When, in May, the news of the Boston Port Bill reached that city, together with instructions to the new governor, to send to another colony or to England, for trial, any persons indicted for murder, or any other capital offence committed in aid of the magistrates in the fulfilment of their duty, an astonishment of grief and anger fell upon the citizens, and a meeting of the inhabitants declared that “the impolicy, injustice and inhumanity of the act exceeded their powers of expression.” The General Assembly met, but was adjourned by the governor to Salem, and it was then resolved that a colonial congress should be convened to take into serious consideration the present difficult state of affairs. James Bowdoin, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams and Robert Treat Paine, were therefore at once appointed as their representatives to such a congress, and the speaker of the house was ordered to inform the other colonies of this measure. The governor, hearing of these proceedings, ordered the assembly to dissolve, but in vain; his officer was not admitted, and in defiance of orders, the assembly finished its business. The colonies sympathised warmly with Massachusetts, and Massachusetts was true to herself. The behaviour of the inhabitants of Salem, whom it was intended to benefit at the expense of Boston, was very noble. They replied to the governor’s proclamation, “That nature, in forming their harbour, had prevented their becoming rivals to Boston in trade; and that, even if it were otherwise, they should regard themselves as lost to every idea of justice and all feelings of humanity, if they could indulge a thought of seizing upon the wealth of their neighbours, or raising their fortunes upon the ruins of their countrymen.” More than this; the inhabitants of Marblehead and Salem offered to the suffering merchants of Boston the use of their harbour, wharfs and warehouses, free of all charge; and in Virginia, where Lord Dunmore, now governor, found it impossible to manage the “the refractory people,” “a day of fast, humiliation, and prayer,” was appointed for the 1st of June, the day on which the Boston Port Act came into effect, “that they might beseech of God to avert the evils which threatened them, and to give them one heart and one mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to the American rights.” In September, the great congress proposed by Massachusetts met at Philadelphia, composed of delegates from eleven of the colonies—the most important assembly which had yet come together in America, and for the result of whose deliberations all parties waited with extreme interest and anxiety.