[American Revolution]:

$2,250 · Offered by William Reese Company

THE PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST...SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1776.... An issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, published June 8, 1776, featuring a variety of news anticipating the imminent announcement of American independence that came some three weeks later. Also of note is the rather peculiar account of several sea turtles, seized by American privateers as part of a ship's cargo and intended as a gift for Lord North in London, but which were presented instead to the president of the Continental Congress, John Hancock. The entire first page and part of the second prints a letter addressed to the inhabitants of York County, Pennsylvania, from their state assemblyman James Rankin, written in response to a recent resolution passed by the York County Committee of Inspection and Observation. Following the Continental Congress's May 15 resolution urging all of the colonies to form their own independent state governments, the state's various committees of inspection had taken it upon themselves, "in exclusion of the Assembly," to appoint members to a state constitutional convention, claiming that the assembly's oaths of allegiance to king and parliament disqualified them from doing so. In his letter, Rankin objects to the committee's actions, declaring them a usurpation of the assembly's power. He cites the text of Congress's resolution calling on "the respective Assemblies, and Conventions" to "adopt such government as shall, in the opinion of the Representatives of the people, best condu

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