to other assemblies that a general congress meet at once. The Massachusetts Assembly, at the request of New York, named the Ist of September as the time and Philadelphia as the place of meeting of a continental congress.

The term "continental" was here used in a new and significant sense. At first, a congress was a meeting of delegates in a single colony. A congress of this kind was, in fact, an extraordinary political gathering, wholly distinct from the legislatures. During the French wars, delegates from several colonies met to consult common interests. These congresses usually represented the northern colonies, as the New York and Albany congresses. The Stamp Act led to another congress, but with a wider range of delegates, as some of the southern colonies were represented. Virginia and Massachusetts now had proposed a "continental, that is as we would say a national, congress, in which every colony would be represented.

The word "colonial" was passing out, "continental" was coming in; but "national" was not yet thought of. The first Continental Congress met in Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia, and was in session seven weeks (September 5-October 26). From twelve colonies came fifty-five men, the chosen leaders of the people. Georgia failed to come, though not because of lack of sympathy or patriotism. For the first time the people of the "continent," the incipient nation, had met in council. Looking back over the years, we see plainly that this Congress was no accident. Events had long been leading to it.

It was no mere revolutionary body. Its work was deliberate, loyal, and permanent. Its main purpose was to set forth all the facts. Following colonial custom, it issued "addresses" to the parties interested. The Address to the People of the Colonies reviewed recent events, and urged union, co-operation, and moderation, but advised a continuance in their present attitude of non-importation till their rights were recognized. The Address to the People of Canada, written in French, and probably by John Dickinson, was mainly a discussion of the evils of the Quebec Act, of the denial of an assembly to the Canadians, and of the attempt of England to establish a military instead of

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a civil government in the province. The Address to the People of England, largely composed by John Jay, was an appeal to kindred over the sea for justice. If the rights of Englishmen in America were violated, what could Englishmen in England expect.

The Address to the King was a humble but profuse statement of loyalty, appealing to George III. not to listen to his evil counselors, but to hear the Americans in their All these addresses were written in a dignified style and in fitting language, and they remain among the most finished of American state papers. They have been the models of innumerable addresses in later times.

own cause.

Like the Stamp Act Congress, the Continental Congress issued a declaration of rights; that is, a political platform. Its propositions seem trite to us now, but they were living issues in the eighteenth century. The Americans were entitled to life, liberty, and property. This idea is at the foundation of our institutions. The exclusive right of taxation was in the assemblies. This made the assemblies the nucleus of American government, and went to the heart of the pending controversy. The Congress, speaking for the continent, supported the claims already made by Virginia and Massachusetts that the Americans had the right to assemble and petition for the redress of grievances. This recognized the existence of a new power in the country, the political meeting, or convention, which was becoming common. Royal governors, acting for the king, had done all they could to prevent and disperse such meetings. The right to assemble and petition is so fundamental with us that it is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and by every state constitution.

The Americans claimed only the rights of Englishmen as granted by the old charters. Now, in truth, the Americans had more rights than most Englishmen, because the charters empowered them to make their own laws and to lay their own taxes through their own assemblies. English kings gave the charters, and these were compacts or agreements of great solemnity which could not be broken or violated without changing the relation of the colonies to the crown. In conclusion, the Congress unanimously

resolved that king or Parliament had no right to tax the Americans; or, to dissolve their assemblies; or, to quarter troops upon them in times of peace without their consent; or, to try them without a jury; or, to transport them to England for trial; or, to close their ports; or, to do any of the late acts, considered so grievous by the colonies.

Yet this Congress did not hint at independence. It believed that all causes of dispute could be removed, and had great faith in its four addresses, and particularly in the petition to the king. The principal men of the country belonged to this Congress. They were now well acquainted with one another, and could henceforth act together in confidence. From one another they learned the resources of the country and the tone of public opinion. They were confident that the king would listen to reason, and that he would influence Parliament to respect colonial rights. Hopeful that all controversy would soon cease, and that before spring king and Parliament would act upon their petition and addresses, they adjourned, with a recommendation to the colonies to convene again in congress at Philadelphia on the 10th of May, 1775.

Before tracing the course of events which now quickly changed the history of America, let us take a glance at the people whose representatives had met in congress.

CHAPTER XII

COLONIAL DAYS

1763-1776

Down to the close of the French wars, in 1763, no name for the people of all colonies was in common use among them. The assemblies had sent troops and voted appropriations for the king's service in the wars, but each colony was independent of the others, and there was no union of resources, except as some British commander-in-chief brought together the military supplies from New England, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. In the debates in Parliament the colonies came to be spoken of together as America, and their inhabitants as Americans. To the ministry the Americans were English people across the sea; but the ministry did not use the term American as the synonym of a united people. It was only a convenient political term, which recognized no peculiar rights. The people of the colonies at the time of the Stamp Act (1765) were mostly strangers to one another. The soldiers sent to the French wars were about the only travelers, and they knew more about the frontier than about any part of the country save their own community.

The pride with which an American now speaks of his own state is far less than that with which an American in 1765 spoke of his own colony. Patrick Henry was expressing quite a new idea when, during the discussion growing out of the Stamp Act, he declared that he was an American first and then a Virginian. Many years of industrial and political association were needed to develop the spirit of union and nationality implied in Henry's patriotic words. He had uttered a sentiment that was slowly working its way over the country. After the Stamp Act, the Americans first, and very slowly, began to realize that they were "a new nation, conceived in liberty

and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Few events stand forth from the gloom of these early days in imperishable brightness. Each colony was a small and pale reflection of England, in speech, thought, and ideas. Preferment in politics was quite impossible, for the crown officers were few in number, and the highest in the colony, the governor, was sent from over the sea. The names rescued from oblivion, because they stand for colonies founded, as Pennsylvania, or cities, like New York, Trenton, Baltimore, Williamsburg, or Charleston, were scarcely more than names when first thus associated. The great personages were Englishmen, like Lord Chatham, better known in America as William Pitt. Even Franklin, whose portentous figure rises above that of any of his countrymen during the last half-century of the colonial era, did not emerge from the shadows of provincialism, and embody any such general interest among the colonists as many of them bestowed upon some contemporary fifth-rate Englishman who happened to be secretary of colonial affairs.

Men who live in a revolutionary time are usually blind to its real heroes, especially if they touch elbows with them in a common struggle. The mystery of office and power did not affect Franklin as it did the head of the British ministry; Franklin's American contemporaries were too near him to see him in his large proportions.

Of the explorers, the discoverers, the men of Spain and France who laid open the wilderness and beat down a pathway for after ages, the people of colonial America took no heed. They neither praised them in books nor honored them in brass or marble. The pioneer receives his first eulogy, not in the log house but in the salon. Parkman has restored New France and painted its heroes to the life; but such work as his can be done only a century or more after the heroic age has closed. The savages were too near our ancestors to figure as persons in a drama. Mephistopheles was known to the Puritans by a plainer name; the Hurons and the French were incarnations of the evil one to the anxious settlers along the English frontier.

But in every village there was a personage: in the New