CONTENTS I. The Committee for Foreign Affairs. II. The Department of Foreign Affairs, I III. The Department of Foreign Affairs, II . IV. The Creation of the Department of State. VI. Sometime Duties of the Department THE CHAPTER I THE COMMITTEE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS HE first Congress of the Revolution assembled in Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia, September 5, 1774. An address to the King of England was adopted on October 25, and transmitted to the agents of several of the colonies in London, with instructions to present it to the King. They were to ask the aid of such Englishmen as they might have reason to believe were "friends to American Liberty." The instructions were drafted October 26, 1774, by Richard Henry Lee, and were sent to Paul Wentworth, who represented New Hampshire, Charles Garth, a member of Parliament, the agent of South Carolina, William Bollan, agent of the Massachusetts Council, Thomas Life, the agent of Connecticut, Edmund Burke, who had been chosen agent of New York in 1771, Arthur Lee, who held an appointment to succeed Benjamin Franklin as agent of the Massachusetts Assembly, and Franklin himself, who had been appointed in 1765 agent of Pennsylvania, in 1768 of Georgia, in the same year of New Jersey, and in 1770 of the Massachusetts Assembly.1 For the first time, these agents were deputed to act for the United Colonies, but Bollan, Lee, and Franklin, who alone, according to Franklin, 1 Journals of the Cont. Cong. (Library of Congress edition), I, 104, et seq. Ј |