MIKE KEELER: 250 Years Ago Boston Was An Armed Camp

In response, On October 5, the colonists created a new Provincial Assembly, which met in Salem and chose Gage’s nemesis John Hancock as President. On October 11 they moved to Concord, and then moved again, to Cambridge, on October 17.

On Friday the 21st, at 4 in the afternoon, they met once more in Cambridge to discuss “the propriety of recommending a day of public thanksgiving throughout the province.” This was a well-established religious tradition going back to the earliest days of the Plymouth colony, and was usually the responsibility of the Royal Governor to proclaim. But under the current circumstances, the Provincial Assembly directed a committee of three Harvard men – Professor John Winthrop, Reverend Joseph Wheeler, and Reverend Solomon Lombard – to draw up a resolution.

One sticking point between the three men was whether they would recommend, “a day of feasting” or “a day of fasting’; they got around that issue by referencing neither.

The following morning the committee presented their draft for review, and it was amended and approved. It was passed to President Hancock, who signed it.

On October 24, it was printed in the Boston Gazette, and as a broadside that was posted in towns and villages, and at every religious meeting house throughout the Colony. This proclamation would prove to be the first quasi-official non-Royal Thanksgiving Proclamation in the American colonies, and the holiday would be overwhelmingly observed, to General Gage’s disgust, throughout Massachusetts on December 15, 1774.

Here is the text in its entirety:

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Cambridge, October 22, 1774

From a consideration of the continuance of the Gospel among us, and the smiles of Divine Providence upon us with regard to the seasons of the year, and the general health which has been enjoyed; and in particular, from a consideration of the Union which so remarkably prevails not only on this Province, but through the continent at this alarming crisis.

It is RESOLVED, as the sense of this Congress, that it is highly proper that a Day of PUBLIC THANKSGIVING should be observed throughout this Province; and it is accordingly recommended to the several Religious Assemblies in the Province, that the Thursday the Fifteenth of December next, be observed as a Day of THANKSGIVING, to render Thanks to Almighty God for all the blessings we enjoy. At the same time, we think it incumbent on the People to humble themselves before God on account of their sins, for which he has been pleased in his righteous judgement to suffer so great a calamity to befall us, as the present controversy between Great-Britain and the Colonies; as also to implore the Divine Blessing upon us, that by the assistance of his Grace we may be enabled to reform whatever is amiss among us, that so God may be pleased to continue to us the blessings we enjoy, and remove the tokens of his displeasure, by causing Harmony and Union to be restored between Great-Britain and these Colonies, that we may again rejoice in the smiles of our sovereign and the possession of those privileges which have been transmitted to us, and have the hopeful prospect that they shall be handed down entire to posterity, under the Protestant Succession in the illustrious House of Hanover.

By order of the Provincial Congress, John Hancock, President

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  Mike Keeler

The Adirondack tale, ‘Forty-Something’ is here