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Browsing named entities in Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing). You can also browse the collection for July 31st, 1775 AD or search for July 31st, 1775 AD in all documents.

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Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Army. (search)
appointed commissary-general; Thomas Mifflin, quartermaster-general; and Joseph Reed, of Philadelphia, was chosen by Washington to the important post of secretary to the commander-in-chief. Soon after Washington took command of the army the legislature of Massachusetts and the governor of Connecticut applied to him for detachments from the army for the protection of points on their respective sea-coasts exposed to predatory attacks from British cruisers. Washington, in a letter dated July 31, 1775, answered these appeals with a refusal, after giving satisfactory reasons for his decision. He pointed out the danger to be apprehended by scattering the army in detachments. He said the matter had been debated in Congress, and that they had come to the wise conclusion that each province should defend itself from small and particular depredations. It was then established as a rule, that attacks of the enemy at isolated points along the coast must be repelled by the militia in the vic
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing), Conciliation measures. (search)
rintending power of Parliament, but provided that no tax should ever be levied except by the consent of the colonial assemblies. It also contained a provision for a congress of the colonies to vote, at the time of making this acknowledgment, a free grant to the King of a certain perpetual revenue, to be placed at the disposal of Parliament. All the assemblies rejected the proposition. A committee of the Continental Congress, to which the proposition had been referred, made a report (July 31, 1775), in which the generally unsatisfactory character and the unsafe vagueness of the ministerial offer were fully exposed. The Congress accepted the report and published it to the world. When Parliament reassembled after the Christmas holidays (January, 1778), the opposition exposed the losses, expenses, and hopelessness of the war with the colonists; and, to the surprise and disgust of some of his most ardent supporters, Lord North presented a second plan for reconciliation (Feb. 17),