Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution
> This admirable Reply to the Answer of the Provincial Congress, which was more especially devoted to the proposal of that body to impose a new form of Government on the Colony or State, without having submitted it to the body of the People, for ratification or rejection, was in these words : ********** 2 Journal of a Convention of Delegates from the Counties and Corporations in the Colony of Virginia, held at tlie Capitol, in tile City of Williamsburgh, " Wednesday May 15, 1776."
" that John Jay and Gouverneur Morris be a Commit- " tee to prepare a draft of an answer to it, and to "report the same" 8 -- without the usual injunction, " with all convenient speed," however, since the Provincial Congress was not in a hurry to consider the subject of Independence ; and it would not be so, at least until what it evidently preferred, the question of Reconciliation, should have been met and finally disposed of.
On the afternoon of the day succeeding that on which the Resolutions from Virginia had been received, [June 6, 1776,] the Committee to whom those Resolutions had been referred, reported an answer to the letter of Edmund Pendleton which had covered them -an answer which was just as icy cold and formal as the Answer to " the Mechanics in Union," two days before, had been ; and which told, as distinctly as the other had told, how entirely obnoxious to the aristocratic leaders of the Rebellion, in New York, the proposition for Independence from Great Britain had been. It simply acknowledged the receipt of the Resolutions and that of the letter which had covered them, saying, also, that they had been communicated to the Provincial Congress, by whom " they would be " considered with all the deliberation due to the im- " portance of the subject ; " that the Congress thanked the Convention of Virginia for its attention ; and that the latter was " assured that the Congress of this Col- " ony will invariably adopt and pursue every measure "which may tend to promote the union and secure " the rights and happiness of the United Colonies." *