ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 81 



Parliament, and as if in some measure to break the force of this 

 illegality, the delegates had assembled in the name of " the peo- 

 ple." It was, in effect, the declaration of a new sovereignty. 

 Patrick Henry justified it on the ground that the " colonial gov- 

 ernments were at an end ; " that " all America was thrown into 

 one mass and was in a state of nature." " Where are your land- 

 marks, your boundaries of colonies?" said he. . . . The 

 distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, 

 and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian ; I am 

 an American." His theory was premature, however, for Con- 

 gress had not been appointed as direct representatives of the 

 people, but as committees of organized colonies which had not 

 yet thrown off allegiance to the British Crown ; but his words 

 were prophetic and forecast the philosophy which the Declara- 

 tion of Independence was soon to assert as the expressed con- 

 viction of the nation. The tendency of public thought, however, 

 outstripped the progress of events ; and, believing the delegates 

 to represent the whole territory claimed by the British Crown 

 in America, the people spontaneously named the assembly the 

 '' Continental Congress." To the popular mind the revolution 

 had become the revolt of a continent against the oppression of 

 an island. When Colonel Ethan Allen demanded the surrender 

 of Fort Ticonderoga "in the name of the Great Jehovah and 

 the Continental Congress," he uttered the whole philosophy of 

 the American Revolution. 



It soon became apparent that the colonists, to whom their 

 King and Parliament denied the rights of Englishmen, were in 

 fact reduced to " a state of nature,' 1 and the idea of Patrick Henry 

 gained ascendancy. The logical result was the abandonment of 

 all allegiance to the British Crown by the Declaration of Inde- 

 pendence. 



Ten days before the adoption of the Declaration, Congress had 

 resolved that " all persons abiding within any of the united col- 

 onies, and deriving protection from the laws of the same, owed 

 allegiance to the said laws and were members of said colony." 

 Thus the same power which declared independence gave to the 

 colonial governments all the authority which they possessed. 

 The colonies owed their existence as independent common- 

 wealths, not to their own separate acts and achievements, but 

 to the united action of nil combined. Whatever sovereignty 

 they subsequently claimed was wholly derived from the union 

 between them. Alone each colony was but an empty name; 



