Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/36

18 tea tax and the Boston port bill, he became keenly alive to the danger of submission, and was ready to unite in measures of remonstrance, opposition, and ultimately of resistance. When he heard at Williamsburg, in August, 1773, of the sufferings resulting from the port bill, he is said to have exclaimed, impulsively: "I will raise a thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march with them, at their head, for the relief of Boston." He little dreamed at that moment that within two years he was destined to be hailed as the deliverer of Boston from British occupation.

Washington accepted an election as a delegate to the first Continental congress in 1774, and went to the meeting at Philadelphia in September of that year, in company with Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton, who called for him at Mount Vernon on horseback. That congress sat in Carpenter's Hall with closed doors, but the great papers that it prepared and issued form a proud part of American history. Those were the papers and that the congress of which Chatham in the house of lords, in his memorable speech on the removal of troops from Boston, January 20, 1775, said: "When your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must declare