“No, I think we should send that letter to the king!”
I said. “Yeah!!” Shouted most of the rest here in the
Pennsylvania State House.
“Oh, Hello! My name is George Wilson and I am a
delegate in the Continental Congress representing North Carolina.
Right know we're discussing whether to send a letter of grievances to
the King or not. I think it's pretty unanimous that we will be. But
let me take you back to where it started.”
“It started around two weeks ago, I received a letter
from John Adams saying that there was going to be a gathering of all
13 colonies in two weeks. (It ended up only being 12 because Georgia
needed British troops for fighting Indians) Anyway where was I? Ah
yes, so I received a letter that said I was chosen to be a delegate
of the fine colony of North Carolina. I was really excited about that
because now I could speak for all of North Carolina in the
Continental Congress. But that also put a lot of responsibility on my
shoulders. But George Wilson was ready! So I made preparations, met
with the other delegates of North Carolina to see what their point of
views were. And we also met with a lot of the authorities from around
the colony to see what the people wanted. So in ten days we were
ready to leave, we said goodbye and left for Philadelphia. We arrived
on the evening of the third day on the road. Philadelphia was
magnificent big brick buildings, cobblestone roads, and best of all,
the Pennsylvania State House! Wow! The tall spire, the length of the
building, and just the grandeur of the building. Inside and out.
We arrived just in time for roll call of the different
colonies' delegates. Everyone was present, other than the Georgian
delegates. And a couple of other people who couldn't make it for
other reasons.
The next day at nine o'clock all the delegates met for
the first discussion topic, boycotting British goods. Now this was
pretty much already in action throughout the colonies but there had
never been an executive decision to boycott. Colonists just started
one day and it spread.
So as you may have guessed already by 11:30 we took a
vote. It was a unanimous vote to keep boycotting British goods until
the taxes were lifted. After a break for dinner (lunch was called
dinner in the old days, Editor) we met back at the State house
in two hours and discussed the letter to the King. The points of view
were mixed at first with 3/4ths of the delegates being in favor but
the other ¼ weren't so sure. They thought that it might anger the
King and Parliament even more than they already were. But others,
like myself, thought differently. We thought that if we sent a calm
and peaceful letter of grievances maybe the King would actually
listen to us. “No, I think we should send that letter to the king!”
I said. “Yeah!!” Shouted most of the delegates. “Lets vote.”
said one of the delegates from Virginia. So we voted. It came out
almost unanimous that we would send a petition to the King.
Now the final discussion, who would write the
letter/petition? It was decided after unanimous vote once again that
John Dickinson would write the letter/petition.
And that my friends is what happened at the First
Continental Congress. The next day we came back to the State House
and told John what the colonies wanted in the letter. We went all
went back to our homes and a week and a half later went back to
Philadelphia to read and edit the letter.
The End
No comments:
Post a Comment