Quotes About 1774

On September 5, 1774, forty-five of the weightiest colonial men formed the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.

On December 15, 1774, the New-York Gazetteer ran an advertisement for a newly published pamphlet entitled "A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress" that promised to answer "The Westchester Farmer.

In the Fall of 1774 & Winter of 1775, I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers, and gaining every intelligence of the movements of the Tories.

Pointing again in the direction of tolerance was the Quebec Act of 1774. Following the treaty which ended the Anglo-French wars in North America, Canada passed to the British. Yet the largest part of the population was Catholic.

From the beginning, the Continental Congress had official chaplains, prayers, and days of fasting and Thanksgiving. When sessions opened in 1774, fear was voiced that the religious diversity of the country would make it hard to choose a form of worship.

It was no secret that the people were arming themselves. That could be surmised in newspaper advertisements, such as an early 1774 notice in the Boston Gazette that a merchant "has just imported for sale, a neat assortment of guns, complete with bayonets, steel rods and swivels, a few neat fowling pieces, pocket pistols.

When in 1774 the rulers of Boston dared even to consider disarming the inhabitants, thousands of armed citizens felt justified in assembling and marching into town to demonstrate their opposition. The Founders considered a ban on importation of firearms and ammunition to violate the right to obtain and possess arms.

The year now is 1774. Poseurs or not, it is time to grow up. It is time to enter the public realm, the world of public acts and public attitudes. Everything that happens now will happen in the light of history. It is not a midday luminary, but a corpse-candle to the intellect; at best, it is a secondhand lunar light, error-breeding, sand-blind and parched.