On this day 250 years in the Town of Wrentham in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, the “general Town-Meeting of the Freeholders, and other inhabitants of this Town” instructed its delegates to the Massachusetts Assembly:
Letters by divers ill-minded persons have been written against the Government, in consequence of which divers acts of the British Parliament have been made, mutilating and destroying the Charter [of Massachusetts], and wholly subversive of the Constitution. Fleets and armies have been sent to enforce them, and at length a civil war has commenced, and the sword is drawn in our land, and the whole United Colonies involved in one common cause. The repeated and humble petitions of the people have been wantonly rejected with disdain. The Prince we once adored has commissioned the instruments of his hostile oppressions to lay waste our dwellings with fire and sword, to rob us of our property, and wantonly to stain the land with the blood of its innocent inhabitants. He has entered into treaties with the most cruel nations, to hire an army of mercenaries to subjugate the Colonies to his cruel and arbitrary purposes. In short, all hopes of an accommodation are entirely at an end. A reconciliation has become as dangerous as it is absurd. A recollection of past injuries will naturally kindle and keep alive the flames of jealousy. We, your constituents, therefore, think that to be subject to or dependant on the Crown of Great Britain would not only be impracticable, but unsafe and dangerous to the State. The inhabitants of this town, therefore, in full town-meeting, unanimously instruct and direct you to give your vote, if the honourable American Congress (in whom we place the highest confidence under God) should think necessary for the safety of the United Colonies to declare them independent on Great Britain, that we. your constituents, with our lives and fortunes, will most cheerfully support them in the measure.
This was Wrentham’s Declaration of Independence.
On This Day In The Revolution 