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REVERE, PAUL. Autograph document signed ("Paul Revere" in text), n.p. [Boston?], n.d. [October 1774?]. 1 page, oblong 4to, 169 x 188 mm. (6 11/16 x 7 3/8 in.), closely cropped at top edge, a few minor stains, verso docketed in an unidentified hand: "Paul Revere's Acct." Octr. 1774....(allowed)." PAUL REVERE'S BILL FOR CARRYING THE SUFFOLK RESOLVES TO THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS IN PHILADELPHIA The document is neatly arranged in tabular form. Across the top, Revere has written: "The Town of Boston to Paul Revere"; beneath are seven lines of itemized expenses. For September 1774, Revere asks reimbursement for #8 10.s. for "Cash expended going to at & from New York and Philadelphia," #5 4s. "To Horse hire from Boston to N-York," #3 0s. "To Horse & Sulkey hire from N-York to Phila.," and #18 0s. "To my Time." Under October 1774, Revere's reckoning includes #9 18s. 6d. "To Cash Expended going to at and from N-York & Philadelphia," #7 11s. "To Horses & Sulkey hire from Boston to N-York," and #3 0s. "To Horse & Sulkey from N-York to Philadelphia." The total, at bottom right, is #55 3s. 6d. Beneath, in a clerical hand, is the note "Allowed." Longfellow's well-known poem extolling Revere's services at Lexington and Concord in April 1775 has long overshadowed the several other occasions on which Revere performed invaluable courier duties, transporting information or highly sensitive documents for the revolutionary statesmen of Massachusetts. This document almost certainly records Revere's important trip from Boston to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, carrying the text of the Suffolk Resolves, written by Joseph Warren and adopted on 9 September at a convention held in Milton, Suffolk County, Massachusetts. Revere delivered them to Congress, perhaps with other news and documents, on 16 September. In retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, four acts collectively termed the Coercive Acts had been enacted by Parliament. In May, when news of them reached America, Samuel Adams and a committee had drafted a circular letter calling upon other colonies to suspend trade with Great Britain and "to consider Boston as now suffering in the common cause" of the American colonies. Paul Revere was dispatched to carry a copy of that letter to Philadelphia, arriving there on May 19. In June, Massachusetts voted to send representatives to the First Continental Congress and chose Sam Adams, John Adams James Bowdoin, Thomas Cushing and Robert Treat Paine as delegates. On 6 September Congress convened. In Boston, town meetings had been prohibited, but county congresses were held in many counties of Massachusetts to marshall support for beleagured Boston. Before leaving for Philadelphia, Samuel Adams instructed Joseph Warren to organize a such a convention of local patriots in Suffolk County, which included the town of Boston, to consider the critical state of the town and province and to send a memorial of their resolutions to him in Philadelphia. At a meeting in Milton on 9 September Warren read to the assembly a set of resolutions, principally written by himself. Unanimously adopted by the Suffolk delegates, they have come subsequently to be known as the Suffolk Resolves. Expressing more vigorously than ever before American opposition to the policies of Great Britain, they denounced the Coercive Acts, asserted that Americans had "an indispensable duty to maintain, preserve and defend those civil and religious rights and liberties, for which many of our fathers fought," vowed non-cooperation with officials charged with enforcement of the Coercive Acts and urged that taxes be withheld. More ominously, Article 11 of the Suffolk Resolves called upon Americans "for the honour, defence and security of this county and province" to appoint local militias and "acquaint themselves with the art of war as soon as possible." These should be mustered weekly, they urged, although "we are determined to act merely upon the defensive, so long as such cond