On this day 250 years ago the Pennsylvania Gazette reported that “we hear from Princeton, in New Jersey, that the officers and students of the college, have unanimously agreed to drink no more TEA.”
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On this day 250 years ago in London, Benjamin Franklin wrote to Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly (and future member of the Continental Congress and Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts) Thomas Cushing about Franklin’s humiliation by the Privy Council in January. Franklin explained that he was insulted for merely looking out for the interests of Massachusetts colony that he was representing and that “Where complaining is a crime, hope becomes despair.”
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/359133?read-now=1&seq=14#page_scan_tab_contents at p. 384.
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On this day 250 years ago the South Carolina Gazette reported on the warfare on the Georgia border with the Creek Nation including the massacre of the William White family on December 25, the massacre of the William, Sherrill family on January 14, the rout on January 23 of the force of 100 Georgia militia sent to the border to protect the settlers and the torture and murder of Lieutenant Daniel Grant following the militia’s defeat.
Source: https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/haynes_joshua_s_201308_phd.pdf at 62-65.
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On this day 250 years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, Superintendent of Indian Affairs John Stuart wrote Lord Dartmouth about the torture and murder of Lieutenant Daniel Grant of the Georgia militia by Creek Indians in January. This incident and associated raids conducted by the Creeks and Cherokees against white settlers in the Carolina backcountry would lead to widespread warfare on the Frontier in the early days of the Revolution.
Source: https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/haynes_joshua_s_201308_phd.pdf at p. 64
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On this day 250 years ago in London, Lord Dartmouth wrote to his friend John Thornton about the resistance of the Patriots in Boston:
How fatally and effectually they have now shut the door against all possibility of present relief for any of the things they complain of, and how utterly vain it must be to expect that Parliament will ever give it to them till there appears to be a change in their temper and conduct
Interestingly both Dartmouth and Thornton were involved in the founding of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire during this time period.
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On this day 250 years ago in Boston, the young African-American poet Phillis Wheatley wrote to the Reverend Samuel Occum to commend him for an open letter he had written criticizing Christian ministers who enslaved Africans. Wheatley wrote:
I have this day received your obliging kind Epistle, and am greatly satisfied with your Reasons respecting the Negroes, and think highly reasonable what you offer in Vindication of their natural Rights: Those that invade them cannot be insensible that the divine Light . . . [r]eveals more and more clearly, the glorious Dispensation of civil and religious Liberty, which are so inseparably united, that there is little or no Enjoyment of one without the other . . . for in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance, and . . . I will assert, that the same Principle lives in us. God grant deliverance . . . [from] those whose Avarice impels them to countenance and help forward the Calamities of their Fellow Creatures. This I desire not for their Hurt, but to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Works and Actions are so diametrically opposite. How well the Cry for Liberty, and the reverse disposition for the Exercise of Oppressive Power over others agree, — I humbly think it does not require the Penetration of a Philosopher to determine.
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On this day 250 years ago in London, Lord Dartmouth, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to Attorney General Thurlow and Solicitor General Wedderburn to demand that they provide a formal legal opinion in response to the questions he had previously submitted regarding Patriot resistance to the Tea Act in Boston including the Boston Tea Party:
“Do the acts and proceedings [in Boston] amount to the crime of high treason?” and “If they do, who are the persons chargeable with such crimes and what will be the proper and legal method of proceeding against them?”
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23064102?read-now=1&seq=15#page_scan_tab_contents
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On this day 250 years ago the Massachusetts House of Representatives named one of its members, 68-year old Seth Pomeroy, as “general officer” for militias. Pomeroy would subsequently fight as a volunteer without command at Bunker Hill, serve as the Major General in command of the Massachusetts Militia and serve in the Continental Army as a Brigadier General. He would die of disease in Continental Service in 1777 at the age of 70.
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On this day 250 years ago, the New Jersey Assembly created a Committee of Correspondence making New Jersey the twelfth colony to do so.
Source: https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/learn/deep-dives/committees-of-correspondence/
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On this day 250 years ago the Boston Evening Post published Resolutions from the Town of Concord that resolved that anyone who continued to buy, sell, or use East India Company’s tea would be “for the future deemed unfriendly and enemical to the happy constitution of this country” and that anyone attempting to import the tea would be treated “as enemies to their country and with contempt and detestation.” The Resolutions also thanked the Patriots of Boston for the “rational measures” they had taken to preserve the colony’s rights and liberties.
Source: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/alyssa-kariofyllis-women-of-the-battle-road-paper4.htm
On This Day In The Revolution 