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Parliament passed four penal laws, the first of which punished Boston
by transferring its port to Salem and closing its harbor. The second
law suspended the charter of the Province and added several new and
tyrannical powers to the British Governor and to Crown officials.
On September 5, 1774, the first Continental Congress met in
Philadelphia. Except Georgia, every Colony sent delegates to it. The
election of those delegates was in several cases irregular, because
the body which chose them was not the Legislature but some temporary
body of the patriots. Nevertheless, the Congress numbered some of
the men who were actually and have remained in history, the great
engineers of the American Revolution. Samuel Adams and John Adams went
from Massachusetts; John Jay and Philip Livingston from New York;
Roger Sherman from Connecticut; Thomas Mifflin and Edward Biddle from
Pennsylvania; Thomas McKean from Delaware; George Washington, Patrick
Henry, Peyton Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and Richard H. Lee from
Virginia; and Edward and John Rutledge from South Carolina. Although
the Congress was made up of these men and of others like them, the
petitions adopted by it and the work done, not to mention the freshets
of oratory, were astonishingly mild. Probably many of the delegates
would have preferred to use fiery tongues.
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