Royal Rule Abolished
From the Fowey, Dunmore sent messages, addresses, and letters to the Burgesses in session at Williamsburg, and received communications from them in return. When all necessary bills had been passed, the House invited Dunmore to his capital, to sign them, promising him a safeguard. He declined, and demanded that they should present the papers at his present residence, the ship-of-war. They did not go; but delegating their powers to a permanent committee, they adjourned. So ended royal rule in Virginia. Other royal governors were also compelled to abdicate; and before the close of the summer of 1775, British dominion in the English-American provinces had ceased forever, and the people were preparing for war.
News of the events of the 19th of April reached the city of New York on Sunday, the 23d. Regarding patriotism as a holy thing, the Sons of Liberty there did not refrain from doing its work on the Sabbath. They immediately proceeded to lay an embargo on vessels bound to Boston with supplies for the British troops there. In defiance of the king's collector at that port, they landed the cargo of a vessel which he had refused to admit, demanded and received the keys of the Custom-house, dismissed those employed in it, and closed it. This was done by Sears and Lamb, the chief leaders of the Sons of Liberty: and they boldly avowed this overt act of treason in letters to their political friends in other cities. It was soon imitated elsewhere.
As the horrid story of Lexington and Concord spread over the provinces southward, royal authority rapidly disappeared. Provincial Congresses were organized in all the colonies where they did not already exist, and so the political union of the provinces was perfected. Provision was everywhere made for war; and in May, a convention of the representatives of the towns in Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, met at Charlotte, and by their proceedings, virtually declared the inhabitants of that county independent of the British crown. Taking into consideration the fact that the crown had proclaimed the people of the colonies to be rebels, the Convention declared that all government in their county had ceased, and proceeded by a series of resolutions, passed on the 31st of May to organize independent local government for themselves. This famous "Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence" has been the subject of much discussion, disputations, and acute historical inquiry.
In the meantime an army of patriots were gathering around Boston with a determination to confine the British troops to the peninsula, or drive them to their ships and out to sea. On the morning of the day after the massacre at Lexington and Concord, and the fight on the retreat, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety sent a circular to all the towns of the province, saying: "We conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is sacred; we beg and entreat you, as you will answer it to your country, to your consciences, and, above all, to God himself, that you will hasten and arrange, by all possible means, the enlistment of men to form the army; and send them forward to headquarters at Cambridge with that expedition which the vast importance and instant urgency of the affair demands."