On this day 250 years ago in Plymouth, Massachusetts, James Warren wrote to his good friend John Adams:

I Admire the Notes and Resolves of the Maryland Convention. They Breath a Spirit of Liberty and Union which does Honour to them and Indeed the whole Continent. I am greatly puzzled to determine what Consequences the United force of all these things will produce in Britain. They must be Infatuated to A degree I can hardly Conceive of, if these things make no Impression and yet in general I think, or rather fear they will not. I am upon the whole much of the Opinion of your friend Chase, that we have but little room to hope for A favourable Event, and that now is the Time, the Exact Crisis to determine the point and the sooner the better before the Tories here can Compleat their Efforts to disunite and Embarrass. They are more Assiduous than Satan was with our first Parents and equal him in deceit and Falshood, and with many find Success, no Stone is left Unturned to Effect their purposes. By that means we are Continually perplexed, which Added to the Contemplation (from one time to Another) of A War at last is (as you say) A state as Bad as can be.

Source: “To John Adams from James Warren, 15 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0070. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, December 1773 – April 1775, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 213–214.]