Tag: politics
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November, 1775: Indignation and Resignation
Sometimes difficult choices have to be made. In November of 1775, the rather wealthy colony of New Jersey contained about 150,000 people, and most had presumably learned of the news from Boston, the King’s rejection of the Olive Branch Petition, and the establishment of two New Jersey regiments of militia. As in the rest of…
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September, 1775: American Blue
In New Jersey, a soldier’s blood runs blue. Back in 1673, the little town of Piscataway was at the bleeding edge of the British-American frontier. The Raritan River runs west from there up into the Jersey high ground, and in the summertime the natives would commonly come down it to hunt and fish along the…
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July, 1775: Causes and Necessity
In the month of July, Thomas Jefferson wrote a Declaration. But it wasn’t in 1776, and it wasn’t about Independence. It was a year earlier, on July 6, 1775, when Jefferson and John Dickenson wrote, “The Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms,” explaining the position of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. It’s a…
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June, 1775: The Road North
This is how an army begins. On June 14, 1775, in response to the events of Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia voted to create the Continental Army out of the militia units surrounding Boston. To lead it, they unanimously appointed George Washington of Virginia to be its commanding general. Washington, a…
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March 1775: Restraint
The timing on the next pair of decisions is almost funny. As previously noted, in the beginning of February 1775, Parliament in England had lost patience with the pesky colonials in Boston and had declared them to be in open rebellion. A ship bearing this decision set sail for America, and would arrive in Massachusetts…
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February 1775: Rebellion
In the beginning of February, 1775, the English Parliament was feeling snarky. On the first day of the month, they rejected William Pitt’s proposed plan for recognizing the authority of the Continental Congress and allowing the American colonists some measure of self rule – a plan known as the Provisional Act – by a whopping…
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