Lot 1224

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CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON
(1737 - 1832) Signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress. CARROLL MENTIONS THE BOSTON TEA PARTY AND LEXINGTON AND CONCORD AS HE SETS FORTH HIS FEELINGS ABOUT THE COMING WAR Historic content draft A.L. (unsigned), 4pp. 4to., Annapolis, May 17, 1775 to an unknown recipient in Europe, probably in England. In part: '...Upon a complaint made to the Governor by several persons in Ware County [Georgia?] of officers in Sussex County upon Delaware imprisoning the inhabitants deemed [?] northward...from Fenwicks Island...His Excellency called a council...to advise him what answer to give...The sooner we proclaim our rights the better as the Pennsylvanians have asserted theirs, where they have gained...[He]...was advised to write to the complainants in Ward recommending peace till he received instructions from the Guardians...I was not in town when the Provincial Conv[ention] broke up nor have a paper where the proceedings are related after professing allegiance to His Majesty. It recommended to its delegates to endeavor all in their power to reunite the Colonies and Mother Country if it could be done without admitting the right of taxation. This is the Rock on which we probable [sic] will rend us still further asunder and if Parliament of Great Britain will not waive its claim much Blood must be spilt and at last probably leave it in no better situation than when the dispute began...99 out of 100 suffer the greatest calamity before they will admit that the Parliament of Great Britain have a right to give and grant all that they are worth [for?] what purpose it pleases, and altho' a great many of free thinking people are of the opinion that the tea destroyed at Boston was an unjustifiable act and that it ought to be paid for yet, there will not be found but very few indeed that would take up arms against their country men...Whenever Great Britain shall be engaged in a war the Colonies...would grant liberally toward his common defense...I wish Parliament had waited...before the question of taxation had been agitated...D[anie?]l Johnson in a late performance mentions the [setting?] slaves in America at Liberty [offering?] a separate Colony out of them. Should such a measure be attempted those poor wretches would be put to death by their masters...By an act of the action between the Regulars and the Provincials in Massachusetts transmitted by Gage to our Governor the General complains that the Provincials would not face the Regulars in the open field, what man in his senses ever thought that they would when it is evident that in Defensive protractive war America can chance it...You may be assured that they will abandon the sea coasts and towns driving before them their stock of all kinds into the back country. Many at the Congress now sitting at Phila. ...talk of stopping exportation to all parts of the world immediately...I hope they will think better of it...Stop they certainly will...to Britain, Ireland, & the West Indies...and I suppose Parliament will prevent exportation to any other place as I perceive a bill for that purpose has been moved in the House of Commons...Liberty or Death is being the Motto engraved in a label near their hearts. If this dispute is not compromized in less than two years, it is my opinion that Great Britain [and] their Colonies will not after that time be ever again re-united...How I shall stand my grounds as Agent the Lord above knows. I must either give all that I am asked for or quit the Country...I am never the less determined to keep my ground as long as I can altho' hope you will allow me to say on this occasion 'Pro Mege Soepe[?], pro publica seimper'. I am utante[?]...' A bit brittle, with some show-through of text from verso, some edge chips and ink-eroded holes, still quite good. In this letter, Carroll clearly refers to the Boston Tea Party which took place two years earlier, as well as the battles at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 - only a month earlier. His thoughts and opinions in this letter, probably provoked by the Massachusetts battles, were spot on, as history has proven. Carroll was not initially interested in politics, and in any event Catholics had been barred from holding office in Maryland since the 1704 act seeking 'to prevent the growth of 'Popery in this Province'. But as the dispute between Great Britain and her American colonies intensified in the early 1770s, Carroll became a powerful voice for independence. In 1772, he engaged in a debate, conducted through anonymous newspaper letters, maintaining the right of the colonies to control their own taxation. He became a member of Annapolis' first committee of safety in 1775, and was a delegate to the Annapolis Convention, which functioned as Maryland's revolutionary government before the Declaration of Independence. The Annapolis Convention would meet again on July 26, 1775 with Carroll in attendance. On that date, it would issue the Declaration of the Association of the Freemen of Maryland wherein it was declared: '...it is necessary and justifiable to repel force by force, [we] do approve of the opposition by Arms to the British troops, employed to enforce obedience to the late acts and statutes of the British parliament...'

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July 29, 2022 10:00 AM EDT
Chesapeake City, MD, US

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