On this day 250 years ago, the New-York Journal republished the “Political Observations” initially published in a Philadelphia newspaper on November 14, 1774. The anonymous article praised the recently completed Continental Congress as the most “august, and . . . equitable Legislative body [that ]ever existed” but provoked a strong reaction with its bold and prescient prediction that America “shall dissolve our connexion with Great Britain.” The writer was thinking not only of his contemporaries but also of the generations of Americans who were still to come:

We are now laying the foundation of an American Constitution. Let us therefore hold up every thing we do to the eye of posterity. They will probably measure their liberties and happiness by the most careless of our footsteps. Let no unhallowed hand touch the precious seed of Liberty. Let us form the glorious tree in such a manner, and impregnate it with such principles of life, that it shall last forever.  . . . Let us not avail ourselves of the just spirit of the times, but bind up posterity to be freemen. 

. . .

I almost wish to live to hear the triumphs of the Jubilee in the year 1874; to see the medals, pictures, fragments of writings, &c˙, that shall be displayed to revive the memory of the proceedings of the Congress in the year 1774. . . . Do not, illustrious Senators, avail yourselves of the gratitude and veneration of your countrymen. You have, we trust, made them free. But a nobler task awaits you. Instruct them, instruct posterity in the great science of securing and perpetuating Freedom.

I am sure the anonymous author would have been pleased to live another hundred years to join the United States of America celebrating its Bicentennial from 1974 through 1976. But I shudder to think of his (or her) view of America 250 years after he wrote the “Political Observations . . . Addressed to the People of America.”

Source: https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A93413; see also longer excerpts from “Political Observations” in my blog on November 14, 2024.

Also on this day 250 years ago in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the Chesterfield Committee of Safety and Correspondence was formed. Chesterfield County was joining counties and towns across all thirteen colonies who were forming committees to enforce the boycott of trade with Great Britain called for in the Continental Association passed by the Continental Congress in the preceding month.

Source: https://chesterfieldhistory.com/revolution-timeline.html

Also on this day in Concord, Massachusetts, the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts directed the Committee of Safety “to prepare a plan for the defence and safety of the government . . . .” By “government” the Provincial Congress did not mean the Royal Governor and officials appointed by the Crown, but instead the government by the democratic town meetings and locally elected officials as well as by the Provincial Congress.

Source: https://archive.org/details/journalsofeachprma00mass/page/50/mode/2up