most of the colonies, with regard to an accommodation of the great controversy. The last petition of the Congress to the King was refused a hearing in Parliament, as emanating from an unlawful assembly, in arms against their sovereign. In November, the town of Falmouth in Massachusetts was bombarded and destroyed by the King's cruisers. In the latter part of December, an act was passed in Parliament, prohibiting all trade and commerce with the colonies; warranting the capture and condemnation of all American vessels, with their cargoes, and authorizing the commanders of the King's ships to compel the masters, crews, and other persons found in such vessels, to enter the King's service. The act also empowered the King to appoint commissioners, with authority to grant pardon, on submission, to individuals and to colonies, and after such submission to exempt them from its operation.1 Great preparations were made to reduce the colonies to the submission required by this act, and a part of the troops that were to be employed were foreign mercenaries.

The necessity of a complete separation from the mother country, and the establishment of independent governments, had, therefore, in the winter of 1775-6, become apparent to the people of America. Accordingly, the Congress, asserting it to be irreconcilable to reason and good conscience for the people of the colonies any longer to take the oaths and affirmations necessary for the support of any govern

1 Annual Register.

ment under the crown of Great Britain, and declaring that the exercise of every kind of authority under that crown ought to be suppressed, and a government of the people of the colonies substituted in its place, recommended to the respective assemblies and conventions of the colonies, where no government sufficient for the exigencies of their affairs had been already established, to adopt such a government as in the opinion of the representatives of the people would best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents and of America in general.1

It is apparent, therefore, that, previously to the Declaration of Independence, the people of the several colonies had established a national government of a revolutionary character, which undertook to act, and did act, in the name and with the general consent of the inhabitants of the country. This government was established by the union, in one body, of delegates representing the people of each colony; who, after they had thus united for national purposes, proceeded, in their respective jurisdictions, by means of conventions and other temporary arrangements, to provide for their domestic concerns by the establishment of local governments, which should be the successors of that authority of the British crown which they had "everywhere suppressed." The fact that these local or state governments were not formed until a union of the people of the differ

1 May 10, 1776. Journals, II. 166, 174.

ent colonies for national purposes had already taken place, and until the national power had authorized and recommended their establishment, is of great importance in the constitutional history of this country; for it shows that no colony, acting separately for itself, dissolved its own allegiance to the British crown, but that this allegiance was dissolved by the supreme authority of the people of all the colonies, acting through their general agent, the Congress, and not only declaring that the authority of Great Britain ought to be suppressed, but recommending that each colony should supplant that authority by a local government, to be framed by and for the people of the colony itself.

The powers exercised by the Congress, before the Declaration of Independence, show, therefore, that its functions were those of a revolutionary government. It is a maxim of political science, that, when such a government has been instituted for the accomplishment of great purposes of public safety, its powers are limited only by the necessities of the case out of which they have arisen, and of the objects for which they were to be exercised. When the acts of such a government are acquiesced in by the people, they are presumed to have been ratified by the people. To the case of our Revolution, these principles are strictly applicable, throughout. The Congress assumed, at once, the exercise of all the powers demanded by the public exigency, and their exercise of those powers was fully acquiesced in and confirmed by the people. It does not at all detract from the

authoritative character of their acts, nor diminish the real powers of the Revolutionary Congress, that it was obliged to rely on local bodies for the execution of most of its orders, or that it couched many of those orders in the form of recommendations. They were complied with and executed, in point of fact, by the provincial congresses, conventions, and local committees, to such an extent as fully to confirm the revolutionary powers of the Congress, as the guardians of the rights and liberties of the country. But we shall see, in the further progress of the history of the Congress, that while its powers remained entirely revolutionary, and were consequently coextensive with the great national objects to be accomplished, the want of the proper machinery of civil government and of independent agents of its own rendered it wholly incapable of wielding those powers successfully.

NOTE TO PAGE 33.

ON WASHINGTON'S APPOINTMENT AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

THE circumstances which attended the appointment of Washington to this great command are now quite well known. He had been a member of the Congress of 1774, and his military experience and accomplishments, and the great resources of his character, had caused his appointment on all the committees charged with making preparations for the defence of the colonies. Returned as a delegate from Virginia to the Congress of 1775, his personal qualifications pointed him out as the fittest person in the whole country to be invested with the command of any army which the United Colonies might see fit to raise; and it is quite certain that there would have been no hesitation about the appoint5

VOL. I.

ment, if some political considerations had not been suggested as obstacles. At the moment when the choice was to be made, the scene of actual operations was in Massachusetts, where an army composed of troops wholly raised by the New England colonies, and under the command of General Ward, of that Province, was besieging the enemy in Boston. This army was to be adopted by the Congress into the service of the continent, and serious doubts were entertained by some of the members of the Congress as to the policy of appointing a Southern general to the command of it, and a good deal of delicacy was felt on account of General Ward, who, it was thought, might consider himself injured by such an appointment. On the other hand, there were strong reasons for selecting a general-in-chief from Virginia. That colony had taken the lead, among the Southern provinces, in the cause of the continent, and the appointment seemed to be due to her, if it was to be made upon political considerations. The motives for this policy were deemed sufficient to outweigh the objections arising from the character and situation of the army which the general would, in the first instance, have to command. But after all, it cannot be doubted, that the preeminent qualifications of Washington had far more weight with the majority of the Congress, than any dictates of mere policy, between one part of the Union and another, or any local jealousies or sectional ambition.

Mr. John Adams, whose recently published autobiography contains some statements on this subject, speaks of the existence of a Southern party against a Northern, and a jealousy against a New England army under the command of a New England general, which, he says, he discovered after the Congress had been some time in session, and after the necessity of having an army and a general had become a topic of conversation. (Works, II. 415.) In a letter, also, written by Mr. Adams in 1822 to Timothy Pickering, he states that, on the journey to Philadelphia, he and a party of his colleagues, the delegates from Massachusetts to this Congress, were met at Frankfort by Dr. Rush, Mr. Mifflin, Mr. Bayard, and others of the Philadelphia patriots, who desired a conference with them; that, in this conference, the Philadelphia gentlemen strongly advised the Massachusetts delegates not to come forward with bold measures, or to endeavor to take the lead; and represented that Virginia was the most populous State in the Union, proud of its ancient dominions, and that "they [the Virginians] think they have a right to take the lead, and the Southern States, and the Middle States, too, are too much disposed to yield it to them."

"I must confess," says Mr. Adams, "that there appeared so much