In Their Own Words
December 19, 1775
Letter Detailed Return of Continental Congress Delegates
From Savannah, royal governor James Wright wrote British secretary of state for the colonies Lord Dartmouth about the return of Georgia Whig delegates to the Continental Congress:
“The people who went from hence as delegates are returned, and it is said they have brought blank commissions from the Continental Congress to be filled up by the Council of Safety here to officers for a regiment of what they called ‘Provincials’ which is to be raised for this province to consist of eight companies of 75 privates, say 600 rank and file in a regiment. Thus, Your Lordship sees they are preparing throughout to support their usurped powers and to resist the King’s troops when any may be sent. In this province, My Lord, we are more unhappily circumstanced than in any other, for there are very few men of real abilities, gentlemen or men of property in their tribunals. The parochial committee are a parcel of the lowest people, chiefly carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths &c. with a few at their head in the general Committee and Council of Safety. They are some better sort of men and some merchants and planters but many of the inferior class, and it is really terrible, My Lord, that such people should be suffered to overturn the civil government and most arbitrarily determine upon and sport with other men’s lives, liberties and properties.”
Source: Mills Lane (ed.), Georgia: History written by Those who lived It (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1995), p. 40.
