[Draft Resolves Concerning the Secret Committee of Correspondence and a Plan of Confederation, February? 1776.]
[from the Diary of John Adams]

[Draft Resolves Concerning the Secret Committee of Correspondence and a Plan of Confederation, February? 1776.] 1

Resolved that the Committee of Secret Correspondence be directed to lay their Letters before this Congress.

Resolved that be a Committee to prepare a Draught of firm Confederation, to be reported as soon as may be to this Congress, to be considered and digested and recommended to the several Assemblies and Conventions of these united Colonies, to be by them adopted, ratified and confirmed.

1. It is impossible to date with certainty these draft resolutions, which JA perhaps introduced in an unrecorded session of a committee of the whole. In the MS they follow his notes of debates assigned to 16 Feb. and precede the quotation from Jeremiah which follows the present entry. But it was not until 10 May that Congress “Resolved, That the Committee of Secret Correspondence be directed to lay their proceedings before Congress on Monday next, withholding the names of the persons they have employed, or with whom they have corresponded” (JCC description begins Worthington C. Ford and others, eds., Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, Washington, 1904–1937; 34 vols. description ends , 4:345). And it was not until 11–12 June (as a result of the Virginia Resolutions of 7 June) that a committee was agreed to and appointed to prepare a plan of confederation (same, 5:431, 433; see Memorandum of Measures to Be Pursued in Congress, preceding, and note 2 there).

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Source Project: Adams Papers
Title: [Draft Resolves Concerning the Secret Committee of Correspondence and a Plan of Confederation, February? 1776.]
Author: Adams, John
Date: February 1776

Reference

Cite as: “[Draft Resolves Concerning the Secret Committee of Correspondence and a Plan of Confederation, February? 1776.] ,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0006-0002-0003. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, vol. 2, 1771–1781, ed. L. H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, p. 233.]