On This Day In The Revolution

On this day 250 years ago in Massachusetts, Royal Governor and General Thomas Gage issued a proclamation declaring the Solemn League and Covenant “unlawful”, “scandalous, traiterous, and seditious” and that those signing the Covenant were “the declared and open Enemies of the King, Parliament, and Kingdom of Great Britain.” Accordingly, Gage ordered the arrest of anyone…

On this day 250 years ago, a town meeting at Faneuil Hall in Boston concluded with an endorsement of the Solemn League and Covenant and its boycott of trade with Britain. The meeting had started the day before (on June 27) and initially merchants opposed to the boycott introduced resolutions that would reject the Solemn…

250 years ago yesterday the Town of Pepperell in Massachusetts adopted the following resolutions: Under a deep sense of the distressing & very extraordinary circumstances we of this land are unhappily brought into by (as we think) a bad ministry, in our Parent Country, by the innovations already made (by act & power) on our…

On this day 250 years ago, the Magna Charta arrived in Charleston Harbor carrying “two chests and a half of tea.” The Charleston Committee demanded that the Captain of the Magna Charta leave the tea onboard and the captain agreed. When it was later discovered that the tea had been unloaded, an angry mob would…

On this day 250 years ago in Annapolis, Maryland the first session of the Annapolis Convention concluded. After Royal Governor Eden dissolved the Maryland Colonial Assembly, 92 members of the Assembly representing all 16 counties in Maryland organized themselves as a Convention that began meeting in Annapolis on June 22. During the four days of…

On this day 250 years ago, citizens of Spotsylvania County, Virginia met at the Town House (i.e., city hall) of Fredericksburg to adopt resolutions in support of Boston and to elect delegates to the Virginia Convention set to meet in August. The Spotsylvania Resolves declared that “we owe no Obedience to any Act of the…

On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, Clementina Rind’s Virginia Gazette published in its lead article the following revolutionary sentiments: American freedom will soon be annihilated, unless we unitedly exert our utmost virtue and firmness; nothing less can recue our liberties, now eagerly grasped by the ruffian hand of power. . . . As…

On this day 250 years ago in London, the British Parliament enacted the Quebec Act or Canada Act. This Act extended the boundaries of the Province of Quebec south to the Ohio River, blocking the expansion of the American colonies westward and providing for trials in the expanded Quebec territory by judges without juries. Although…

Yesterday 250 years ago, a general Town meeting was held in the Town of Huntingdon on Long Island in New York led by Israel Wood, then President of the Town’s Board of Trustees. That meeting adopted seven resolutions that have come to be known as Huntington’s Declaration of Rights. The first resolution was “that every…

On this day 250 years ago, the citizens ofFrederick County, Maryland, met at Frederick County Court House in support of the besieged citizens of Boston. The meeting was chaired by John Hanson, who would in 1781 at the end of the Revolution be elected as President of the Confederation Congress (which was the highest ranking elected…