On this day 250 years ago in Watertown, Massachusetts, Col. Joseph Palmer of the Massachusetts Militia wrote to his friend John Adams in the Continental Congress:
I heartily thank you for your present of common Sense; it is very welcom, and I believe no person was ever more eagerly read, nor more generally approved: People Speak of it in rapturous praise. Union among ourselves, and independency respecting Europe, seems to be the ardent wish of almost all. . . .
conversation has much turn’d upon Independency; and after having considered the matter as fully as opportunity admited, I am Satisfied in my mind, that this Colony wou’d rejoice most heartily in a Declaration by Congress in favor of it
. . .
This is the time, for declaring independency; we never have had such a favourable moment before, and ’tis not likely we ever Shall have such another, if we neglect this: Such a Declaration, with a good Test-Act, will be a foundation to build a good Constitution upon; without these, many will be Squinting at the Constitution of 63; and so long as men (I ask pardon for calling ’em so) have an Eye to Such a reconsiliation, they never will act with firmness and Spirit against our enemies. I fell into chat, this day, with . . . a retailer of other Men’s politicks; and when Speaking of independency, he asked whether Such a declaration wou’d not make G B more angry, and more determined to execute their Plans upon us: Such Questions have a bad tendency, which is very obvious, but a Declaration for Independence wou’d put a total Stop to all Questions of this kind
Palmer was an immigrant from England, but had fought against the British at Lexington and Concord and at Bunker Hill and would continue to serve as a commander of the Massachusetts Militia until the end of the War rising to the rank of Brigadier General.
Source: “Joseph Palmer to John Adams, 19 – 24 February 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0011. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 4, February–August 1776, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 36–39.]
On this day 250 years ago at Corbett’s Ferry on the Black River in North Carolina, a small detachment of the Loyalist Highlander Regiment commanded by Brig. Gen. Donald MacDonald played bagpipes, beat drums and fired muskets to mislead Col. Richard Caswell’s North Carolina Militia into thinking that the Regiment would assault Caswell’s force at the ferry. In the meanwhile the Highlanders had captured a five-man Militia patrol and identified a location to build a bridge further north on the river to again outflank the North Carolina Militia again.
Source: Rankin, The Moores Creek Bridge Campaign at 30.
On This Day In The Revolution 
3 responses to “On this day 250 years ago in the Revolution — February 24, 1776”
I wonder where I could find the text of the “Constitution of 63” to which Joseph Palmer refers?
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Hi Ron, The British did not then or now have a written constitution as we now do in the United States. Instead references to the “Constitution” in the United Kingdom today and in Colonial America meant the body of laws and practices that governed the function of government. The specific reference to “Constitution of 63” meant the British “Constitution” in 1763 before the British Parliament began imposing new taxes on the colonists without their consent to pay off the Crown’s debt to finance the French and Indian War that ended in 1763. The Stamp Act in 1765 is the Act of Parliament that in particular was viewed as unconstitutional by the Colonists.
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Thank you so much. I recall once before that you told me they did not have a written constitution. Somehow I thought the “one” referred to might be different.
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