America survived those crucial months because we had self-government as well as liberty.
The Second Massachusetts Provincial Congress assembled on February 1, 1775.
The Second Congress would select Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine to serve as delegates to the Continental Congress. It authorized a Committee of Safety—among other duties—to raise and order Massachusetts’ new armed forces. The Second Massachusetts Provincial Congress would govern Massachusetts as Parliament declared Massachusetts in rebellion and when British troops marched to Lexington and Concord. Indeed, the Congress had sat at Concord and departed to safer Watertown due to those battles. The Massachusetts men who fired the shot heard round the world had been authorized and organized by the Second Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
America survived those crucial months because we had self-government as well as liberty.
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Scattered individuals would scarcely have had the heart to continue resistance once Great Britain’s king and parliament had declared them rebels. Even a mob of Boston wharf rats whipped up by Sam Adams would have had trouble facing redcoats. Massachusetts had the representatives of towns writing journals and working in committees to do all the work of keeping up the struggle. The men of Lexington and Concord—how could they have coordinated to fight the British, how could they have had powder and shot for their guns, if the Second Provincial Congress had not preparing the ground for months? The Second Provincial Congress kept Massachusetts at a fighting pitch—not least by declaring days of Thanksgiving in prayerful reverence to God. They sent an official letter with their account of Lexington and Concord ASAP to Ben Franklin in London to pass on their side of the story. They sent their best, above all John Adams, to talk the representatives of the other colonies into support, into union, into that sympathy and commitment that would transform a Massachusetts rebellion into an American revolution.
Several dozen Massachusetts representatives sat down, day after day, voted, scribbled, debated, and sent out orders, cognizant that they represented the people of Massachusetts’ town. What they did, they did in their name—and with the realism bred of 150 years of self-government.
Most rebellions fail—the state’s sinews of power rarely buckle, even in crisis. Massachusetts was governed in rebellion, and it did not fall apart. The Minutemen fought and won at Lexington and Concord—and the militia was still there to fight another day. The voters of Massachusetts’ towns chose well when they voted in these Congressmen.
But perhaps it mattered as much that this was the Second Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
Rebellion became routine by repetition; the shock of government without royal sanction faded and became old hat. (So, too, a second Trump administration: it gains power and authority by proving the first administration was no fluke.) Had Parliament declared Massachusetts in rebellion? Why, yes. And? Was this news to the good folks of Massachusetts who had voted in a second rebel Congress? Massachusetts, by the matter-of-fact continuance of its rebellion, did that bit more to turn British colonies into the United States of America.
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When we work to restore American liberty, we too must marry liberty with self-government, the bold act with the quiet legislative and administrative work that makes liberty endure. And we must repeat our defiance until they can no longer be called exceptions but the standard behavior of the rejuvenated republic. We must make liberty customary.
The Second Massachusetts Provincial Congress provides a model for how that should be done.
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