occasion.

The time was now arrived when the other provinces of America were required definitely to resolve, and unequivocally to declare, whether they would make common cause with the New England States in actual war, or, abandoning them and the object for which they had all so long jointly contended, submit to the absolute supremacy of the British parlia ment. The congress did not hesitate which part of the alternative to embrace, but unanimously determined, [May 26,] that, as hostilities had actually commenced, and large reinforcements to the British army were expected, the several provinces should be immediately put in a state of defence; adding, however, that, as they ardently wished for a restoration of the harmony formerly subsisting between the mother country and the colonies, they were resolved, for the promotion of this desirable object, to present once more an humble and dutiful petition to the king. Yet the members of this body perfectly well knew that the king and his ministers and parliament not only denied the legality of their assemblage and their right to represent the sentiments of America, but openly denounced them as a seditious and traitorous association; and by a great majority of the American people the sentiments of loyalty, which they had once cherished or professed for the British crown and empire, were now extinguished, and either lost in oblivion or remembered with disdain. But it is a general practice of mankind, and the peculiar policy of governments, to veil the most implacable animosity and the most decisive martial purpose under a show of professions more than ordinarily forbearing and pacific; nor can any proclamation be more ominous of violence, than that in which a kingdom or commonwealth judges it expedient to vaunt its own moderation. Massachusetts, having informed the Congres of her destitution of regular government, and solicited advice for the reniedy of his defect, received in answer the counsel, that the freeholders should elect the members of a representative Assembly; that these representatives should appoint counsellors; and that the representatives and counsellors should together provisionally exercise the powers of government. This counsel was straightway embraced. Equal efficacy attended a recommendation addressed to all the colonies, that they should appoint committees of general safety to guard and administer the public interest during the occasional recess of the provincial assemblies.

Besides their second petition to the king, the Congress renewed their applications to Canada and other places, and published an admirable address to the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland. In this last composition, the British people were addressed with the endearing appellations. of "Friends, Countrymen, and Brethren;" and entreated, by these and every other of the ties which bound the two nations together, seriously to receive and consider the present and probably final attempt to prevent their dissolution. After again recapitulating former injuries, and recount

ing the recent acts of hostility in the wanton destruction of American life and property, they demanded if the descendants of Britons could tamely submit to this? "No!" they added, we never will! While we revere the memory of our gallant and virtuous ancestors, we never can surrender those glorious privileges for which they fought, bled, and conquered. Admit that your fleets and armies can destroy our towns and ravage our coasts; these are inconsiderable objects,-things of no moment to men whose bosoms glow with the ardour of liberty. We can retire beyond the reach of your navy; and, without any sensible diminution of the necessaries of life, enjoy a luxury which, from that period, you will want,—the luxury of being free. Our enemies charge us with sedition. In what does this sedition consist? In our refusal to submit to unwarrantable acts of injustice and cruelty? If so, show us a period in your history in which you have not been equally seditious. We are reproached with harbouring the project of independence; but what have we done that can warrant this reproach? Abused, insulted, and contemned, we have carried our dutiful petitions to the throne; and we have applied to your justice for relief. What has been the success of our endeavours? The clemency of our sovereign is unhappily diverted; our petitions are treated with indignity; our prayers answered by insults. Our application to you remains unnoticed, and leaves us the melancholy apprehension of your wanting either the will or the power to assist us. Even under these circumstances, what measures have we taken that betray a desire of independence? Have we called in the aid of those foreign powers who are the rivals of your grandeur? Have we taken advantage of the weakness of your troops, and hasted to destroy them before they were reinforced? Have not we permitted them to receive the succours we could have intercepted? Let not your enemies and ours persuade you that in this we were influenced by fear or any other unworthy motive! The lives of Britons are still dear When hostilities were commenced,-when, on a late occasion, we were wantonly attacked by your troops, though we repelled their assaults and returned their blows, yet we lamented the wounds they obliged us to inflict; nor have we yet learned to rejoice at a victory over Englishmen.' After reminding the British people that the extinction of liberty in America would be only a prelude to its eclipse in Britain, they concluded in these terms:- 'A cloud hangs over your heads and ours. Ere this reaches you, it may probably burst upon us. Let us, then, (before the remembrance of former kindness be obliterated,) once more repeat these appellations which are ever grateful to our ears, let us entreat Heaven to avert our ruin, and the destruction that threatens our friends, brethren, and countrymen, on the other side of the Atlantic."

to us.

Aware that a great deal of discontent existed in Ireland, the Congress conceived the hope of rendering this sentiment conducive to the multiplica

tion of their own partisans and the embarrassment of the British court; and to this end in their address to Ireland they alluded to the past oppression and present opportunities of this people with a politic show of sympathy and friendship calculated at once to foment agitation among them, and to attach to themselves the numerous bands of Irish emigrants who had resorted and still continued to resort to the American provinces. "The innocent and oppressed Americans," they declared, "naturally desire the sympathy and good-will of a humane and virtuous people who themselves have suffered under the rod of the same oppressor."

Having thus made their last appeals to the king and people of Great Britain, the Congress proceeded to organize their military force, and issued bills of credit to the amount of three millions of Spanish milled dollars (for the redemption of which the confederated colonies were pledged) to defray the expenses of the military establishments and operations. Articles of war for the regulation of the continental army were framed; measures were pursued for the enlistment of regiments; and a declaration or manifesto was published, setting forth the causes and necessity of recourse to arms, and withal protesting that American resistance would end as soon as American wrongs were redressed.

A battalion of artillery was formed, and the command of it intrusted to Henry Knox, a native of Boston, whom the force of his genius and the peculiar bent of his taste and studies had already qualified to sustain the part of an accomplished master of the art of war, and whose successful exertions in the sequel to improve the American ordnance and artillery excited the surprise and admiration of the most accomplished officers of Europe. In all the provinces the enlistment of troops was promoted by the operation of the late acts of parliament, which deprived many of the inhabitants of America of their usual employments and means of subsistence.

GENERAL KNOX.

The nomination of a commander-in-chief of the American forces was the next, and not the least important measure which demanded from the Congress the united exercise of its wisdom and authority. Its choice (and never was choice more happily directed) fell upon George Washington, whom previous scenes have already introduced to our acquaintance, and whose services, especially in Braddock's campaign, had been always the more fondly appreciated by his countrymen, from the flattering contrast they suggested between British rashness and misconduct, and American skill, foresight, and energy. The deputies of the New England states, ess acquainted with the achievements and character of Washington than

the people of the southern provinces, and warmly admiring their own. officers, would willingly have conferred this high dignity upon one of them; and Putnam, Ward, and several others were named as candidates; but the partisans of these officers, perceiving that Washington possessed a majority of suffrages, and that his was the name the most widely spread abroad in America, forbore a vain opposition, and promoted the public confidence by uniting to render the election unanimous. [June 15.] Of the other officers who had been proposed, some, though inhabitants, were not natives of America; and some had distinguished themselves by undisguised and headlong zeal for American independence. None of them possessed the ample fortune of Washington, who, in addition to this advantage and to the claim arising from previous services, was a native American; and though a firm friend of American liberty, yet moderate in his relative views and language, and believed still to cherish the hope, or at least the wish, of reconcilement with the parent state. In conferring the supreme command on him, the partisans of conciliation meant to promote a friend, and the partisans of independence hoped to gain one. Nature and fortune had singularly combined to adapt and to designate this individual for the distinguished situations which he now and afterwards attained, and the arduous duties they involved. A long struggle to defend the frontiers of Virginia against continual incursions of the French and Indians,-the command of a clumsy, ill-organized provincial militia, prouder of being free citizens than effective soldiers, and among whom he had to introduce and establish the restraints of discipline,-obliged with minute labour and constant activity to superintend and give impulsion to every department of the service over which he presided, to execute as well as order, to negotiate, conciliate, project, command, and endure ;-there could not have been a better preparatory education for the office of commander-in-chief of the motley, ardent, and untrained levies that constituted at present the army of America. His previous functions and exertions, arduous rather than splendid, excited respect without envy, and, combined with the influence of his character and manners, qualified him to exercise command and prepared his countrymen to brook his ascendency. The language and deportment of this truly great man were in general remarkably exempt from every strain of irregular vehemence and every symptom of indeliberate thought; disclosing an even tenor of steadfast propriety, an austere but graceful simplicity, sound considerate sense and prudence, the gravity of a profound understanding and habitual reflection, and the tranquil grandeur of an elevated soul. Of this moral superiority, as of all human virtue, part was the fruit of wise discipline and resolute self-control; for Washington was naturally passionate and irritable, and had increased the vigour and authority of every better quality of his mind by the conquest and subjection of those rebellious elements of its composition. Calm,