In this gingerly way did the deputies
lift the curtain and peer down the road to revolution.
The deputies, like true Britons, contrived to avoid the highly
theoretical question of authority, and began straightway to
concern themselves with the practical question of whether the
Congress, with or without authority, should recommend the
adoption of strict non-intercourse agreements. Upon this question,
as the chief issue, the deputies were divided into nearly equal
groups. Mr. Galloway, Mr. Duane, and Mr. Rutledge were perhaps
the leaders of those, probably a majority at first, who were
opposed to such vigorous measures, fearing that they were
intended as a cloak to cover the essentially revolutionary
designs of the shrewd New Englanders. "We have too much reason to
suspect that independence is aimed at," Mr. Low warned the
Congress; and Mr. Galloway could see that while the Massachusetts
men were in "behavior very modest, yet they are not so much so as
not to throw out hints, which like straws and feathers show from
which point in the compass the wind comes." In the early days of
the Congress, if we are to believe Mr. Hutchinson, this cold
north wind was so much disliked that the New York and New Jersey
deputies, "and others," carried a vote against the adoption of
non-intercourse agreements, "agreed to present a petition to the
King," and "expected to break up, when letters arrived from Dr.
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