previous next
[31]

It was on the 5th of this month that delegates from twelve of the thirteen Colonies assembled, and Peyton Randolph, a Virginian, was called upon to preside over its deliberations. It is not my purpose to recapitulate the stirring events of the period that flashed across the horizon like the shifting scenes in a kaleidoscopeic panorama—the Boston massacre, the battle of Concord, Lexington and other events that resulted in the appointment of Washington to the command of the armies of the embryo republic. On the fourth of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed. Eight days thereafter the committee appointed for that purpose reported the articles of confederation, under which the war of the Revolution was waged and independence achieved. The war of the Revolution itself is an interesting theme and well worthy of a separate paper at some future date. The struggles, sufferings, the heroic sacrifices, the patriotism displayed, all call for admiration and evince the devotion of our forefathers to the principles they avowed and so strenuously maintained.

But whilst the sufferings of the Colonial troops at Valley Forge and throughout the struggle were great, I question if they were more severe or more heroically borne than the ordeal through which many of us passed during the second struggle for constitutional liberty—during the trying period of 1861-65.

At the termination of the struggle for independence the Colonies were confronted with chaotic conditions. Bills of Credit had been emitted known as ‘Continental Money,’ not including what was termed the ‘New Emission,’ amounting to two hundred millions of dollars—a vast sum for those days and values at that time and the poverty of the young republic. Public credit was exhausted; general stagnation existed; commerce was languishing; discontent prevailed; the confederation was inadequate to properly conduct the government or enforce the laws. The system was about to dissolve in its own inanity and imbecility. Congress had made requisitions upon the States for their quota to meet the public debt, some had paid in part, others refused to pay—there existed no adequate power to enforce payment. Large sums were due France and Holland upon which even the interest had not been paid. The individual indebtedness to the English merchants was over ten million

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Valley Forge (Pennsylvania, United States) (1)
France (France) (1)
Concord (Massachusetts, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
George Washington (1)
Peyton Randolph (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1865 AD (1)
1861 AD (1)
July 4th, 1776 AD (1)
5th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: