A

DECEMBER MEETING, 1915

STATED MEETING of the Society was held at the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, No. 28 Newbury Street, Boston, on Thursday, 23 December, 1915, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Vice-President ANDREW MCFARLAND DAVIS in the chair.

The Records of the Annual Meeting were read and approved.

Mr. ALFRED JOHNSON of Brookline, and Mr. GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP of Cambridge, were elected Resident Members.

Announcement was made of the appointment of Messrs. FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, ANDREW MCFARLAND DAVIS, and SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON as delegates from the Society to the Twelfth Annual Conference of Historical Societies to be held in Washington on the thirtieth instant in connection with the meeting of the American Historical Association.

Mr. ALBERT MATTHEWS exhibited a copy of the Solemn League and Covenant1 which, after a few changes, was adopted by the town of Westford on July 4, 1774, and which contains the signatures of 207 signers. Mr. MATTHEWS spoke as follows:

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, 1774

The Boston Port Bill received the Royal assent on March 31, 1774, and went into effect "from and after the First Day of June."2 On

1 For permission to exhibit this document, I am indebted to Miss Mary A. Tenney, on behalf of her family, in whose possession it has been since Revolutionary days.

2 It is printed in the Postscript to the Massachusetts Spy of May 12, 1774. In the same paper of June 2 (p. 3/3) appeared the following:

Tell it in Gath, publish it in Askelon, that the Boston Port-Bill, in all its parts is now carrying into execution and that Boston is thereby put into greater dis

June 2 the Boston Committee of Correspondence decided upon what soon became known as the Solemn League and Covenant,1 and on June 5 Joseph Warren reported it. On June 8 the Committee of Correspondence sent out the following letter: 3

GENTLEMEN,

T

HE evils which we have long foreseen are now come upon this town and province, the long meditated stroke is now given to the civil liberty of this country? How long we may be allowed the enjoyment of our religious liberty is a question of infinite moment. Religion can never be retained in it's purity where tyranny has usurped the place of reason and justice. The bill for blocking up the harbour of Boston is replete with injustice and cruelty, thousands of innocent men, besides women and infants, are by it reduced to indegence and distress; and though we in this town more immediately feel this distress, yet our brethren in the other towns of this province, and all the other colonies, must see that we suffer in the common cause, and that they themselves must soon realize the sufferings under which we now labour, if no means are discovered for our relief. But if any should think that this town alone is to groan under the weight of arbitrary power, we are now furnished by our enemies with a still more glaring evidence of a fixed plan of the British administration to bring the whole continent into the most humiliating bondage. A bill has been brought into parliament apparently for the purpose of taking away our charter rights, wherein it is to be enacted that the counsellors shall be appointed by mandamus from the king, that our justices of the superior court, justices of our inferior courts, and justices of the peace, shall be all appointed by the governor alone, without the advice of the council, and all of them, excepting the tress, and is more insulted by an English armament than she ever was by a French or Spanish fleet in the hottest war, when left without one British ship for her protection. The town is become a spectacle to angels and men, G O D grant that it may not be intimidated by the present horrors to make a surrender of the rights of Americans; or in any respect to dishonour herself in this day of tryal and perplexity.

Business was finished at the custom-house at 12 o'clock yesterday noon, and this harbour is now shut against all vessels bound hither, and on the 15th instant none will be allowed to depart hence. Be it forever remembered, to thy grief and shame, O Britain!

1 Frothingham, Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 336 note. 2 Wells, Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, ii. 172.

3 Copied from an original (two leaves, printed on inside pages) owned by the American Antiquarian Society. An extract from this letter is in Force's American Archives, 4th Series, i. 397; but apparently the letter has not before been reprinted in full.

justices of the superior court be removable by him at his pleasure, that our juries shall not be chosen by the freeholders, as they heretofore have been, but by the sheriff of the county, and that this sheriff shall not be appointed by the governor and council as heretofore, but by the governor alone, so that our lives and properties are to be decided upon by judges appointed by, the governor alone, and by juries chosen by a sheriff who must be entirely under the influence of the governor as he is appointed by him, and is removable by him alone, whenever he shall discover a reluctance to conform to the will of the governor. Surely if we suffer these things we are the most abject slaves. If a favorite of a perverse governor should pretend a title to our lands, or any part of our property, we need not doubt but a very small degree of evidence in support of the claim, would be judged sufficient, especially as the bill makes provision, that upon the motion of either of the parties, it shall be lawful to try the cause in another county than that in which the action was brought, so that a man is to be carried into a distant part of the province, instead of having his cause tried in his own county, and to be tried by strangers with whom the good or bad characters of the parties or of the witnesses can have no weight, contrary to the very spirit of magna charta. Of what value are our lands or estates to us, if such an odious government should be established among us? Can we look with pleasure on the inheritance left by our ancestors, or on the fields cultivated by our industry? When we reflect that all our labours have made them only a more inviting prey to our enemies, will not the vine-yard of Naboth be ever in our minds? But lest any thing should be wanting to compleat our misery, another bill is also prepared, which enables the governor to save any person or persons, who, under the pretext of supporting or carrying into execution the late or other acts of the British parliament, shall murder and destroy the people of this country, from being tried in this province (even if they should be indicted by such grand jurors as shall be chosen by the sheriff of the county in the same manner that we have mentioned that petty jurors are to be returned) but the person indicted with such witnesses as he and the prosecutor (which will be the crown) shall judge proper, shall be sent to either of the other colonies, or even to Great Britain, to be tried for murdering the inhabitants of the Massachusetts-Bay. And provision is also made to prevent our meeting together in our corporate capacity as a town, unless it be once in the month of March for the election of the town officers, except the matter or business of the meeting is laid before the governor, and his leave in writing is obtained for a meeting of the town.

There is but one way we can conceive of, to prevent what is to be deprecated by all good men, and ought by all possible means to be prevented, viz, The horrors that must follow an open rupture between Great Britain and her colonies; or on our part, a subjection to absolute slavery: And that is by affecting the trade and interest of Great Britain, so deeply as shall induce her to withdraw her oppressive hand. There can be no doubt of our succeeding to the utmost of our wishes if we universally come into a solemn league, not to import goods from Great Britain, and not to buy any goods that shall hereafter be imported from thence, until our grievances shall be redressed. To these, or even to the lease of these shameful impositions, we trust in God, our countrymen never will submit.

We have received such assurances from our brethren in every part of the province of their readiness to adopt such measures as may be likely to save our country, that we have not the least doubt of an almost universal agreement for this purpose; in confidence of this, we have drawn up a form of a covenant to be subscribed by all adult persons of both sexes; which we have sent to every town in the province, and that we might not give our enemies time to counteract us, we have endeavoured that every town should be furnished with such a copy on or before the fourteenth day of this month, and we earnestly desire that you would use your utmost endeavours that the subscription paper may be filled up as soon as possible, that so they who are in expectation of overthrowing our liberties may be discouraged from prosecuting their wicked designs; as we look upon this the last and only method of preserving our land from slavery without drenching it in blood, may God prosper every undertaking which tends to the salvation of his people. We are, &c.

1 "William Cooper Clerk" is an autograph signature. Near the wax of the seal, still visible, are written a few words, apparently "S Jenison Or Town." No doubt this was Samuel Jennison (1733-1790), later elected a member of the Provincial Congress from Douglas: see W. A. Emerson, History of Douglas, pp. 68-70; G. F. Daniels, History of Oxford, pp. 559-560; Vital Records of Oxford, p. 289.

The Massachusetts Historical Society owns two copies of this broadside.

Of the Solemn League and Covenant itself, two printed forms exist. Uncertainty prevails as to which of these was the one sent out by the Boston Committee of Correspondence -a problem which will be discussed later. For purposes of comparison the two forms, respectively designated A and B, are here printed in parallel columns: 1

W

[B]

E the Subscribers, inhabitants of the town of having

taken into our serious consideration the precarious state of the liberties of North-America, and more especially the present distressed condition of this insulted province, embarrassed as it is by several acts of the British parliament, tending to the entire subversion of our natural and charter rights; among which is the act for blocking up the harbour of Boston: and being fully sensible of our indispensable duty to lay hold on every means in our power to preserve and recover the much injured constitution of our country; and conscious at the same time of no alternative between the horrors of slavery, or the carnage and desolation of a civil war, but a suspension of all commercial intercourse with the island of Great Britain, Do, in the presence of God, solemnly and in good faith, covenant

taken into our serious consideration the precarious state of the liberties of North-America, and more especially the present distressed condition of this insulted province, embarrassed as it is by several acts of the British parliament, tending to the entire subversion of our natural and charter rights; among which is the act for blocking up the harbour of Boston: and being fully sensible of our indispensable duty to lay hold on every means in our power to preserve and recover the much injured constitution of our country; and conscious at the same time of no alternative between the horrors of slavery, or the carnage and desolation of a civil war, but a suspension of all commercial intercourse with the island of Great Britain: Do, in the presence of God,3 solemnly and in good faith, covenant One, with the wax of the seal still visible, is addressed "For the Committee of Correspondence for Salem." The other ends with the words "We are, &c.;" after which is written in ink in Cooper's hand:

June 8. 1774.

By Order of the Committee of Correspondence for Boston, William Cooper Clerk.

1 Form A is copied from the document exhibited to-day. It is a folded sheet which, opened, measures 134 inches in width by 20 in height. The covenant is printed on the first page. The alterations made in the Westford meeting of July 4 are indicated in footnotes, all the alterations being in ink.

Form B is copied from a broadside owned by the American Antiquarian Society. It measures 71⁄2 inches in width by 121⁄2 in height.

2 In the Westford document, the name "Westford" has been inserted. The words "in the presence of God" are crossed out in the Westford docu

ment.

The words "and in good faith" are crossed out in the Westford document.