On This Day In The Revolution

On this day 250 years ago, the Philadelphia Committee of Merchants formed the previous day reported that Thomas and Isaac Wharton had agreed to resign as agents for the East India Tea Company but that the firm of James and Drinker had not agreed. Source: https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/text:352118#page/1/mode/1up

On this day 250 years ago a meeting of merchants at the State House in Philadelphia adopted resolutions written by group of Patriots led by Benjamin Rush, Thomas Mifflin, and William Bradford. The Resolutions declared: “That the duty imposed by Parliament upon tea landed in America is a tax on the Americans, . . .…

On this day 250 years ago the Maryland Assembly formed Maryland’s Committee of Correspondence joining Virginia, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Georgia to coordinate responses to British rule. Thomas Johnson, William Paca, Samuel Chase, Matthew Tilghman, Matthias Hammond, Thomas Beale, James Lloyd Chamberlaine, Brice Thomas Beale Worthington, Joseph Sim, John Hall…

On this day 250 years ago, the Massachusetts Spy published essays by “A Consistent Patriot” and “Joshua the Son of Nun” criticizing the importation of East India Company tea. Source: Norton, Mary Beth, 1774: The Long Year of Revolution, New York, Vintage Books, 2021 at 12.

On this day 250 years ago, the Pennsylvania Journal published an essay by “Cassius” that asserted “a Tax of the value of one penny levied upon us without our consent, as effectually takes away our liberty, as if the sum were a million. It is not the value of the Tax we object to, but…

On this day 250 years ago, Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia published his essay “On Patriotism” in which he wrote that if the ships headed to America with tea were allowed to unload their cargo “then farewell American liberty! . . . let us with one heart and hand oppose the landing of it. .…

A band of 19 warriors from three different tribes (Delaware, Shawnee and Cherokee) angry at the westward expansion of white settlements attacked, tortured and killed James Boone, Henry Russell, John Mendenhall, Richard Mendenhall, Samuel Drake and Charles (an enslaved member of their party) on Wallen’s Creek in the Yadkin Valley of Virginia. Although the attack…

Captain William Russell’s 17-year old son Henry Russell with Daniel Boone’s 17-year old son James Boone departed Russell’s home at Castle’s Woods in Fincastle County, Virginia with a party of 8 carrying supplies to join Daniel Boone’s trek into Kentucky. They would soon become the first casualties in “Dunmore’s War”, an importtant precursor to the…

Thomas Mifflin of Philadelphia, writing as “Scaevola” published a broadside threatening any agents accepting delivery of tea from the East India Company. Mifflin was a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly and later would serve in the Continental Congress, the Continental Army and as Governor of Pennsylvania. Source: Norton, Mary Beth, 1774: The Long Year of…