97 



questing their concuiTcncc in tliis measure/''^ Troops, it is 

 said, were ordered up from the fort to enforce obedience to the 

 proclamation, who having marched most of the distance, again 

 returned. On the 18th of the same month, the day after the 

 House had been dissolved, a protest against the Boston Port 

 Bill, signed by one hundred and twenty-iive of the most influ- 

 ential merchants and traders of Salem, was presented to the 

 Governor. This protest has ever been admired for its spirit 

 and the generosity of its sentiments.f 



In July, by order of Governor Gage, two companies of the 

 64th regiment came here by water from Boston. They landed 

 and marched through the town to the Governor's head-quarters 

 in Danvers, then the country residence of Robert Plooper, of 

 Marblehead, an eminent merchant, familiarly known in those 



* We say this was the firsl step whicli uUlmaiely led to the independence 

 of America. By this we mean that our independence was the final 

 result of the delibei'ation of such a meeting as is here for the first time 

 definitely proposed — namely, — a General Congress. We are aware that 

 in some of the colonies suggestions of independence had already been 

 loosely and vaguely thrown out by certain individuals in the heat of 

 debate, but the colonies separately could efl'ect nothing towards it, and 

 it was only by the concentrated action and united efibrts of the whole 

 together, that any thing like independence would ever have been at- 

 tempted. The avowed object of the Congress here proposed, we know to 

 have been " the restoration of union and harmony between Great 

 Britain and the Colonies ; " but if this had been the real motive in the 

 minds of those who proposed this measure, why the observance of so 

 much secrecy ? Viewed in this light only, there was no taint of treason 

 about it. " The fact is," to quote the language of Graham in his 

 history of the United States, " all the ardent friends of America, all 

 the partizans of Great Britain, and all, in short, except those whose 

 penetration was obscured by divided hope and purpose, plainly perceived 

 that the formation of a general deliberative council for America, at a 

 crisis like the present, as it was an essential requisite, was also a bold 

 and deliberative approximation to united revolt." Therefore, we repeat, 

 that as our independence was the result of the action of a general Con- 

 gress of all the Colonies thus assembled, it was here, in Salem, the first, 

 the initiatory step, which led to that great event, was taken at this time. 

 Out of 129 members present, only 12 voted against it. The names of 

 11 of those who opposed it were published at the time in the 

 Essex Gazette. Next to the building where the Declaration of Indepen- 

 dence was consummated, no spot more richly deserves a monument 

 than that of the once humble " Town House'''' of Salem. 



f For the names of the persons who signed this protest see Essex 

 Gazette files, June 21st, 1774. 



ESSEX INST. PROCEED. 13. 



