On this day 250 years ago, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia passed a non-resolution that they “do confine themselves, at present, to the consideration of such rights only as have been infringed by acts of the British parliament since the year 1763, postponing the further consideration of the general state of American rights to a future day.” Congress was ready to claim that Britain was violating American rights, but after a couple of weeks of debate, was not yet ready to define the rights that Americans claimed. More debate would follow before the Second Continental Congress would set forth a statement of American rights as part of the Declaration of Independence. And in reality Congress is still debating today “the general state of American rights.”

Source: https://americanfounding.org/entries/act-i-saturday-september-24-1774/

Also on this day 250 years ago, in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, the Military Independent Company of East Greenwich was formed by James Mitchell Varnum, Nathaniel Greene and other Patriots. This unit was later renamed the “Kentish Guards” and chartered by the Rhode Island Assembly. It was the first military unit in Rhode Island organized without the authority of the British Crown. Varnum was named the Captain of the Company but his good friend Greene was not elected as an officer and had to enlist as a private because a limp supposedly disabled him from serving as an officer. Both Varnum and Greene would later serve as generals in the Continental Army. Nathaniel Greene would rise to Major General in command of the Continental Army in the South at the end of the War and is widely acknowledged as the ablest of Washington’s generals.

Sources: https://varnumcontinentals.org/2017/01/feature-article-varnum-first-ri-regiment/; https://www.kentishguards.org/kentish-guards-history-formation-and-the-revolutionary-war/