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250 and Counting: February 1, 1775

Cover art for February 1, 1775: Portrait of John Hancock.

Before the shooting started, Boston appeared to be the place which gave King George III the most hassles. But to be fair, Boston is the place that the British seemed to provoke more than the other Colonies, so it kind of evened out in the end.

When the Intolerable Acts dissolved the existing government in Massachusetts, the locals said, “Whatever” and convened anyway that same summer. But there’s no denying the results: they did all the things that a government is supposed to do, and the locals pretty much ignored whatever apparatus was set up by the British.

There were three Provincial Congresses in Massachusetts, but by the time the Third one convened, much of what they did was rendered unnecessary because the war had turned “hot” and other structures were in place to do the job.

250 and Counting: January 19, 1775

Cover art for January 19, 1775: An image of the Petition to the King.

Most people (we think) have this popular notion of American history involving the British imposing taxes and massacreing people in Boston and the Colonists responding with an indignant “Oh, we need to dump some tea and write a Declaration of Independence and take up arms and shoot those red-coated monsters right now!”

But if you’ve been listening to this show for the past couple of weeks, you already know that wasn’t the case. There were many, many attempts to seek out a peaceful solution to the troubles going on. Some of them were rather covert: backchannel people talking to one another, negotiating quietly, Others, of course, were overt. And today we’ll be talking about one of those. It was an attempt by the First Continental Congress to bring up their issues, ask for relief and simultaneously affirm their allegiance to the King.

(Spoiler Alert: it didn’t work.)