On this day 250 years ago, Royal Governor Josiah Martin of North Carolina fled the colony’s capital of New Bern eventually making his way to Fort Johnston at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and the safety of British ships. With his flight from New Bern, Martin left the governmnent of North Carolina in the hands of the Patriots.
Source: Chris E. Fonvielle Jr., “‘With Such Great Alacrity’: The Destruction of Fort Johnston and the Coming of the American Revolution in North Caarolina”, The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Apr 2017), pp. 150, 155-56 accessed at
On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress approved a letter to the “Oppressed Inhabitants of Canada” proclaiming that:
Alarmed by the designs of an arbitrary Ministry to extirpate the Rights and liberties of all America, a sense of common danger conspired with the dictates of humanity, is urging us to call your attention, by our late address, to this very important object.
. . . we have been happy in considering you as fellow-subjects, and from the commencement of the present plan for subjugating the continent, we have viewed you as fellow-sufferers with us. As we were both entitled by the bounty of an indulgent creator to freedom, and being both devoted by the cruel edicts of a despotic administration, to common ruin, we perceived the fate of the protestant and catholic colonies to be strongly linked together, and therefore invited you to join with us in resolving to be free, and in rejecting, with disdain, the fetters of slavery, however artfully polished.
. . .
When hardy attempts are made to deprive men of rights, bestowed by the Almighty, when avenues are cut thro’ the most solemn compacts for the admission of despotism, when the plighted faith of government ceases to give security to loyal and dutiful subjects, and when the insidious stratagems and manoeuvres of peace become more terrible than the sanguinary operations of war, it is high time for them to assert those rights, and, with honest indignation, oppose the torrent of oppression rushing in upon them.
. . .
We, for our parts, are determined to live free, or not at all; and are resolved, that posterity shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into the world.
. . .
We yet entertain hopes of your uniting with us in the defence of our common liberty, and there is yet reason to believe, that should we join in imploring the attention of our Sovereign, to the unmerited and unparalleled oppressions of his American subjects, he will at length be undeceived, and forbid a licentious Ministry any longer to riot in the ruins of the rights of Mankind.
Source: “Letter from Congress to the “Oppressed Inhabitants of Canada,” 29 May 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-01-02-0078. [Original source: The Selected Papers of John Jay, vol. 1, 1760–1779, ed. Elizabeth M. Nuxoll. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, pp. 116–118.]
On This Day In The Revolution 