Browsing: Papers of John Adams, Volume 2

3. Since the author draws so heavily on the Massachusetts example, his call for county meetings to elect congresses in each colony suggests that he wrote before the meeting of the Massachusetts First Provincial Congress, whose delegates came from the towns and met first as a congress on 7 Oct. 1774, after Gage had refused to hold a General Court on 5 Oct. (Mass. Provincial Congress, Jours. , p. 3–6).