One of the earliest acts of the New York Provincial Congress was the promise on May 24, 1775, to repay all monies advanced for the resistance to British domination. When the old colonial government was gradually superseded in 1774 and 1775 by an extra-legal government of committees and congresses chosen by the people, these bodies were met immediately by the problem of financing both the political activities and the military operations. The latter began with the plans to seize Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, shortly after the colonists had been electrified by the news of Lexington and Concord. [Read more…] about New York & The Struggle to Finance the Revolutionary War
William Tryon
New York’s Revolutionary Provincial Congresses 1775-1776
By May 1775 civil war between the American colonies and the British government had begun. The Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the seizures of Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point told the story of an appeal to arms.
Town, county, city and state committees, as representatives of the people, assumed the functions of government, took the initiative in opposing the objectionable acts of the British parliament, and gradually, perhaps more or less unconsciously, prepared the people for the Revolutionary War. [Read more…] about New York’s Revolutionary Provincial Congresses 1775-1776
New York’s Provincial Congress: From Association to State Government
The New York Provincial Congress on May 26, 1775, appointed a “standing committee of correspondence” and the next day ordered all the counties in the Province of New York to name committees for the counties, towns and districts and to have the “general association” signed, in order to execute the orders of the Second Continental Congress.
Every citizen was to be invited to sign the “association” and by July 1775, all the non-signers (loyalist, or otherwise) were to be reported to the Provincial Congress. [Read more…] about New York’s Provincial Congress: From Association to State Government
1775 Articles of Association: One Long Island Community’s Experience
The residents of Huntington, on Long Island, were quick to react to the first battle of the American Revolution when the local militia in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts successfully repulsed a British attempt to seize their arms on April 19, 1775.
A week later in the city of New York, the Committee of Sixty, which had been created the previous November, expressed its opinion “That at the present alarming Juncture, it is highly adviseable [sic] that a Provincial Congress be immediately summoned.” [Read more…] about 1775 Articles of Association: One Long Island Community’s Experience