Journals of Congress, Containing the Proceedings from Sept. 5, 1774 to Jan. 1, 1776.
Philadelphia: printed and sold by R. Aitken, Book-seller, Front-Street, 1777.
Price: $4,500.00
About the item
[2], 310pp. Without the 12-page index sometimes found bound in the rear. 8vo. Bound to style in half calf and period paper covered boards. Evans 15683; Reese, Revolutionary Hundred 48; ESTC W20603.
Item #373113
Shortly after the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress recognized the necessity of publishing its proceedings on a timely basis. These volumes appeared in more or less annual volumes, but in inconsistent formats and from different printers: Robert Aitken, John Patterson, David Claypoole, and John Dunlap. The first volume of this series, from the press of Robert Aitken in 1777, i.e. after the Declaration of Independence, reprinted the separately issued pre-Independence journals of Congress from 1774 and 1775. This collected edition of the first two Congresses became the first volume of the series, which continued until the end of the Confederacy and the adoption of the federal Constitution in 1788. The volume contains a wealth of the most important documents of the Revolutionary period, with all of the proceedings of the first, and part of the second, Continental Congress for 1774 and 1775, including a printing of the July 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms.
