January 7, 1775. To the inhabitants of Anne-Arundel County. Gentlemen, You are requested to meet at the city of Annapolis, on Monday the 16th instant, to nominate deputies to attend, on behalf of this county, at the next provincial convention, and to chuse a committee of observation ...

January 7, 1775. To the inhabitants of Anne-Arundel County. Gentlemen, You are requested to meet at the city of Annapolis, on Monday the 16th instant, to nominate deputies to attend, on behalf of this county, at the next provincial convention, and to chuse a committee of observation ...

Table of contents

January 7, 1775. To the INHABITANTS of ANNE-ARUNDEL county.

[Page]

[Page]

January 7, 1775. To the INHABITANTS of ANNE-ARUNDEL county.

GENTLEMEN,

YOU are requested to meet at the city of Annapolis, on Monday the 16th instant, to nominate deputies to attend, on behalf of this county, at the next provincial convention, and to chuse a committee of observation; permit me to offer to your consideration, the reasons, which induce me to solicit your attendance on that day. The inconvenience arising from the season of the year, I am satisfied, will not prevent you, if convinced, that your duty to your country requires your attendance. You have always distinguished [...]selve [...] [...] cause of liberty, and never been exceeded by any county, in zeal and public spirit.

Your liberty and happiness, and that of your posterity, depend on the event of the present struggle with the British ministry: they seem determined to make you slaves, you are resolved to be free: the American congress has pointed out the means of preserving freedom: a suspension of your trade;—and the necessary preparations to enable you to repel force by force, if that should be employed to subvert your rights and liberties: these are the means recommended by the united opinion and advice of America. The freedom of millions, the political salvation of all British America, can only be secured by executing with fidelity and resolution the advice of the congress.

A strict compliance with the association and resolves of our late provincial convention, dpends in great measure on a prudent and wise choice of your committee of observation: I would recommend it to consist of a considerable number of gentlemen of the best understanding, fortune, and influence in the county, without any regard to profession, religion, or residence; men able to speak your sense on any question, and to whose resolutions you would wish to give that weight, which their utility, and the public good might require.

The appointment of deputies, to represent this county, at the next convention, in April; which will not be held, if American grievances should in the mean time be redressed, appears to me of the greatest consequence, and to demand your most deliberate attention: If the British ministry should continue deaf to our complaints, and to the voice of reason, of policy, and justice, and and should determine to enforce, at all events, its arbitrary decrees, how dreadful would be our situation, in the midst of all the horrors and calamities of civil war! We scorn, we reject with contempt, the base humiliating conditions of slavery—We are determined to resist even unto death, to save our country, or bravely perish in her ruins. If American grievances should not be redressed (and I fear they will not) questions of such a magnitude and difficulty [...] arise, as to require the united wisdom, knowledge, and fortitude of this province. Your virtue will then be put to a severe trial—Consider then with attention, the nature and importance of the trust, and to whom you delegate your power at this very critical and alarming crisis of your affairs.—You never were called on to exercise your great constitutional right of electing your representatives, at a time which required more judgment in your choice. I would recommend but one TEST—an honest man with ability and resolution.—

"The Congress thought themselves bound in duty to observe to the colonies, that the schemes agitated against them had been so conducted as to render it prudent, that they should extend their views to the most unhappy events, and be in all respects prepared for every contingency." The necessary means of preparation were left to each province, as best acquainted with their own peculiar circumstances.—Your deputies met in provincial convention were of opinion, that a well regulated militia is the natural strength and only stable security of a free government, and unanimously recommended to the freemen of this province to form themselves into companies, chuse their officers, learn the military exercise, be provided with arms and ammunition, in readiness to act on any emergency, and to raise money for the purchase of arms and ammunition: They entreated, they conjured every man by his duty to God, his country, and his posterity, cordially to unite in defence of our common rights and liberties. I want no argument to convince me of the immediate necessity of putting this province in a posture of defence. If any one should object to the measure, I would answer, THE CONGRESS ADVISED IT:—The deputies of all the counties of this province unanimously recommended it: The first with me is sufficient, the latter conclusive: The deputies were gentlemen of the first fortunes, ability, and knowledge, well acquainted with our circumstances, and undoubtedly spoke the sense of the whole province. The private opinions of some few individuals, [...] respectable for integrity of character, soundness of judgement, and their attachment to the cause of America, ought to have little weight in opposition to the advice of the continental congress, and the recommendation of your own provincial convention.

I have not the least doubt that this county will inviolably observe and execute the association, and the resolves of the province: I question not but a very great majority of you will form yourselves into a militia, and liberally contribute for the purchase of arms and ammunition. Every man is bound to serve his country; all are obliged, or none. Every man is bound to contribute his endeavours to advance and secure the general good. This county is called [Page] on by the province to raise £. 866, for the purchase of arms and ammunition. Every man then in this county is bound to contribute in some proportion to the property which he holds, and the more his property is worth, the more he ought to pay for the security of it. But there are a few among you (I rejoice but a few) who, in this time of public danger and calamity, separate themselves from their country, and though blessed with very ample fortunes, refuse, or decline, to contribute any part thereof, to the support of the public cause, or to unite in defence of our common rights and liberties.—Our convention in June recommended contributions for the support of our distressed brethren in Boston; not one farth [...] was given by the same gentlemen; a congress was deemed proper to collect the sense of [...] same persons did not contribute to the support of your delegates: the congress [...] the colonies to arm in defence of their liberties; your late convention unanimously recommended a militia, and subscriptions to raise money for the purchase of arms and ammunition; the same men, persevering in the same line of conduct, have declined to comply with either of the requisitions; they withdraw their persons and their fortunes from the service of their country: but they are as much interested, and have as deep a stake to lose as any other men in the province; they, and their posterity are to enjoy, with you, all advantages arising from the success of the present contest with Great-Britain; they must be involved with you in all the consequences of a slavish subjection; liberty procured by you will be equally enjoyed by them; slavery fixed on you will be equally intailed on them and their posterity.—If such indeed was their situation, it would be difficult to account for their conduct.—In truth, if America succeeds, they will be benefitted as much as any men in the province, without contributing any part of their property, without any risque of forfeitures, and with safety to their persons; their present behaviour may entitle them to the protection of the ministry. If we fail, they will possess their estates, and enjoy their offices; promotion may reward their present conduct, and their resentment may be gratified by seeing some of your best and firmest friends, executed as rebels and traitors.—Such is the double, crafty, and, in their opinion, secure game played by some few among you. Place, therefore, no confidence in such men, view them as foes to the rights of British America, let their names be published to the world, that they may be universally contemned, as the enemies of American liberty; let them be the object of your contempt, but let them not feel the force of your resentment.

I cannot conclude without once more earnestly requesting a full meeting of the county: numbers will command respect, and give weight to your resolutions.

AN AMERICAN.

Information about this book

Title statement

January 7, 1775. To the inhabitants of Anne-Arundel County. Gentlemen, You are requested to meet at the city of Annapolis, on Monday the 16th instant, to nominate deputies to attend, on behalf of this county, at the next provincial convention, and to chuse a committee of observation ...

American.

Publication

Publisher

Text Creation Partnership,

Place of publication

Ann Arbor, MI :

Date

2007-01.

ID [DLPS]

N10916

ID [TCP]

N10916

ID [STC]

Evans 13816

ID [NOTIS]

APV5876

ID [IMAGE-SET]

13816

ID [EVANS-CITATION]

99001309

Availability

This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal. The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

Series

Early American Imprints, 1639-1800 ; no. 13816.

Notes

(Evans-TCP ; no. N10916)

Transcribed from: (Readex Archive of Americana ; Early American Imprints, series I ; image set 13816)

Images scanned from Readex microprint and microform: (Early American imprints. First series ; no. 13816)

Source

— January 7, 1775. To the inhabitants of Anne-Arundel County. Gentlemen, You are requested to meet at the city of Annapolis, on Monday the 16th instant, to nominate deputies to attend, on behalf of this county, at the next provincial convention, and to chuse a committee of observation ..., American..

Extent

1 sheet (2 p.)

Printed by Anne Catharine Green and Son,. [Annapolis :: 1775]. (Signed on p. 2: An American.) (Imprint supplied by Wroth.)

Creation

Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.

Editorial practices

EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO.

EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org).

The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source.

Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data.

Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so.

Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor.

The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines.

Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements).

Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site.