On this day 250 years ago from Mount Vernon, Virginia, George Washington wrote to Governor Dunmore’s agent John Connolly at Fort Pitt:

With us here, things wear a disagreeable aspect; and the minds of men are exceedingly disturbed at the measures of the British government. The King’s Speech and Address of both Houses, prognosticate nothing favourable to us

Eight months later Connolly would be arrested in Maryland under Washington’s orders while he was traveling to Fort Pitt to organize Indians and Loyalists to invade Virginia, and would remain a prisoner for most of the War.

Source: “From George Washington to John Connolly, 25 February 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/02-10-02-0207. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 10, 21 March 1774 – 15 June 1775, ed. W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, pp. 273–274.]

Also on that day in Williamsburg, Virginia, Dixon & Hunter’s Virginia Gazette published a report that:

The following Gentlemen are elected Delegates to attend the convention to be held at Richmond on the 20th of next month: DUDLEY DIGGES and THOMAS NELSON, jun. Esquires, to represent the county of York, and JOHN BOWDOIN and JOHN BURTON, Esquires, to represent the county of Northampton.

Digges would serve as an elected official throughout the War and would be elected Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, but would be captured by British raiders in 1781. Nelson would become a signer of the Declaration of Independence and then Governor of Virginia and as Governor commanded Virginia militia at Yorktown where he authorized the bombardment of his home and Digges’ home, which both still stand in Yorktown and can be visited today. Bowdoin and Burton did not have similarly high profile careers, but Bowdoin served in the Virginia legislature for the duration of the War and Burton served through 1776.

Source: https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/todayin1770s/index.cfm

Also on that day in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Mercy Otis Warren wrote to Abigail Adams to congratulate her husband John Adams on the essays he wrote under the pseudonym “Novanglus” opposing the “Corrupt influance Which has brought one of the finest Countrys in the World to the Verge of Distruction.”

Source: “Mercy Otis Warren to Abigail Adams, 25 February 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0123. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 186–188.]

And on that day the Committees of Correspondence of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Medford, Lexington, Watertown, Brookline and Concord in Massachusetts jointly pledged to prevent anyone from supplying the British troops in Boston with horses, cattle, oats, “timber, boards, spars, pickets, tentpoles, canvas, bricks, iron, waggons, carts, carriages, intrenching tools, or any materials for making any of the carriages or implements aforesaid.”

Source: Boston Committee of Correspondence, “Boston, February 25, 1775,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/a1035e5fbf7300b2e40d073a33b58f7b.

And on that day in London, the radical Whig publication The Crisis published this remarkable denunciation of British Prime Minister Lord North and defense of American rights:

You have, my Lord, by the most cruel Oppressions, drove the Americans to a State of Desperation, you have destroyed their Charters, invaded their Rights, imposed Taxes contrary to every principle of Justice, and to every idea of Representation, and by blockading the Port of Boston, reduced near Thirty Thousand People in easy Circumstances, to a State of dependence upon the Charity and Benevolence of their Fellow-Subjects; and now, rare CONDESCENSION, a SUSPENSION, of the several American Acts, or in other Words, Ministerial Oppression and Villainy is to be granted them, provided they will raise a REVENUE in America, still subject to the CONTROUL of the King and Parliament in England: This Suspension Scheme, my Lord, will not do, the Americans will have a REPEAL of ALL the Acts they complain of, and a full restoration of all their CHARTERS, RIGHTS, LIBERTIES, and PREVILIGES, before they grant you a single Farthing, and then not subject to the controul of a Banditti of Rotten Members in St. Stephen’s Chapel, of your appointing, for where would be the difference, between their Taxing themselves, Subject to the Controul, and at the DISPOSAL of the King and Parliament, HERE; or of the House of Commons in England Taxing them in the first Instance, there would be none, my Lord, and they would still be in the same situation they are now; still subjects to the Will of the King, and the Corrupt influence of the Crown, this Scheme, my Lord, appears to me as ridiculous and absurd, as the Negative still vested in the Court of Aldermen, in the City of London, which gives a Power to a Majority of Twenty-Six, to set aside the Choice of Seven Thousand Liverymen, in the Election of their Mayors. Be assured, my Lord, this new Plan must fall to the Ground, with all your former ones in this Business; the Day of Trial is at Hand, the Americans will be firm, they will have a confirmation of all their Rights; they will have a redress of all their Grievances; they will levy their own Taxes, not Subject, to any controuling Power; and they will fix the Constitutional Liberty of America, upon a Foundation not be again shaken by YOU, nor any PUSILANIMOUS, WEAK, WICKED, or CRUEL TYRANT.

Source: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/the-crisis-a-british-defense-of-american-rights-1775-1776#lf1663_head_019