Before starting he made a great speech in the House of Burgesses. "If
necessary, I will raise a thousand men," he said, "subsist them at my
own expense, and march them to the relief of Boston."

But the time for marching to Boston had not quite come.

The delegates from the different colonies met in Carpenter's Hall, in
Philadelphia, on the 5th of September, 1774. Their meeting has since
been known as the First Continental Congress of America.

For fifty-one days those wise, thoughtful men discussed the great
question that had brought them together. What could the colonists do to
escape the oppressive laws that the King of England was trying to force
upon them?

Many powerful speeches were made, but George Washington sat silent. He
was a doer rather than a talker.

At last the Congress decided to send an address to the king to remind
him of the rights of the colonists, and humbly beg that he would not
enforce his unjust laws.

And then, when all had been done that could be done, Washington went
back to his home at Mount Vernon, to his family and his friends, his big
plantations, his fox-hunting, and his pleasant life as a country
gentleman.

But he knew as well as any man that more serious work was near at hand.