_b. Thomas Jefferson's Account of the Feeling aroused by News of the Port Bill, and of the Action taken Thereon_ _Works_, Washington edition, I, 6, 7. The _Autobiography_ in which this passage occurs was composed many years after the event. The lead in the House ... being no longer left to the old members, Mr. Henry, R. H. Lee, Fr. L. Lee, three or four other members whom I do not recollect, and myself, agreeing that we must boldly take an unequivocal stand in the line with Massachusetts, determined to meet and consult on proper measures ... We were under conviction of the necessity of arousing our people ... and thought that ... a day of general fasting and prayer would be most likely to ... alarm their attention. No example of such a solemnity had existed since. ... our distresses in the war of of '55, since which a new generation had grown up. With the help, therefore, of Rushworth [_Historical Collections_], whom we rummaged over for the revolutionary precedents and forms of the Puritans of that day [England, in the Seventeenth century], we cooked up a resolution, somewhat modernizing the phrases, for appointing the first day of June, on which the Port Bill was to commence, as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. ... To give greater emphasis to our proposition, we agreed to wait the next morning on Mr. Nicholas, whose grave and religious character was more in unison with the tone of our resolution, and to solicit him to move it ... He moved it the same day ... and it passed without opposition [_c_, below.] _c. Resolution of the Burgesses_ _Journals of the House of Burgesses, 1773-1776_, 123-136. Tuesday, the 24th of May. 14 Geo. III. 1774. * * * * * This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension of the great dangers, to be derived to british _America_, from the hostile Invasion of the City of _Boston_, in our Sister Colony of _Massachusetts_ bay, whose commerce and harbour are, on the first Day of June next, to be stopped by an Armed force, deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the Members of this House, as a day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, devoutly to implore the divine interposition for averting the heavy Calamity which threatens destruction to our Civil Rights, and the Evils of civil War; to give us one heart and one Mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American Rights; and that the Minds of his Majesty and his Parliament, may be inspired from above with Wisdom, Moderation, and Justice, to remove from the loyal People of America all cause of danger from a continued pursuit of Measures pregnant with their ruin. * * * * * _d. Dissolution_ Thursday, the 26th of May. 14 Geo. III. 1774. The Order of the Day being read;