On this day 250 years ago in the Revolution — June 17, 1774

On this day 250 years ago the Patriots in Massachusetts were very busy. The General Assembly was meeting in Salem where Royal Governor Gage sent the Provincial Secretary with an order dissolving the Assembly. However, the Assembly members decided to “keep the door fast” and blocked him from entering the meeting to deliver the order. The Assembly then endorsed

a meeting of Committees, from the several Colonies on this Continent…to consult upon the present state of the Colonies, and the miseries, to which they are, and must be reduced by the operation of certain Acts of Parliament respecting America, and to deliberate and determine upon wise and proper measures to be by them recommended to all the Colonies for the recovery and establishment of their just rights and liberties.

created

a Committee on the Part of this Province, to consist of five Gentlemen . . . to meet such Committees or Delegates from the other Colonies as may be appointed either by their respective Houses of Burgesses or Representatives, or by Convention, or by Committees of Correspondence appointed by the respective Houses of Assembly, in the City of Philadelphia . . . on the first Day of September next

elected John and Samuel Adams, James Bowdoin, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine as delegates to this first Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and voted to provide 500 Pounds to the delegates for their expenses.

Simultaneously, at Faneuil Hall in Boston, “at a legal and very full meeting of the freeholders and other inhabitants of the Town of Boston” chaired by John Adams, the town refused to pay for the tea that had been dumped in Boston Harbor.

Also on this day, Sam Adams somehow found time to draft Resolves of the Massachusetts House of Representatives that declared

Whereas the towns of Boston and Charlestown are suffering under the Hand of Power, by shutting up the harbor by an armed force, which is in the opinion of this House an invasion of the said towns evidently designed to compel the inhabitants thereof into a submission to taxes imposed on them without their consent and whereas it appears to this House that this attack upon the said towns for the purpose of the aforesaid is an attack made upon this whole Provence and continent which threatens the total destruction of the liberties of all British America

Sources: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0016;