
 recommendation came from Philadelphia. 
 
 To neither community, however, in point of fact, does 
 the merit of the first public suggestion of a Congress be- 
 long. On the 17th May, 1774, a town meeting was held 
 at Providence, Rhode Island, called by warrant, at which 
 Samuel Nightingale acted as Moderator, and the follow- 
 ing resolutions were adopted: 
 
 " Resolved, That this town will heartily join with the 
 province of Massachusetts Bay and the other Colonies 
 in such measures as shall be generally agreed on by the 
 Colonies, for the protecting and securing their invaluable 
 rights and privileges, and transmitting the same to the 
 latest posterity. 
 
 "Resolved, That the deputies of this town be requested 
 to use their influence at the approaching session of the 
 
24 
 
 Gener.il Assembly of this Colony, for promoting a Con- 
 gress, as soon as may be, of the representatives of the 
 General Assemblies of the several Colonies and provinces 
 in North America, for establishing the firmest union and 
 adopting such measures as to them shall appear most 
 effectual to insure that important purpose, and to agree 
 upon proper methods for executing the same." 
 
 These resolutions, though prior to the action of New 
 York and Philadelphia, were probably for a time un- 
 known beyond the immediate neighborhood where they 
 originated. The question as to which of the two prin- 
 cipal cities of the colonies publicly agitated the proposi- 
 tion of a Congress still remains; and the error of giving, 
 in this matter, New York a precedence to Philadelphia, 
 is not affected by the anterior action of the Town Meet- 
 ing at Providence. 
 
 The first meeting that was held at New York after 
 the receipt of the Port Bill was on the 16th May, when 
 nothing was done beyond the appointment of a commit- 
 tee of fifty to correspond with the Colonies. On Tues- 
 day, 17th, the express arrived from Boston on its way to 
 Philadelphia. On Thursday, 19th, a second meeting 
 was called to ratify the proceedings of the former meet- 
 ing. At neither of these was there a suggestion made 
 as to a Congress. On Monday, the twenty-third of May, 
 
25 
 
 the Committee of Fifty met and adopted the following 
 Resolution : 
 
 " Ordered, that Mr. M'Dougall, Mr. Low, Mr. Duane 
 and Mr. Jay be a committee to prepare and report a 
 draft of an answer to the Boston Committee at 8 o'clock 
 P. M., to which hour the Grand Committee then ad- 
 journed. «• 
 
 At 8 o'clock the same evening (23d) the Grand Com- 
 mittee met, and the letter prepared by Mr. Jay recom- 
 mending a General Congress was reported and adopted. 
 This, says his biographer, was the first formal sugges- 
 tion of a Congress for the Colonies. At the same meet- 
 ing it was " Ordered, that the chairman send a copy of 
 this letter to the Committee at Boston, and to the Com- 
 mittee of Correspondence at Philadelphia, acknowledging 
 the receipt of a copy of their letter to Boston, and approving 
 the sentiments contained in it." 
 
 But in the interval, what was doing in this, our staid 
 and peaceful city, and what was the letter which the New 
 York gentlemen received from Philadelphia? On the 17th 
 or 18th of May, the Port Bill was published in the papers 
 of Philadelphia, and on that, or the next day, Mr. Revere 
 arrived from Boston. On Friday evening, May 20th, 
 between two and three hundred of the most respectable 
 inhabitants met at the City Tavern, when a Committee 
 4 
 
26 
 
 of Correspondence was appointed.* On the 21st the 
 Committee met and reported a letter to Boston, which 
 was adopted, signed and despatched by Mr. Revere. As 
 I have stated, it is dated two days before the New York 
 committee met, or Mr. Jay's letter was reported, and con- 
 tains the following passage, conclusive on this question of 
 precedence. 
 
 " By what means the truly desirable circumstance of 
 a reconciliation and future harmony with our mother 
 country, on constitutional grounds, may be obtained, is 
 indeed a weighty question. Whether by the method you 
 have suggested of a non-importation and non-exportation 
 agreement, or by a General Congress of Deputies from 
 the different Colonies, clearly to state what we conceive 
 to be our rights, and to make a claim, or petition of them 
 to his majesty, in firm but decent and dutiful terms, so as 
 that we may know by what line to conduct ourselves in 
 future, are now the great points to be determined. The 
 latter we have reason to think would be the most agree- 
 able to the people of the province, and the first step that 
 ought to be taken; the former may be reserved as our 
 last resource should the other fail, which we trust will 
 
 * It consisted of John Dickinson, William Smith, Edward Penington, 
 Joseph Fox, John Nixon, John M. Nesbit, Samuel Howell, Thomas 
 Mifflin, Joseph Reed, Thomas Wharton Jun., Benjamin Marshall, 
 Thomas Barclay, George Clymer, Charles Thomson, Jeremiah Warder 
 Jun., John Cox, John Gibson and Thomas Penrose. 
 
27 
 
 not be the case, as many wise and good men in the 
 mother country begin to see the necessity of a good un- 
 derstanding with the Colonies, upon the general plan of 
 liberty as well as commerce." 
 
 This letter dated the twenty-first was received and 
 acknowledged at New York on the twenty-third, and on 
 its receipt was the formal suggestion of a Congress made 
 by Mr. Jay in his letter to Boston. 
 
 This question of precedence disposed of, it would be 
 interesting, were time allowed me, to note the similarity 
 in many respects, of the movements at New York and 
 Philadelphia, and the difficulties which in each place the 
 friends of liberty had to overcome. A letter of Governeur 
 Morris, of that date, has been preserved, in which, in his 
 peculiar manner, and with what I may be permitted to 
 call his habitual sneer at every thing like popular move- 
 ment, he describes the tumult and disorder which distin- 
 guished the meetings of the 17th and 19th May, at New 
 York. The perplexities of the patriots in Philadelphia 
 were scarcely less. I have in my possession a manu- 
 script narrative of the events of that day, left by the late 
 Charles Thomson, who with his friends John Dickinson, 
 Joseph Reed, and Thomas Mifflin, were the principal 
 actors in the opening scene of the great drama. It 
 describes the meeting at the City Tavern, on the 20th 
 May, as composed of various and discordant materials. 
 
28 
 
 There were the proprietary interests, the sons of the prin- 
 cipal officers of government, the whigs, all impatient to 
 know what was to be laid before them, what was to be 
 said, what was to be done, all anxious to stimulate or com- 
 pose the excitement of the time. The narrative thus pro- 
 ceeds: (the writer generally speaking of himself in the 
 third person) " The room, though large, w r as exceedingly 
 crowded. The letter received from Boston was read, 
 after which Mr. Reed addressed the assembly with tem- 
 per, moderation, and in pathetic terms. Mifflin spoke 
 next with great warmth and fire. Thomson succeeded, 
 and pressed for an immediate declaration in favour of 
 Boston, and making common cause with her, but being 
 overcome with the heat of the room and fatigue, for he 
 had scarce slept an hour for two nights past, he fainted, 
 and was carried out into an adjoining room. Great 
 clamour was raised against the violence of the measures 
 proposed. Mr. Dickinson then addressed the meeting. 
 In what manner he acquitted himself I cannot say.* 
 After he had finished the clamour was renewed. Voices 
 were heard in different parts of the room, and all was in 
 
 * Mr. Reed, in describing the proceedings, says, "After Mr. Thomson 
 had fainted, he (Mr. R.) supported what he had previously said and sat 
 down, when Mr. Dickinson rose and recommended an address to the 
 Governor to call the Assembly; this being done in a few words he im- 
 mediately left the meeting and returned home." MS. in my posses- 
 sion.— W. B. R. 
 
29 
 
 confusion. A chairman was called for, to moderate the 
 meeting and regulate debates. Still the confusion con- 
 tinued. As soon as Mr. Thomson recovered, he returned 
 into the room. The tumult and disorder were past de- 
 scription. He had not strength to attempt opposing the 
 gust of passion, or to allay the heat by anything he could 
 say. He therefore simply moved a question that an 
 answer should be returned to the letter from Boston. 
 This was put and carried. He then moved for a Com- 
 mittee to write the answer. This was agreed to, and 
 two lists were immediately made out and handed to the 
 chair. The clamour was then renewed on which list a 
 vote should be taken. At length it was proposed that 
 both lists should be considered as one, and compose the 
 Committee. This was agreed to, and the company broke 
 up in tolerable good humour, both parties thinking they 
 had in part carried their point. At what time Mr. Dick- 
 inson left the room I cannot say, as a great many with- 
 drew when the tumult raged. Next day the Committee 
 met, and not only prepared and sent back an answer to 
 Boston, but also forwarded the news to the Southern 
 Colonies, accompanied with letters intimating the neces- 
 sity of a Congress of Delegates from all the Colonies to 
 devise measures necessary to be taken for the common 
 safety. It was then proposed to call a general meeting 
 of the inhabitants of the city at the State House. This 
 
30 
 
 required great address. The Quakers had an aversion 
 to town meetings, and always opposed them. However 
 it was so managed that they gave their consent, assisted 
 in preparing for this public meeting, and agreed on the 
 persons who should preside and those who should address 
 the inhabitants. The presidents agreed on were Dickin- 
 son, Willing and Penington. The speakers were Smith,* 
 Reed, and Thomson, who were obliged to write down 
 what they intended to say, and submit it to the revision 
 of the presidents. The meeting was held, and it was 
 resolved to make common cause with Boston." 
 
 At this crisis, the three Colonies whose action was 
 regarded with most solicitude, were Massachusetts, 
 Pennsylvania, and Virginia. We have seen that, while 
 in New England the first impulse was to resort to 
 extremities, by immediate non-intercourse and separate 
 colonial action, the patriots who there controlled the 
 counsels of discontent, simultaneously with their first 
 expressions of resentment, sent a special messenger to 
 Philadelphia to ascertain the views of their friends here. 
 Almost immediately on the return of that messenger, the 
 proposal of a Congress was cordially approved and 
 Philadelphia fixed as the place of its convention. 
 
 The " Ancient Dominion" was prompt in her action. 
 
 * The Rev. William Smith, Provost of the College. 
 
31 
 
 Virginia had been well grounded in the rudiments of dis- 
 content, and had been taught in the various contests 
 between the Assemblies and the Royal Governors, by- 
 how frail a tenure the rights of the Colonial subject would 
 be held if popular vigilance were once lulled to sleep. 
 There were also two elements of agitation in Virginia, 
 which could hardly be said to exist elsewhere. The 
 Church of England here had peculiar privileges that were 
 looked on with an evil eye by the dissenters, and against 
 which, as part and parcel of the appendages of Govern- 
 ment, sectarian and political animosity allied their forces. 
 " The Church of England," we are told by Mr. Burke,* 
 " was formed from its cradle under the nursing care of 
 regular government," and the instant that regular govern- 
 ment in Colonial America began to be threatened, it 
 hugged its foster child to its affrighted bosom, and made 
 at once the parent's and the infant's cause the same. 
 The dissenters, especially the Baptists, in Virginia threw 
 themselves at once into the ranks of political opposition, 
 and saw, in the progress and sure result of social disor- 
 ganisation, the issue of their polemical aspirations. 
 Besides this, there were castes in Virginia. There was 
 an order of spurious aristocracy, and there was a class of 
 men who had not the instinct of submission which belongs 
 
 * s 
 
 peech on Conciliation with America. 
 
32 
 
 to a people used to hereditary nobility. These sturdy 
 murmurers at the pretensions of the " untitled nobility" 
 of Virginia, Patrick Henry represented, and never had 
 the democratic principle a more sincere or conscientious 
 advocate. He was the true tribune of an injured people. 
 He believed " all men to be free and equal." He was a 
 republican in spirit and in truth. With such a leader, it 
 may be supposed how much force was given to the move- 
 ment in Virginia by the activity of the party identified 
 with what might be called the lower classes. Religious 
 dissent and social restlessness were thus combined to 
 make the atmosphere more explosive. 
 
 Let me here mention to you a curious anecdote, which 
 I do not remember to have seen on record, connected 
 with the memorials of the Virginia Orator. Most of you 
 no doubt are familiar with the biography of Patrick 
 Henry, by the late Mr. Wirt. Prefixed to that volume 
 is an engraved portrait of Mr. Henry, the history of which 
 is somewhat curious. When the memoir was ready for 
 the press, its author and his friends were anxious to pro- 
 cure a portrait, and made diligent though ineffectual 
 search for one. None could then be discovered. The 
 late John Randolph of Virginia, informed Mr. Wirt that 
 the only known resemblance to Mr. Henry, was the head 
 of Captain Cook, on Arrowsmith's map of the world. 
 On this hint the publisher of the biography acted. The 
 
33 
 
 skill of our townsman, Mr. Sully, was put in requisition, 
 and by divesting the British sailor of his uniform coat, 
 and adorning him with a cloak, wig, and spectacles, he 
 was transformed into the rebel orator. The indefatio-a- 
 
 is 
 
 ble proprietor of the National Portrait Gallery, our fellow 
 citizen, Mr. Longacre, has since succeeded in finding an 
 original miniature of Mr. Henry, and any one who will 
 examine the latter will be forcibly struck with the 
 contrast of the two portraits. Which is the more faith- 
 ful I of course pretend not to say. 
 
 On the 24th of May, the House of Burgesses was in 
 session. The news of the Port Bill arrived on that, or 
 the day before. A resolution was introduced and adopt- 
 ed, fixing the first of June as a day of fasting, humiliation, 
 and prayer. The book of precedents, to which the Vir- 
 ginia " faithful subjects" had recourse, was one of evil 
 omen to royal authority. " No example of such a so- 
 lemnity," says Mr. Jefferson, " had existed since the days 
 of our distresses in the war of '55, since which a new 
 generation had grown up. With the help of Rushworth, 
 whom we rummaged over for the revolutionary prece- 
 dents and forms of the Puritans of those days, preserved 
 by him, we cooked up a resolution, somewhat modern- 
 ising the phrases, for appointing the "first of June, on 
 which the Port Bill was to commence, for a day of fast- 
 ing, humiliation, and prayer, to implore Heaven to avert 
 5 
 
34 
 
 from us the evils of civil war, and to inspire us with firm- 
 ness in support of our rights, and to turn the hearts of 
 the king and parliament to moderation and justice." 
 
 May we not suppose, that among the thick coming 
 fancies that floated through the minds of Henry and his 
 associates, were more than one of separation — violent, 
 bloody separation — and independence. What a picture 
 for the hand of art to trace would be Patrick Henry, 
 poring over the pages of Rushworth, and catching the 
 spirit of Pym, of Vane and Hampden, from its illumi- 
 nated record ! The volume which told the tale of long 
 endured wrong, and slow resentment; of a monarchy 
 strongly guarded by the prejudices of the age, sustained 
 by the hierarchy, the nobility, and the soldiery, trampling 
 on popular rights and popular feelings. It told the tale 
 of arbitrary taxation and its issue; narrated the rise, the 
 progress, and the triumph of popular feeling thus defied — 
 of a single individual starting from an humble sphere and 
 wresting from the high hand of authority, the sceptre and 
 the crown — it told of a Parliament sovereign in itself, 
 and proud in its disregard of the dissolving and prorogu- 
 ing power of the throne — it told of the austere tribu- 
 nal that brought to its bar successively all the oppressors 
 of the people, the haughty and misguided Laud, the traitor 
 Wcntworth; and, finally, passed the stern decree that 
 sent Charles Stuart to a bloody doom, which pity can 
 
35 
 
 scarcely pronounce unmerited. This was the volume 
 from which the patriots of Virginia learned their lessons 
 of loyalty and submission.* 
 
 As a matter of literary curiosity 1 have "rummaged" 
 the volumes of Rush worth to discover the precedent 
 which the Virginia patriots followed. On Monday, 7th 
 of June, 1647, the following entry appears on the minutes 
 of the Commons : 
 
 * May I be permitted here to record, in better language than my own, 
 a character of the Puritan patriots of the Commonwealth of 1640, to 
 each word of which a republican student must subscribe. " At this time, 
 Philosophy ceasing to be speculative, applied itself to public business; 
 and sought, by seizing the helm of Government, to steer the ship of the 
 Commonwealth in the direction most agreeable to the wishes of all wise 
 and good men. The records of ancient and modern times were ransack- 
 ed, in the hope of discovering hints for the improvement of society. 
 Principles favourable to religious toleration were gradually established. 
 Religion, greatly purified from the errors of the Roman church, began 
 powerfully to influence the politics of the country, to operate a reform 
 in manners, to raise and purify the character of its votaries. For the 
 first time, perhaps, since the age of the apostles, Christianity was put in 
 practice by high-minded disinterested men, who sought in earnest to lay 
 the foundations of an evangelical Commonwealth, modelled in harmony 
 with the precepts of the gospel, such as no other age or country ever 
 yet aimed at. The Puritans, in fact, were genuine Christians, the most 
 perfect, perhaps, that, with the failings inherent in human nature, we 
 can ever expect to see on earth. They united with the sincerest piety 
 and the fervent belief of all truth, a martial temper more stern and un- 
 bending than chivalry and knighthood ever inspired. Their courage 
 was indomitable. Wise in council, adventurous and enthusiastic in the 
 field, they were precisely the soldiers a great general would choose with 
 which to subdue the world." — Preliminary Discourse to the Prose 
 Jf'orks of Milton, by .?. St. John. 
 
30 
 
 " Some debate there was about a fast for the members 
 of Parliament only : and accordingly it was ordered by 
 the Commons that this House set apart next Wednesday 
 for a day of humiliation. That God would be pleased 
 to give them one heart and one mind in carrying on the 
 great work of the Lord. And Mr. Marshal, Mr. Strong 
 and Mr. Whitecar are appointed to pray and preach 
 with them in their own House. The Lords likewise 
 joined the Commons in observing the Fast." On the 
 27th of July, 1647, a Proclamation of the Kirk of Scot- 
 land directing a General Fast was read in Parliament, 
 one inducement to which is in form, "the phrases being 
 somewhat modernised," the same as that of Virginia. 
 
 " We are to entreat the Lord in the behalf of the 
 King's majesty, that he may be reconciled to God, and 
 that he may be now furnished with wisdom and counsel 
 from above, that he be not involved in new snares to the 
 endangering of himself and these kingdoms ; but that 
 his heart may incline to such resolutions as will contri- 
 bute for settling of religion and righteousness." On the 
 same page of Rushworth from which this extract is 
 made will be found the following ominous minute : " Die 
 Lunoe, 26 Julii, 1647. The House of Commons having 
 adjourned till the morning, and Mr. Speaker risen out of 
 his chair, and the members going out, divers petitioners 
 
37 
 
 moved them to sit again, and the Speaker returning to 
 his chair, and the members sitting in their places, the 
 petitioners desire them to vote that the King's majesty 
 should come to London ; whereupon it was Resolved, 
 DCP That His Majesty shall come to London."* 
 On the next day but one the Governor dissolved the 
 House. On the following day eighty-nine members met 
 at a room in the Apollo Tavern and signed a formal 
 association, pledging themselves to resolute co-operation 
 with the other Colonies, and recommending ar* immedi- 
 ate call of a General Congress. In one important par- 
 ticular this sus^estion differed from the others. It 
 contemplated Congress as a permanent body, and re- 
 commended that " Deputies should be appointed to meet 
 in General Congress at such place annually as may be 
 thought most convenient." On Sunday, the 29th, letters 
 were received by express from Boston, Philadelphia and 
 Annapolis, and immediately considered. Every thing, 
 however, was ultimately referred to a general meeting, 
 to be held at Williamsburg on the 1st of August. 
 
 Thus within little more than a fortnight from the date 
 of the receipt of the Port Bill all the principal Colonies 
 had bound themselves in this voluntary league, and were 
 
 * Rushworth's Historical Collections, Part IV, Vol. I, pp. 546. 644. 
 
38 
 
 pledged to the great measure of resistance — an Union 
 and a Congress. 
 
 I should detain you too long were I to dwell on the 
 interesting details of popular movement which filled the 
 interval that elapsed from the period at which we 
 have now arrived, to the month of September, when 
 the Congress met. Every city — every county — every 
 hamlet had its public meeting and voted its instructions 
 to the Delegates to be elected. The soil was thoroughly 
 volcanic, and the jets of flame which burst from every 
 crevice showed what subterranean fires burned beneath. 
 To two prominent expressions of sentiment shall I, 
 for the sake of their peculiar interest, point your atten- 
 tion — pausing first merely to indicate the mode and pe- 
 riods of the election of the Delegates. The first election 
 was made by Rhode Island on the 15th of June: her 
 Delegates were Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward. 
 The last was that of North Carolina, on the 24th of Au- 
 gust. The Delegates from Rhode Island and Pennsyl- 
 vania were elected by the Assemblies, acting regularly 
 under their charters. Those from Massachusetts were 
 elected by the House of Representatives, acting suddenly 
 and with closed doors on the last day of its session. 
 The record of that day is curious and characteristic. I 
 cite it from a journal of the times. 
 
39 
 
 "June 17, 1774. His Excellency the Governor having 
 directed the Secretary to acquaint the two Houses that 
 it was his pleasure that the General Assembly should be 
 dissolved, and to declare the same dissolved accordingly, 
 the Secretary went to the Court House, and finding the 
 door of the Representative Chamber locked, directed the 
 Messenger to go in and acquaint the Speaker that the 
 Secretary had a message from His Excellency to the 
 Honorable House, and desire he might be admitted to 
 deliver it. The Messenger returned and said he had 
 acquainted the Speaker therewith, who mentioned it to 
 the House, and tlicir orders were, to keep the door fast. 
 Whereupon the Proclamation was published on the stairs 
 leading to the Chamber, dissolving the Assembly." 
 
 The Delegates from Virginia were elected by the 
 members of a dissolved House, and all the other Dele- 
 gates were chosen by the voluntary action of the differ- 
 ent Colonies in Provincial Committees. In all except 
 New York the whole Colony was represented. The city 
 of New York and King's county were the only portions 
 of that important province represented in the First Con- 
 gress — and, according to the testimony of Mr. Galloway 
 before the House of Commons, (assuming that to be 
 worthy of credit,) the representative of King's county, 
 Mr. Bocrum, was elected at a meeting composed of two 
 individuals, one of whom was the Delegate himself. On 
 
40 
 
 the 6th July, 1774, every district of South Carolina ex- 
 cept three, (Grenville, St. John's, Colleton county, and 
 Christ Church Parish,) was represented in a voluntary 
 convention in Charleston. A poll was opened and five 
 Delegates were elected to represent the Colony to the 
 General Congress. On Tuesday, August 2d, the As- 
 sembly of the Province met. Its action is thus described 
 in a letter from the Governor to Lord Dartmouth. 
 
 " It having been expected that I should prorogue the 
 General Assembly yesterday at the usual time, about ten 
 or eleven o'clock, the Assembly privately and punctually 
 met at eight o'clock in the morning" (on account, they 
 say, of the excessive heat of the weather,) " and made 
 an house, which was very uncommon. They had not 
 been assembled five minutes before I was apprised of it. 
 I immediately went to the Council Chamber in order to 
 prorogue them, and waited a few minutes for one or two 
 of the Council to be present. As soon as I sent for the 
 Assembly they attended, and I prorogued them to the 
 6th of September; but their business having been ready 
 prepared, in which they were all previously agreed, it 
 required only a few minutes to pass through the forms 
 of the House. They came to two Resolutions — one 
 approving and confirming the election of the five persons 
 chosen on the 6th of last month to assist at the Congress 
 of the several Provinces; and the other, that they would 
 
41 
 
 provide for the expense of their voyage. I returned to 
 my own house in less than twenty minutes past eight. 
 Your Lordship will sec by this instance with what per- 
 severance, secresy and unanimity they form and conduct 
 their designs — how obedient the body is to the head, and 
 how faithful in their secrets." 
 
 The Delegates from South Carolina were Henry Mid- 
 dleton, John Rutledge, Thomas Lynch, Christopher 
 Gadsden and Edward Rutledge. At one of the prepara- 
 tory meetings at which they were chosen Charles Cotes- 
 worth Pinckney presided. No one of the Colonies had 
 better reason to be proud of its representatives than 
 South Carolina. They had a rich reward : and three of 
 the names I have enumerated, let me observe in passing, 
 are associated with an incident probably new to you, but 
 which has always seemed to me full of interest. In the 
 Congress of 1774, John and Edward Rutledge first met 
 George Washington as a fellow patriot or a fellow rebel, 
 as the issue might be. In less than twenty years from 
 that time George Washington was President of these 
 United States, free and independent, and John and 
 Edward Rutledge were two of his most tried and valued 
 friends. They had stood side to side in common peril, 
 in the council and in the field. When the Federal Go- 
 vernment was organized, Washington selected the bro- 
 thers for special honours. In 1789, John Rutledge was 
 6 
 
12 
 
 appointed an Associate Judge of the Supreme Court of 
 the United States. On his resignation two years after- 
 wards the President addressed to Edward Rutledge and 
 Charles Cotesworth Pinckney the following curious joint 
 Jetter, for which 1 am indebted to Mr. Sparks' invaluable 
 collection : 
 
 " Columbia, S. C, 2d May, 1791. 
 " Gentlemen, 
 
 "An address to you jointly on a subject of the fol- 
 lowing nature may have a singular appearance; but that 
 singularity will not exceed the evidence which is thereby 
 given of my opinion of and confidence in you, and of 
 the opinion I entertain of your confidence and friendship 
 for each other. The office lately resigned by Mr. John 
 Rutledge in the Supreme Judiciary of the Union, remains 
 to be filled. Will either of you two gentlemen accept it? 
 And in that case, which of you ? 
 
 Of my sincere esteem and regard for you both, I wish 
 you to be persuaded, and that I am, gentlemen, &c. 
 
 " George Washington." 
 
 In a joint answer the two friends declined the appoint- 
 ment, partly from private considerations and partly from 
 a belief that they could better serve their country in the 
 State Legislature of which they were members. Their 
 reply thus concludes: "But as we devoted a large por- 
 tion of our early years to the service of our country, so 
 
43 
 
 whenever her honour or her interest shall seem to re- 
 quire our aid, we shall cheerfully lay aside all private or 
 partial considerations, and imitate, so far as may be in 
 our power, the best and brightest of examples." Musing 
 on this beautiful incident, characteristic alike of him who 
 gave and thein who received the mark of confidence, 
 may we not mourn over the contrast of the past and the 
 present? I speak it not invidiously, but where is the 
 executive patron now who can find two disinterested 
 friends to be trusted thus — where, under the atmospheric 
 influence that makes all, save very few indeed, seekers 
 of offices and jobs, and fills every avenue to authority 
 with scrambling assailants, rushing like the mob of Paris 
 on the Swiss within — where shall we find two partizans 
 who would refuse so high an honour for so high a reason? 
 
 On the 1st July, 1795, the President appointed John 
 Rutledge Chief Justice of the United States on the re- 
 signation of Mr. Jay, also a member of the First Conti- 
 nental Congress. Rich indeed must have been the soil 
 which produced such fruits. 
 
 I have said there were some important primary meet- 
 ings among the thousand which were held throughout the 
 provinces, worthy of attention. Among them was that 
 at which Washington presided, in Fairfax county, Vir- 
 ginia, and which may be supposed to have spoken his 
 sentiments and expectations at this crisis. He was a 
 
44 
 
 member of the House of Burgesses at the time of its 
 dissolution, and was a participant in the action of its 
 refractory members when the news of the Port Bill ar- 
 rived. The entry in his diary for the first of June shows 
 how solemnly he regarded the issue and how thoroughly 
 he was imbued with the spirit of the times. "June 1st, 
 Wednesday — Went to church and fasted all day." A few 
 days afterwards he returned to Mount Vernon. The 
 Fairfax county meeting was held on Monday, 18th of 
 July. George Washington was Moderator and reported 
 the resolutions, the authorship of which belongs, it is 
 presumed, to George Mason, a copy in his writing being 
 found in the Washington archives. Their style is clear 
 and forcible, and they contain some views which, for 
 their modes of expression and peculiar interest, cannot 
 be passed by. They open with the strong assertion of 
 the colonial communion of privilege with the mother 
 country ; declaring that this Colony and Dominion of 
 Virginia cannot be considered as a conquered country ; 
 and if it be, its present inhabitants are the descendants, 
 " not of the conquered, but of the conquerors." They 
 recommend a Congress and commercial non intercourse; 
 non-importation at once and non-exportation afterwards. 
 The seventeenth Resolution, considering the source 
 whence it came, is worthy of all attention, even at this 
 day. It is in these emphatic words: 
 
45 
 
 "Resolved, That it is the opinion of this meeting, that 
 during our present difficulties and distress, no slaves 
 ought to be imported into any of the British Colonies on 
 this continent; and we take this opportunity of declaring 
 our most earnest wishes to see an entire stop for ever 
 put to such a wicked, cruel and unnatural trade." 
 
 The discrimination made between the periods at which 
 non-importation and non-exportation agreements were to 
 be resorted to, rests on a basis of honour and sense of 
 justice with which Washington and Virginia seem to 
 have been strongly impressed. To Virginia, indeed, so 
 far as I have been able to trace it, is due the praise of 
 having first suggested this discrimination, and in Wash- 
 ington's private letters is the first illustration of its rea- 
 son. The Colonies were of course a debtor country. 
 Manufactures they may be said to have had none ; and 
 those products which are now our country's staples, and 
 by means of which we hold the world in tribute, were 
 then unknown. The commercial balance was thus al- 
 ways on one side. The habitual maintenance of the 
 nation's faith is a Briton's proudest boast, and none but 
 the brood of puny moralists and wretched partizans, 
 whom later times have produced, ever pretended to dis- 
 tinguish between the political and commercial debt of a 
 people so far as the nation's faith is involved. Deep 
 and dark indeed must be the dishonour with which his- 
 
46 
 
 tory will mark the character of that government or 
 those public men who connect their policy with the self- 
 ish and wicked scheme of compelling its citizens to dis- 
 regard the obligations which, in the aggregate, make a 
 nation's commercial debt to foreigners. Even in the 
 excitement of impending revolution our ancestors, burn- 
 ing with just indignation at oppression, did not lose 
 sight of this hereditary obligation. They took the 
 distinction at once between the right not to buy and 
 the right not to pay for what they had bought already. 
 In a letter to a near relative, dated two days after the 
 Fairfax meeting, Washington thus speaks of its pro- 
 ceedings : 
 
 "As to the resolution of addressing the throne, I own 
 to you, sir, I think the whole might as well have been 
 expunged. I expect nothing from the measure, nor should 
 my voice have sanctioned it, if the non-importation was 
 intended to be retarded by it, for I am convinced as much 
 as I am of my existence, that there is no relief for us, 
 but in their distress; and I think, at least I hope, there is 
 public virtue enough left among us to deny ourselves 
 every thing but the bare necessaries of life to accomplish 
 this end. This we have a right to do, and no power 
 upon earth can compel us to do otherwise, till it has first 
 reduced us to the most abject state of slavery. The 
 stopping of our exports to Great Britain would, no doubt, 
 
47 
 
 be a shorter method than the other to effect this purpose, 
 but if we owe money to Great Britain, nothing but the 
 last necessity can justify the non-payment of it; and, 
 therefore, I have great doubts upon this head, and wish 
 the other method first tried, which is legal and will 
 facilitate these payments." 
 
 In the instructions prepared at Williamsburgh, on the 
 1st of August, for the Delegates to Congress, the same 
 idea was enforced, and the only restriction which was 
 imposed, was one preventing immediate resort to non- 
 exportation, originating, as the convention expressly 
 stated, " in their earnest desire to make as quick and 
 full payment as possible of their debts to Great Britain."* 
 
 Between the date of these proceedings and the meet- 
 ing of the Congress, the news of a new Parliamentary 
 Statute reached this country and was made to add new 
 fuel for the flame, which was ready to be lighted. I refer 
 
 * In the Pennsylvania Gazette of 3d August, 1774, is the following 
 notice copied from a Fredericksburg paper: 
 
 A Card. — A Virginian presents his compliments to the Jockey Clubs 
 of Fredericksburg and Portsmouth, and begs that they will suppress their 
 sporting spirit till the circumstances of America can permit it with more 
 decency. He also begs leave to recommend to the most serious con- 
 sideration of these Clubs, whether their purses applied to the relief of 
 the distressed Bostonians, would not afford them more real pleasure than 
 all that can arise from viewing a painful contest between two or three 
 animals. 
 
48 
 
 to the Bill commonly known as the Quebec Bill, the effect 
 of which in the Colonies was most remarkable. Look- 
 ing at this statute with cool minds, and in a spirit of 
 tolerable impartiality, it is difficult to find in it or about 
 it the horrors with which excited imagination once 
 painted it. It contained a provision restoring the French 
 laws and modes of justice to the Province of Canada 
 as best suited to the habits and manners of the popula- 
 tion. But, beside this, it contained a provision for the 
 maintenance of the privileges of the Catholic clergy, and 
 the free exercise of the religion of the Church of Rome 
 in Canada, subject to the king's supremacy. Its enact- 
 ment was a measure of obvious policy if not necessity to 
 the ministry. It was in legal phrase a bill quia timet, a 
 measure to secure tranquillity in Canada, by whatever 
 concessions, at a moment when the other Colonies were 
 so thoroughly disturbed. The fear that prompted the con- 
 cessions must now be conceded not to have been unrea- 
 sonable. No sooner, however, was the Bill introduced into 
 Parliament, than it was denounced by the Opposition as 
 a measure designed to introduce absolute despotism and 
 unmitigated Popery into a large part of the King's do- 
 minions, and bitter were the taunts, and violent the invec- 
 tives that were hurled at the Bench of Bishops, and other 
 High Church ministerial members, who with unusual 
 tolerance and kindness to an ancient foe, sustained the 
 
49 
 
 measure. Vain were the protestations of the Minister 
 and his party, the clamour was loud and the excitement 
 deep and pervading. With this opposition gloss and 
 comment, the Quebec Bill reached America, and thus 
 interpreted we may wonder that it did not produce a 
 greater sensation among those whose religious feelings 
 were so strong, and whose temperaments were so excita- 
 ble and excited. 
 
 The religious sentiment which operated on the 
 Revolution would be a theme of great interest — but it is 
 one worthy of more minute examination than I have the 
 means or time to bestow on it. I refer to it now merely as 
 connected directly with my subject. When the Quebec 
 Bill passed, little more than one hundred years had elaps- 
 ed since the Puritan settlers of New England had fled 
 from the religious persecution of a church identified 
 closely in their imaginations with the Church of Rome. 
 "Prelatist and Paoist" were, in their estimation, con- 
 vertible terms. Less than one hundred years had elapsed 
 since a Roman Catholic monarch was driven from the 
 British throne, and it was not quite thirty years since 
 Protestant England had been invaded by an adventurer 
 of the exiled family, sustained by the favour of the Vatican 
 and the arms of France. The feelings of the Common- 
 wealth of 1640, and of the Revolution of 1688, were 
 
 strong in Puritan New England. They were strong in 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 Protestant America. Nor was the appeal to this senti- 
 ment without a powerful though temporary effect; and 
 among the grievances which were subsequently com- 
 plained of by Congress, the Quebec Bill, and the exposure 
 of the Colonies to the contagion of Roman Catholic doc- 
 trines, were not forgotten. It was, however, a short 
 lived and partial excitement, and its temporary character 
 illustrates most strongly the destitution of the cause of 
 the Revolution of the least tinge of sectarian feeling. 
 
 The cause of the patriots was not the cause of any 
 sect, and thoroughly as the principles of Puritanism were 
 interwoven with popular sentiment in one portion of the 
 country, when that sentiment was mingled in communion 
 with that of others, sectarism and religious exclusive* 
 ness were found to be irreconcilable with the high and 
 more catholic sympathy which bound the Congress and 
 its varied constituency together. The last impotent 
 attempt to revive this feeling was made by some of the 
 loyalists, who endeavoured, with a fierceness that only 
 tended to defeat their design, to represent the cause of 
 the Colonies as that of a few troublesome schismatics, 
 whose end and aim were to restore in these remote re- 
 gions the empire of sour intolerance and persecution. In 
 a pamphlet published by a clergyman of the Church of 
 England at New York, in 1774, a fierce admonition 
 against dissent thus concludes: " In a word, no order or 
 
51 
 
 denomination amongst us would enjoy liberty or safety, 
 if subjected to the fiery genius of a New England Repub- 
 lican Government, the little finger of which we should 
 experience to be heavier than the loins of Parliament. 
 This has sometimes chastised us with whips when we 
 deserved punishment, but that would torment us with scor- 
 pions whether we deserved it or not." Mr. Galloway, a 
 loyal partizan of higher credit, described the patriots of 
 1774 as an " united faction of Congregationalists, Pres- 
 byterians, and Smugglers" and deduces the issue of 
 revolt and revolution mainly from the action of the Pres- 
 byterian Clergy and Laity as early as 1764, when the pro- 
 position of a general synod emanated from a Committee 
 appointed for that purpose in Philadelphia. 
 
 A gentleman in New York, on the 31st May, 1774, 
 thus wrote to a friend in London — 
 
 "You will have discovered that I am no friend to 
 Presbyterians, and that I fix all the blame of these extra- 
 ordinary American proceedings upon them. You would 
 perhaps think it proper to ask whether no Church of 
 England people were among them. Yes, there were, to 
 their eternal shame be it spoken, but in general they 
 were interested in the motion, either as smugglers of tea 
 or as being overburdened with dry goods they knew not 
 how to pay for, and would therefore have been glad to 
 have a non-importation agreement, or a resolution to pay 
 
52 
 
 no debts to England. But, sir, these are few in number. 
 Believe me the Presbyterians have been the chief and 
 principal instruments in all these flaming measures, and 
 they always do and ever will act against Government, 
 from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchical spirit 
 which has always distinguished them everywhere when 
 they had, or by any means could assume power, how- 
 ever illegally. It is an indubitable fact, that previous to 
 and during all these acts of violence committed in the 
 Colonies, especially to the Eastward, the Presbyterian 
 pulpits groaned with the most wicked, malicious, and in- 
 flammatory harangues, pronounced by the favourite 
 orators among that sect, spiriting their godly hearers to 
 the most violent opposition to Government; persuading 
 them that the intention of Government was to rule them 
 with a rod of iron, and to make them all slaves; and 
 assuring them that if they would rise as one man to 
 oppose those arbitrary schemes, God would assist them 
 to sweep away every ministerial tool (the amiable name 
 these wretches are pleased to bestow on the professors 
 of the Church,) from the face of the earth; that now was 
 the time to strike, whilst Government at home was afraid 
 of them; together with a long string of such seditious stuff 
 well calculated to impose on the poor devils their hearers, 
 and make them rush into everv kind of extravagance and 
 
53 
 
 folly, which if I foresee aright, they will have leisure 
 enough to be sorry for." 
 
 Thus spoke the bigot loyalist — but the demon of in- 
 tolerance was invoked in vain on this side of the Atlantic, 
 and it is a glorious comment on such strains of persecu- 
 tion that no response was made. All that the invocation 
 gained was the acquiescence of zealots in England, and 
 the stigma which it fixed on the Establisment in Great 
 Britain, in its sanction subsequently given through a ma- 
 jority of the Bishops in Parliament, to the employment of 
 Hessian and Indian mercenaries to desolate the homes 
 of their American Brethren. Here, I repeat, the exor- 
 cism failed. How it failed scarcely needs illustration. 
 
 In an original manuscript letter in my possession, a 
 Philadelphia gentleman writes to a friend at a distance: 
 " The "Virginia Delegates to the Congress have arrived 
 in town — they are a fine set of fellows — even the New 
 England men are milksops to them.'''' Yet every one of 
 these Virginia Delegates was an Episcopalian, attached 
 from habit, education and reflection, to its institutions, its 
 liturgy, and its theories of discipline and doctrine. On 
 the 9th September, 1774, Samuel Adams writes to Dr. 
 Warren: " After settling the mode of voting, which is by 
 giving each colony an equal voice, it was agreed to open 
 the business with prayer. As many of our warmest 
 friends are members of thn Church of England, I thought 
 
54 
 
 it prudent, as well on that as some other accounts, to 
 move that the service should be performed by a clergy- 
 man of that denomination. Accordingly the lessons of 
 the day and prayers were read by the Rev. Doctor Duche, 
 who afterwards made a most excellent extemporary 
 prayer, by which he discovered himself to be a gentleman 
 of sense and piety, and a warm advocate for the religious 
 and civil rights of America." 
 
 The history of this eminent divine is well known to 
 vou. The opening prayer, for steadiness in resistance 
 and fidelity to the cause of an injured people, was heard, 
 but not for him, and the blessing which the minister of the 
 Gospel invoked for the rebel Congress, descended richly 
 on those for whom he prayed. It was a blessing, 
 which, like that of the Moabite prophet, could not be re- 
 versed. In less than three years, the first Chaplain of 
 Congress abandoned the cause of Liberty, and was suc- 
 ceeded in his trust by one whose fidelity never faltered. 
 This venerable man we all remember. His praise I mean 
 not here to pronounce, further than to say that no one 
 of his high attributes was more worthy of admiration than 
 his strict sense of the duties which are due from the 
 citizen to the state. Those duties he steadily but inof- 
 fensively performed; giving to the clergy of his beloved 
 country, of all denominations, an example too rarely 
 imitated, and illustrating by contrast with his conduct 
 
55 
 
 the inefficacy of those cloistered virtues which seem in the 
 effeminate judgment of many to constitute the perfection 
 of clerical character. I have before me, through the 
 kindness of a member of his family, his narration of those 
 times of trial, from which I may, without indelicacy, and 
 in the assurance that it will be deeply interesting to all 
 who hear me, extract a single passage. It embodies the 
 opinion of an American Christian, a Whig of the Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 " You know my construction of the scriptural precepts 
 on the subject of obedience to civil rulers. It en^-ao-ed 
 my most serious consideration, and under the sense of 
 my responsibility to God, I am still of opinion that they 
 respect the ordinary administration of men in power who 
 are not to be resisted from private regards, or for the 
 seeking of changes however promising in theory. In a 
 mixed Government the constitutional rights of any one 
 branch are as much the ordinances of God as those of 
 any other. To talk of hereditary right, when the ques- 
 tion is of the scnee of the scriptural precepts, is beside 
 the mark, for they look no further than to the present 
 possessor of the power. The contrary theory lands us 
 in despotism, and if any should be reconciled to this by 
 the notion of its securing of tranquillity there cannot be a 
 greater mistake. Although possessed of these sentiments 
 I never beat the ecclesiastical drum. When my coun- 
 
56 
 
 trymen in general had chosen the dreadful measure of 
 forcible resistance, for certainly the spirit was almost 
 universal at the time of arming, it was the dictate of 
 conscience to take what seemed the right side. I con- 
 tinued, as did all of us, to pray for the king, until Sunday 
 (inclusively) before the Fourth of July, 1776. Within a 
 short time after, I took the oath of allegiance to the 
 United States, and have since remained faithful to it. 
 My intentions were upright and most seriously weighed. 
 I hope they were not in contrariety to my duty."* 
 
 In his published memoirs of the church, he thus mod- 
 estly records the singularity of his position at this junc- 
 ture: 
 
 " Owing to the circumstance of many able and worthy 
 ministers cherishing their allegiance to the king of Great 
 Britain, and entertaining conscientious scruples against 
 the use of the liturgy, with the omission of the appointed 
 prayers for him, they ceased to officiate, and the doors 
 of the far greater number of the Episcopal churches were 
 closed for years. In this State there was a part of that 
 time in which there was, through the whole extent, but 
 one resident minister of the church in question: He who 
 records the fad? On the Fourth of July, 1776, there is 
 an entry made in the minutes of Christ Church and St. 
 
 * MS. letter to Bishop Hobart, Sep. 1, 1819. 
 
57 
 
 Peters, which is worthy of notice here. It is in these 
 words: 
 
 " At a meeting of the vestry at the Rector's, July 4, 
 1776. 
 
 Present, Rev. Jacob Duche, Rector. 
 
 Thomas Cuthbert, church warden; Jacob Duche, 
 Robert Whyte, Charles Stedman, Edmund Physick, 
 James Biddle, Peter Dehaven, James Reynolds, Gerar- 
 dus Clarkson, vestrymen. 
 
 Whereas the Honourable Continental Congress have 
 resolved to declare the American Colonies to be free and 
 independent states; in consequence of which it will be 
 proper to omit those petitions in the Liturgy wherein the 
 king of Great Britain is prayed for, as inconsistent with 
 the said declaration — Therefore, Resolved, that it appears 
 to this vestry to be necessary for the peace and well- 
 being of the churches to omit the said petitions; and the 
 rector and assistant ministers of the united churches are 
 requested in the name of the vestry and their constitu- 
 ents to omit such petitions as are above mentioned."* 
 
 Thus peculiarly unjust to the American Episcopal 
 Church would be any inference drawn from the ravings 
 
 * I am indebted for this extract to the present Rector, Dr. Dorr, whose 
 interesting historical account of Christ Church is now in course of pub- 
 lication. It would seem that the action of the vestry preceded the pub- 
 lic Declaration of Independence. 
 8 
 
58 
 
 of maddened zealots, of wholesale infidelity to the cause 
 of the Revolution; while on the other hand, the sweeping 
 asseveration that dissent and disloyalty were necessarily 
 convertible, is alike unfounded. In a Pastoral letter from 
 the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Philadelphia, 
 to the congregations under their care, read from the 
 pulpits on Thursday, June 29ih, 1775, the day of the 
 General Fast, and after the battles of Lexington and 
 Bunker Hill, this emphatic language is used. Its author 
 was Doctor Witherspoon. 
 
 " In carrying on this important struggle let every op- 
 portunity be taken to express your attachment and re- 
 spect to our sovereign King George, and to the revolu- 
 tion principles by which his august family was seated 
 on the throne. We recommend, indeed, not only alle- 
 giance to him from duty and principle as the first magis- 
 trate of the empire, but esteem and reverence for the 
 person of the prince who has merited well of his subjects 
 on many accounts, and who has probably been misled 
 into the late and present measures by those about him ; 
 neither have we any doubt that they themselves have 
 been in a great degree deceived by false information 
 from interested persons residing in America. It gives 
 us great pleasure to say from our own certain knowledge 
 of all belonging to our communion, and from the best 
 means of information of the far greatest part of all de- 
 
59 
 
 nominations in this country, that the present opposition 
 to the measures of administration does not in the least 
 arise from disaffection to the King or a desire of separa- 
 tion from the parent state. * * * * We exhort 
 you, therefore, to continue in the same disposition, and 
 not to suffer oppression or injury itself easily to provoke 
 to any thing which may seem to betray contrary senti- 
 ments : let it ever appear that you only desire the pre- 
 servation and security of those rights which belong to 
 you as freemen and Britons, and that reconciliation upon 
 these terms is your most ardent desire."* 
 
 Such a letter from the pen of such a man, while it 
 shows how little mere sectarism mingled in the conflict, 
 detracts nothing from the praise due to the body of the 
 Presbyterian Clergy and Laity for their single hearted 
 support of the cause of liberty in the Colonics. A Pres- 
 byterian loyalist was a thing unheard of. Patriotic cler- 
 gymen of the Established Church were exceptions to 
 general conduct, for while they were patriots at a sacri- 
 fice and in spite of restraints and imaginary obligations 
 which many found it impossible to disregard, it was 
 natural sympathy and voluntary action that placed the 
 Dissenters under the banner of revolutionary redress. 
 It is a sober judgment which cannot be questioned, that 
 
 * Witherspoon's Works, Vol. Ill, p. 602. 
 
60 
 
 had independence and its maintenance depended on the 
 approval and ready sanction of the colonial Episcopal 
 clergy, misrule and oppression must have become far 
 more intense before they would have seen a case of jus- 
 tifiable rebellion. The debt of gratitude which indepen- 
 dent America owes to the Dissenting Clergy and Laity 
 never can be paid. Still, mere sectarism was inoperative 
 to sow discord or disunite friends. 
 
 Nor was the destitution of sectarian feeling — the 
 abandonment of minor adverse sentiment confined to 
 Protestant denominations. No sooner had the excite- 
 ment produced by the Quebec Bill and the gloss it was 
 made to bear subsided, than the feeling which had inci- 
 dentally been aroused against the Roman Catholics dis- 
 appeared likewise. During the session of the Congress 
 of 1774, General Washington, as appears from his diary, 
 attended mass in the old Roman Catholic Church in this 
 city;* and as early as 1775, John Carroll and his kins- 
 man Charles, both Roman Catholics, and one a Jesuit 
 from St. Omers, were selected by Congress for a public 
 mission to Canada, which they executed with prompti- 
 tude and fidelity, and continued from the beginning to 
 the end of the war as true, as ardent and consistent 
 patriots as our infant country knew. 
 
 * Sparks's Washington, Vol. II, p. 504. 
 
61 
 
 So may, so must it always be with us. Whatever 
 contests arise — whatever diversities of opinion and ac- 
 tion occur in this land of toleration, never let us forget 
 the lesson which the birth of the Revolution teaches, the 
 example which it gives. Sectarian animosity and intole- 
 rance, the reproach of true religion, as they never can 
 have permanent influence, should have no abiding place 
 here. The clergy of all denominations was then a bro- 
 therhood of peace — the pulpit was the source of peace- 
 ful and harmonizing influences. So let them always be. 
 Let it never be forgotten that when the multitude of the 
 oppressed were summoned to the great work of the Re- 
 volution, the call was to all alike — Protestant and Catho- 
 lic, Churchman and Dissenter were called and came 
 together: the Nation's Fast and the Nation's Festival 
 were for all alike. 
 
 On the fifth of September the Congress met — and 
 here, gentlemen, the fear of having too long occupied 
 you admonishes me to pause, leaving to other and abler 
 hands to trace anew the record of its glorious acts. It 
 too is a topic worthy careful illustration. It is a volume 
 of deeper interest than the meagre preface I have at- 
 tempted would indicate. When you study it, as I hope 
 you will, carefully and philosophically as part and portion 
 of our Revolutionary annals, be assured that if you have 
 no other recompense you will be repaid by the sense of 
 
62 
 
 invigorated patriotism which it gives. From those annals 
 only will you learn that loyalty is a citizen's as well as 
 a subject's virtue, and be made to feel how rich is his 
 privilege who learns to love exclusively his country's 
 institutions. 
 
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