Wednesday, February 1, 1775 1

Ordered, That Hon. John Hancock, Esq., Major Hawley, Hon. Mr. Cushing, [of Boston,] Mr. Adams, Col. Warren, Mr. Paine, Mr. Pitts, Doct. Holten, Col. Heath, Col. Gerrish, Mr. Cushing of Scituate, Hon. Col. Ward, and Col. Gardner,2 be a committee to take into consideration the state and circumstances of the province.

33

Saturday, February 11, 1775, A.M.

Ordered, That Col. Tyng, Mr. Adams, Doct. Warren, Major Hawley, Col. Ward, Hon. Mr. Hancock, and Mr. Paine, be a committee3 to report a resolve, purporting the determination of this people, coolly and resolutely, to support their rights and privileges, at all hazards.

Wednesday, February 15, 1775, A.M.

Ordered, That Mr. Adams, Major Hawley, Mr. Gerry, Hon. Mr. Cushing, Mr. Paine, Col. Palmer, and Mr. Freeman,4 be a committee to bring in a resolve holding up to the people of this province, the imminent danger they are in, from the present disposition of the British ministry and parliament, and that there is reason to fear that they will attempt our sudden destruction: and the importance it is to the inhabitants of this colony to prepare themselves for the last event. . . .5

Ordered, That Mr. Adams, Mr. Gerry, Hon. Mr. Cushing, Mr. Paine, Hon. Col. Ward, Col. Prescot,6 and Major Holten, be a committee to wait on the Hon. Col. Williams, and [Nathaniel] Wales, Esq., and inform them that the Congress had had notice of their being in town as a committee from Connecticut, in order to have a conference with us; and that we are ready to confer with them by a committee, at such time and place as shall be most agreeable to them.

Ordered, That no member of this Congress depart therefrom until the conference with the committee from Connecticut is over.

The committee appointed to wait upon the gentlemen from Connecticut, reported, that they had attended that service, and delivered the message with which they were charged; and that the gentlemen propose this evening to meet the committee from this Congress at such place as you shall appoint.

Ordered, That the committee on the state of the province be the committee from this Congress, to meet the gentlemen from Connecticut, this evening, at Capt. Stedman’s, for the proposed conference.

Printed in the Journals of Each Provincial Congress , 84, 97–98, 101, 105.

1.

The Second Provincial Congress of Massachusetts met at Cambridge, from Feb. 1 to Feb. 16; at Concord from Mar. 22 to Apr. 15 and again on Apr. 22; and at Watertown from Apr. 22 to May 29 ( Journals of Each Provincial Congress , 75).

2.

RTP’s fellow members on this standing committee were John Hancock of Boston (1737–1793); Joseph Hawley of Northampton (1723–1788); Thomas Cushing of Boston 34(1725–1788); Samuel Adams of Boston (1722–1803); James Warren of Plymouth (1726–1808); John Pitts of Boston (1737–1815); Samuel Holten of Danvers (1738–1816); William Heath of Roxbury (1737–1814); Joseph Gerrish of Newbury (1708–1776); Nathan Cushing of Scituate (1742–1812); Artemas Ward of Shrewsbury (1727–1800); and Thomas Gardner of Cambridge (1724–1775) (Schutz, Legislators of the Mass. General Court).

3.

The others members of this committee were John Tyng of Dunstable (1705–1797); Samuel Adams of Boston (1722–1803); Joseph Warren of Roxbury (1741–1775); Joseph Hawley of Northampton (1723–1788); Artemas Ward of Shrewsbury (1727–1800); and John Hancock of Boston (1737–1793) (Schutz, Legislators of the Mass. General Court).

4.

Benjamin Freeman (1718–1786) represented Harwich (Schutz, Legislators of the Mass. General Court, 224).

5.

The committee reported back the same afternoon that there was “real cause to fear” that approaches to Great Britain “for ‘peace, liberty, and safety,’ will not meet with a favorable reception.” To counteract the implied threat of British troops, the committee called upon the “great law of self-preservation” and encouraged the development of militias and the manufacture of firearms. The entire report appeared in Journals of Each Provincial Congress , 103, and in the newspapers.

6.

James Prescott (c. 1721–1800) represented Groton (Schutz, Legislators of the Mass. General Court, 317).

Taunton Feby. 25th. 1775 1 Kind Sr.,

Your freindly Epistle of the 14th ulto. I have lately recd. & it is now before me; I am much obliged to you for the Care of my purse. I wish our endeavours to recover it had succeeded, for the scituation of our public affairs, makes Cash very scarce, as well as much wanted; respecting any suspicion that the Goldfinders have got it; perhaps an enquiry of their circumstances since the affair might be serviceable, at least so far as to know if it were worth while to try again.

I cannot concieve on what principle it is that the Torys should tryumph in the late Conduct of Portsmouth & other places securing their Guns & Ammunition; no freind of Government can rejoyce in any thing that disturbs Government much less in what they call Acts of Rebellion and their tryumph must Spring from a malicious diabolical desire, that the Vengeance of G. Britain may be reaked on the American Colonies. We are very much obliged to you for every hint you Give of any danger of dividing the Colonys; our freinds from one End of the Continent to the other may depend upon it that in this Colony no Step is taken of any Importance witht. considering how it will be approved off by the Other Colonys, & our earnest desire to do 35nothing that might give uneasiness, has prevented some steps being taken which perhaps might have been salutary. With regard to the perticular matter of moving the Guns &c., any person who attends to the Current of affairs must know the reason of it was the forbidding Arms & Ammunition being imported, & the Conduct of Administration wearing so hostile an Appearance as to loudly call upon the natural inherent principle of self preservation; those who hold the Doctrines of passive obedience & non resistance will fault their Conduct, whilst others who view these transactions as connected with the rights of mankind & Englishmen, will have more liberal apprehensions from them; but our Enemys omit no opportunitys to asperse the Whiggs; & even the Whiggs who are at a distance from the scene of action dont sufficiently consider the difficult scituation of the Freinds, who in the centre of action are continually impressed, & in danger of being shackled & rendered unable to struggle by patience & remissness, or of giving offence & causing Divisions by any Enterprize which might save them; they who wish well to our common cause will consider all Circumstances before they form a judgment, & they who are unfreindly will stick at nothing to reproach us.

The report you mention of Mr. Adams & Mr. Cushing, is much such a kind of a story, as one industriously reported here vizt. that the (learned, the sincere, the deliberate, the judicious) Farmer of Pennsylvania2 had back’d about & gone over to the Tory Cause. My Friend, you must have observed that ever since the Congress rose, the great father of lies has been fully employ’d in misrepresenting every thing, & making some pompous lies clearly out of nothing. The story you mention is one of this sort. No such motion was made or thought of, as I know of, much less did Mr. Cushing ever in his life use such language, & as for the dissolution of the congress, it was done upon the same principle the Grand Congress was dissolved, Vizt. to give the Inhabitants opportunity of sending other men if they pleased, after they had done every thing which they then thought proper to do & a new one has just sat. I hope the freinds of our Common Cause will not grow cool much less forsake it, upon any supposition that we are rash in our measures, if in our Extremitys we Should not conduct as cool Reason would dictate, we are to be pityed, but I dont know that the Cause is the worse i:e has GBritain a right to make us Slaves because when we endeavour to hinder it we do not do it with the most discretion. Pray remember me to yr. good Wife 36& to all my freinds at Philada. of whom I recollect too many to be enumerated; hoping yr. best Welfare & the redress of all Greivances I am yr. obliged & hble. Servt.

R T Paine

RC (Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania) ; addressed: “To Mr. Stephen Collins Mercht. at Philadelphia To the Care of Jos. Clarke Esq. Newport. Recd. & forwarded by thy Friend Jos. Clarke”; endorsed.

1.

The draft in the RTP Papers, MHS, dates this Feb. 26. It is endorsed: “To Stephen Collins, Phila. in Ans to his of 14th ult. 26 Feby. 1775 about union &c. to be quoted”; “Answer to a letter from S. Collins of Philadelphia of Jany.—in which he expressed a hope the several Colonies would act harmoniously in all their measures & stating a report in circulation, that the principal men in Massts. were divided in opinion as to the steps necessary to be taken—some being for raising men immediately & attacking the British troops in Boston—& others as warmly opposed to it—.”

2.

John Dickinson (1732–1808) began the practice of law in Philadelphia in 1757. From the 1760s onwards he was actively promoting conciliation with Britain, both as an elected official and as a publicist writing as the “Pennsylvania Farmer.” Dickinson served in the Continental Congress representing both Pennsylvania (1774–1776) and Delaware (1779). He also served both states as president (Delaware in 1781 and Pennsylvania from 1782 to 1785). After that he returned to Delaware which sent him as a delegate to the federal convention in 1787 ( DAB ).