George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 6, 10th edition.

[456]

The effect of these Resolutions of the Old Domin-

Chap. XLIX.} 1773. April.

ion was decisive.¹ In Massachusetts they gladdened every heart. ‘Virginia and South Carolina by their steady perseverance,’ inspired the hope, that the fire of Liberty would spread through the Continent.² ‘A Congress and then an Assembly of States,’ reasoned Samuel Adams, is no longer ‘a mere fiction in the mind of a political enthusiast.’ What though ‘the British nation carry their liberties to market, and sell them to the highest bidder?’ ‘America,’ said he, repeating the words of Arthur Lee, ‘America shall rise full plumed and glorious from the mother's ashes.’³

A copy of the proceedings of Virginia was sent to every town and district in Massachusetts, that ‘all the friends of American Independence and freedom,’⁴ might welcome the intelligence; and as one Meeting after another echoed back the advice for a Congress, they could hardly find words to express how their gloom had given way to light, and how ‘their hearts even leapt for joy.’ ‘We trust the day is not far distant,’ said Cambridge by the hand of Thomas Gardner, ‘when our rights and liberties shall be restored unto us, or the Colonies, united as one man, will make their most solemn appeal to Heaven, and drive tyranny from these northern climes.’⁵