 There are many who believe that the American Revolution began with that fateful shot on Lexington Green in Massachusetts. But in many ways, the American Revolution began with letters. I fear that letter writing has fallen out of favor with many people, but in the American colonies, at the latter half of the 18th century, it was the only way for a far-flung people to correspond and exchange ideas. So vital was it to our communication that all the colonies that eventually rebelled against the crown formed committees of correspondence for the express purpose of exchanging information with one another and disseminating that same information to their constituents. Committees of correspondence were used to rally opposition to unlawful acts by the British Parliament, such as the Stamp Act, as well as to inform the citizenry of measures taken by the crown, such as the closing of the Port of Boston. Good day. I am John Dickinson. I have been a lawyer, a representative to the Congress, military officer, author, composer, as well as the President of Pennsylvania and the President of Delaware. However, it was as a letter writer that I first became known on the larger American political stage. In 1767 and 1768, I wrote a series of essays which took the guise of 12 letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania, which treated upon the mounting tension between Great Britain and her North American colonies. These pseudonymous letters written in the voice of a fictional farmer were written as a response to Parliament's unwarranted attempt to exercise authority over us by levying taxes in which we had no consent. The letters proved to be so popular that they were reprinted in 21 of the then operating 25 newspapers in America. The wisdom of the farmer became the subject of conversations in coffee houses and around dinner tables. In taverns across the colonies, glasses were raised and health shrunk to the farmer. Once it became known that I was the author, my name was recognized in households from Nova Scotia to the Carolinas. Meanwhile, relations between the colonies and the mother country continued to erode. The Stamp Act was replaced with taxes on paint and glass and tea, which led to the Boston Tea Party, in response to which the Parliament closed the port of Boston and enacted the coercive acts, or, as they were known here in America, the intolerable acts. In Philadelphia, we found out about the closing of the port when we received a circular letter written from the Boston Committee of Correspondents, which was delivered by Paul Revere, a son of Liberty and a silversmith, better known for his work as a messenger. The committee's letter had already been shown in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, but any unified response from these colonies to the acts of Parliament would need the support of Philadelphia, the largest port and largest city in America. Letters had also been written by Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Thomas Cushing, addressed to Philadelphia lawyer Joseph Reed and Quaker merchant Thomas Mifflin. The Boston men urged Philadelphia to call a public meeting to discuss the plight of Boston and to suspend trade with Britain. They added that they hoped that the Pennsylvania farmer could attend. So it was that Mr. Reed and Mifflin, joined by Charles Thompson, called upon me, one afternoon in May of 1774, to induce me to intend a meeting at Philadelphia's new city tavern. At first I refused, for I was as equally opposed to submission to the coercive acts as I was to resisting them by force. They prevailed upon me by convincing me that the public might be brought around to a more moderate response through our canny planning. First Mr. Reed would speak with temper and moderation, then Mr. Mifflin would stoke the flames a little higher. Mr. Thompson, by his own admittance a very rash man, would then sweep in and urge an immediate declaration in favor of Boston. Into this tumult I would step offering counsel better adapted to moderation. It worked more or less as planned, even though the histrionic Mr. Thompson seemed to faint right away at the height of his diatribe. Speaking with a cooler head and a measure of good sense, I proposed that a special session of the assembly be called and the formation of our own committee of correspondents to offer our sympathy and support to the city of Boston. Thus, the stage was set for these letter riders to meet in person. As summer approached, the committees of correspondents in Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York called for a Continental Congress and there was no better place for this body to convene than in Philadelphia. The Congress convened on September 5, 1774 in Carpenter's Hall. Twelve British colonies were represented among its membership, Georgia declining to attend. I, however, was not among its delegates. The problem was that a decade before I had made an enemy of Joseph Galloway, who was the Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Though I was the chairman of the committee of correspondents and had done much to prepare for this Continental Congress, Speaker Galloway had determined that only members of the assembly could serve as delegates to the Congress. As I was not currently serving, the doors to Carpenter's Hall were shut to me. This animosity between Mr. Galloway and myself dates back to 1764, when Galloway's political partner, Benjamin Franklin, proposed a measure to remove the Penn family as the proprietors of Pennsylvania and place the Commonwealth under the direct jurisdiction of the King. While I freely acknowledged the problems with the proprietorship and the governance of the Penn family, there are also certain rights and privileges guaranteed by their government. Why should we engage in an enterprise that will render them uncertain? I wasn't opposed, in theory, to the elimination of the proprietorship. I just thought we should wait for some sign of a favorable disposition in the British ministry towards us. I should have liked to see an olive leaf at least brought to us before we quit the Ark. Franklin and Galloway sent a petition to the King asking him to take possession of the colony. And I sent a petition with almost five times as many signatures asking the King to ignore the first petition. The whole notion of royal government for Pennsylvania disappeared. But not before I had earned the lifelong enmity of Joseph Galloway. Fortunately for me, while I may not have been able to, as yet, take formal part in the proceedings of the Continental Congress, many of the delegates came to visit me, and thus I was kept somewhat apprised of the proceedings. The first question that had to be settled before any other measure could be approached by the delegates was how would the votes be apportioned? Should each colony have one vote? Or should votes be allotted to the colonies on the basis of their population or the wealth of their property? Rhode Island argued that each colony was taking the same risk by opposing Great Britain, and therefore each should have the same vote. John Jay of New York countered that a colony with twice the population of some others shouldn't have its vote cut in half. One problem with dividing votes by population was that there wasn't an accurate census of the inhabitants of North America. Therefore there was no data on which to decide how many votes should be given to this or that province. In the end it was decided that each colony would have one vote with the caveat that it would not be irrevocably binding and could be revisited in the future. This first decision had given them a sense of what future deliberations might be like, so the second decision was that no man could speak twice on the same subject without expressed permission, a sensible precaution for anybody that contains both John Adams and Patrick Henry. The next obstacle that had to be overcome was one that could have divided Congress perhaps more than anything else save the distribution of the votes. It had been moved that each session be opened with a prayer. A room full of Anglicans, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Quakers, that proposal was akin to throwing a bit of lit match into a powder-cag. How could such a group ever hope to agree on an individual to give such an invocation? Samuel Adams, who was known to be a very pious and strict man, rose and impressed everyone by declaring that he was no bigot, that he could hear a prayer from any virtuous gentleman so long as he was also a friend to his country. He then went on to suggest that the opening prayer be given by Jacob Duchay, the assistant rector of the largest Anglican church in Philadelphia. The following morning, the Good Reverend opened the session by reading the 35th Psalm. Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive against me. Fight against them that fight against me. Prophetic words indeed. After that, the delegates were divided into committees to discuss the grievances between the colonies and the mother country and suggest resolutions to them. Meanwhile, the committees of correspondence in Suffolk County, Massachusetts had written a series of resolves in response to the closing of the port and the Massachusetts Government Act. The document denounced the coercive acts and resolved to refuse British imports, curtail exports, and to refuse to use British products, to pay no obedience to the Massachusetts Government Bill or the Boston Port Bill, to demand resignation from those appointed under said act, to refuse payment of taxes until the Massachusetts Government Act was repealed, to support a colonial government in Massachusetts free of royal authority until the intolerable acts were repealed, and to urge the colonies to raise militia of their own people. Paul Revere once again made that long and dusty ride from Boston to Philadelphia delivering a copy of the resolves to the Continental Congress. The Congress voted to endorse the Suffolk Resolves without changing so much as a comma. Toward the end of September, the Congress voted to implement a non-importation agreement among the colonies. This was originally intended to halt the import of British products or the export of American products effective December 1. But with warehouses in Virginia still full of tobacco seed ready to plant, the compromise was that the embargo of British goods would begin in December, but the cessation of export would begin the following autumn to allow farmers time to prepare alternative crops. Mr. Galloway insisted that non-importation was too slow a strategy to relieve Boston's plight. He instead submitted a plan for a union between Britain and her colonies. In this plan, each government would form governments much as they had for their own domestic affairs. A president of the colonies would be appointed by the king together with an elected grand council which would be an inferior and distinct branch of the British legislature. The council and the parliament would share authority over general policies requiring the consent of the king's president for implementation. It was a bold plan and not without merit. Just because Mr. Galloway and I do not get along does not mean I cannot see wisdom in attempting to repair the relationship between England and America. When it came time to vote for the measure, five colonies said yes and six said no with Rhode Island's delegates being split down the middle. The proposal was tabled and was never again considered. Before Congress adjourned, it was agreed to expunge all mention of it from the written record. Another blow to Mr. Galloway's ego came on October 1 when I was re-elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly who voted to make me a delegate which would finally allow me to attend the meetings at Carpenter's Hall. I was just in time to vote on the finalized version of the declarations and resolves of the Congress, a document that outlined the grievances of these colonies and listed a colonial Bill of Rights. The grievances were more or less every act that parliament had passed in the colonies and not repealed in the last ten years. They included an objection to the levying of taxes and duties for the purpose of purely raising revenue, the paying of judges' salaries by the Crown, keeping standing armies among the public in times of peace, dissolving our assemblies, extending the rights of Catholics and abolishing English law in the province of Quebec, supplanting the government of Massachusetts, transporting colonists to England for trial and treating our petitions for the redress of grievances with contempt. They enumerated the rights expected based upon the laws of nature and the principles of the English Constitution, namely that we are entitled to life, liberty and property, that our ancestors who settled this country had emigrated from England and were entitled to all the rights and liberties and immunities of free and natural born subjects within the realm, that by their emigration they did not forfeit or surrender any of those rights and that their descendants are entitled to the exercise and an enjoyment of those rights, that the people have a right to participate in their legislative councils, that the colonies and colonists are entitled to the common law of England including a trial by their peers, that they are entitled to the benefit of such English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization and are likewise entitled to all immunities and privileges granted and confirmed by royal charters or secured by provincial laws. They have the right to peaceably assemble, consider their grievances and petition the king, that keeping a standing army in these colonies in times of peace without consent of the legislature of that colony is against the law, that it is indispensably necessary that branches of the legislature be independent of each other, therefore the exercise of legislative power in several colonies by council appointed by the crown is unconstitutional, dangerous and destructive to the freedom of American legislation. By the time I took my seat among the delegates from Pennsylvania the Continental Congress had been in session for almost six weeks. In that time they had endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, compiled a list of grievances and voted to endorse a non-importation agreement. That doesn't seem like a long list of accomplishments but I assure you it is nothing short of miraculous. John Adams once remarked that if a proposition was presented that three and two made five the result was two days of speeches on logic, rhetoric, law, history, politics and mathematics before it last the resolution passed unanimously. The men in that room at Carpenter's Hall were some of the finest minds that America had to offer. They were also some of the most opinionated minds. The fact that they were able to sit down and agree on anything is the greatest accomplishment of what would be the first Continental Congress. All that remained before adjournment was to formalize the ideas of this august body and draw up some sort of compact between us. The document was called the Articles of Association or sometimes the Continental Association. It formalized the decisions that had come from more than a month of debates echoing many tenets of the Suffolk Resolves. First there was an immediate ban on British tea, that commodity whose taxation had landed us in such hot water. Beginning on 1st of December there would be a ban on importing or consuming any goods from Britain, Ireland or the British West Indies. In the document provisions were laid out for an export ban on products from the colonies to Britain, Ireland or the West Indies to take effect on September the 10th, 1775 unless the intolerable acts were repealed. There was also a ban placed on all ships engaged in the slave trade. The association included policies intended to enforce these bans as well as policies that would help Americans endure these deprivations. Local committees of inspection would be established in every colony and any individual found to be violating these articles would be condemned in print and ostracized in society as the enemies of American liberty. If any colony failed to enforce these provisions other colonies would cease all trade and dealings until that colony complied with the bans. The colonies pledged to encourage frugality, economy and industry and to promote agriculture, arts and manufacture in this country especially that of wool and would discounten and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation such as gambling, theater and frivolity. One other effect of the continental association was that it forced our leaders to publicly take sides. Patriots signed the document, loyalists did not. One of the most important decisions made by the first continental congress was to call for a second continental congress in May of 1775. There was, after all, still much more to discuss and much more work to be done by this fragile alliance of colonies. So it was. Then our last days at Carpenter's Hall we turned once again to letter writing just as we had at the outset of this venture. We extended an invitation to this second congress to Quebec, St. John Island, Nova Scotia, Georgia and East and West Florida. After all, they too had been victims of the overreaching policies of Great Britain and that left just one more letter to write and the responsibility for drafting it fell to me. We sent a petition for the redress of grievances to King George III. Now, there are some who have called this the most useless writing of my career. The King was not interested in hearing a petition. As for those on this side of the Atlantic, many thought it was too late for redress. Though it may have fallen on deaf ears, the petition to the King was not a useless gesture, but a necessary one. We have a moral obligation to seek a peaceful resolution to all civil conflict. However, the conflict in North America would not remain peaceful. Less than six months after we adjourned in Philadelphia, war began in Massachusetts, a war that would catch up 13 colonies into a rebellion. The First Continental Congress is often overlooked or seen as being less important than later events, but it was a vital first step in establishing ourselves as a people. The 56 delegates who met in Philadelphia from September to October of 1774 paved the way for the debates that would come and set the foundation of a nation.