Rowe, Captain Clough, Captain Adams, Captain Titcomb, Captain Gilman, Captain Wentworth, Captain Tilton, and Captain Norriss, to march their men without loss of time to Cambridge, to join the Army.

PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY (VIRGINIA) COMMITTEE.

At a meeting of the Committee for the County of Prince Edward, at the Court-House, June 19, 1775:

Present: Colonel John Nash, Jun., Chairman for the day; John Morton, Robert Lawson, William Booker, Francis Watkins, Obadiah Woodson, Thomas Flournoy, James Allen, Senior, and Thomas Haskins, Committeemen.

The Committee, taking under their consideration his Excellency Lord Dunmore’s conduct in the removal of the Powder from the publick magazine in the City of Williamsburgh, after the most mature deliberation, came to the following Resolutions:

1. That, for ourselves and our constituents, we do hereby publickly avow our unfeigned attachment and affectionate, loyalty to the sacred person of our most gracious King, George the Third, and that we ardently pray for nothing more than a speedy pacification between Great Britain and her American Colonies, upon permanent, constitutional, and generous principles, as the only probable means of preserving to us our inherent, legal, and just rights and privileges—rights and privileges which His Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain have ever laid claim to, and have received the ample enjoyment of; and deprived of which inestimable blessings, the Americans must, of necessity, cease to be a free, happy, and flourishing people.

2. Under these sentiments, and when exerting every human effort to effect a reconciliation between us and the Parent State, upon the grounds aforesaid, we can but lament that his Excellency Lord Dunmore, as a representative of our Sovereign here, whose duty it was to have given a fair and impartial state to the Ministry of the disposition of the people committed to his care and government, should, on the contrary, delight, by disingenuous, illiberal, and viciously subtle representations, to keep up the unhappy ferment between us and them; the truth of which charge against his Lordship appears but too clearly in his Letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, on the 24th of December last, as published in the different Gazettes on this Continent; the authority of which said Letter his Lordship (as far as we know) has never, as yet, thought proper to disavow.

3. That his Lordship’s conduct in the removal of the Powder from the publick magazine in the City of Williams-burgh, under the cover of the night, in the manner it appears to have been done, at that critical juncture of affairs, was as despotick, cruel, and unwarrantable, as his verbal answer to the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of Williamsburgh, was unmanly, evasive, and affrontive; and that, in conjunction with some other parts of his conduct, it was a clear declaration of his inimical and hostile designs against this Country; and thereby he has forfeited all claim to the further confidence and respect of the good people thereof.

4. We, therefore, under the above circumstances, and having before us the proceedings of Captain Patrick Henry, do approve of the same, and unanimously vote him, and the volunteers under his command, our cordial thanks, for their firm, prudent, and spirited conduct, in obtaining an equivalent for the Powder so unjustly removed out of the publick magazine.

Ordered, That the Clerk do transmit a copy hereof to Messrs. Dixon and Hunter, and entreat them to publish the Same in their Gazette.

BEN. LAWSON, Clerk.

FREDERICK COUNTY (VIRGINIA) COMMITTEE.

Committee Chamber, Frederick County, June19, 1775.

The late conduct of Patrick Henry, Esq., relative to his making reprisals from the King’s Receiver-General, for the Powder so clandestinely taken from the Colony Magazine, being laid before this Committee, they took the same into consideration; when it was

Resolved unanimously, That an express be immediately despatched to Williamsburgh, with the following Address to the Printer:

“SIR: We should blush to be thus late in our commendations of, and thanks to Patrick Henry, Esquire, for his patriotick and spirited behaviour in making reprisals for the powder so unconstitutionally (not to use a term more harsh, which perhaps it deserves) taken from the publick magazine, could we have entertained a thought that any part of the Colony would have condemned a measure calculated for the benefit of the whole; but as we are informed this is the case, we beg leave, through the channel of your paper to assure that gentleman, that we did from the first, and still do, most cordially approve and commend his conduct in that affair. The good people of this County will never fail to approve and support him to the utmost of their powers in every action derived from so rich a source as the love of his Country.

“We heartily thank him for stepping forth to convince the tools of despotism that freeborn men are not to be intimidated by any form of danger, to submit to the arbitrary acts of their rulers; and hope he knows us better than to suppose any proclamated distinctions, respecting the property of the powder, can ever make us condemn actions so worthily achieved, or forsake the achievers; and more fully to express our sentiments, we cannot but wish he had proceeded to secure what arms and ammunition might remain after the plunder of the magazine.”

An Address from the Council, to the good people of this Colony, being laid before the Committee, it was, after mature deliberation,

Resolved unanimously, That the following be transmitted to the publick Printer, in answer thereto:

“The Committee considering the very extraordinary powers assumed and exercised by the Council of this Colony, are induced the more attentively to investigate their conduct on this alarming crisis, and to express their abhorrence and detestation of having the generous struggles for liberty branded with the opprobrious terms of licentious and ungovernable. The peace and good order of the community in their County (and they have been informed it is general through the Colony) they will venture to say has been preserved inviolate, and the people as governable as in times of the most profound tranquillity, unless frequent meetings to perfect themselves in military exercises, and a steady resolution to oppose to the last extremity all invaders of their just rights and liberties, be deemed a licentious and ungovernable spirit. Then, indeed, they must glory that such a spirit has gone forth; and pledge their faith to their countrymen that nothing but death shall rob them of their part of it,

“This Committee has seriously considered, according to the recommendation of the Council, the probable consequences of the conduct which hath been lately pursued; and are of opinion it is the only method to obtain a redress of their grievances. Every lenient measure, they think, has already been tried, without success, (a circumstance with which their Honours would seem to be unacquainted,) and they have nothing left but tamely to submit, or resolutely oppose; of which two they hope the latter will be the choice of every American.

“This Committee would have wished not to doubt the integrity of the Council, nor to make any odious distinction from the important place they hold in the state; but when such odious epithets as licentious and ungovernable are made use of to stigmatise men labouring in the glorious cause of liberty, they must say, in their opinion, the conduct of a man to whom they hold themselves and the whole Colony much obliged for his patriotick behaviour, they conceive it their duty to speak their minds without disguise to any man, or set of men, under Heaven.”

A copy from the Minutes:

WILLIAM HETH, Clerk.

QUEEN ANNE COUNTY (MARYLAND) COMMITTEE.

Queen Anne’s County, June 19, 1775.

Whereas, the business of this Committee has been, and is likely to be rendered very tedious and troublesome, by inquiries into the circumstances of goods which have been, and may be imported into this County from other Provinces