Undismayed by impending dangers, they did not, for an instant, admit the idea of surrendering the independence they had declared, and purchasing peace by returning to their colonial situation.

As the British army advanced through Jersey, and the consequent insecurity of Philadelphia rendered an adjournment from that place a necessary measure of precaution, their exertions seemed to increase with their difficulties.

They sought to remove the despondence which was seizing and paralyzing the public mind, by an address to the states, in which every argument was suggested which could rouse them to vigorous action.

They made the most strenuous efforts to animate the militia, and impel them to the field, by the agency of those whose popular eloquence best fitted them for such a service.
{1776} {December 20.} When reassembled at Baltimore, the place to which they had adjourned, their resolutions exhibited no evidence of confusion or dismay; and the most judicious efforts were made to repair the mischief produced by past errors.
{December 27.} Declaring that, in the present state of things, the very existence of civil liberty depended on the right execution of military powers, to a vigorous direction of which, distant, numerous, and deliberative bodies were unequal, they authorized General Washington to raise sixteen additional regiments, and conferred upon him, for six months, almost unlimited powers for the conduct of the war.
Towards the close of 1776, while the tide of fortune was running strongest against them, some few members, distrusting their ability to make a successful resistance, proposed to authorize their commissioners at the court of Versailles to transfer to France the same monopoly of their trade which Great Britain had possessed.[53] This proposition is stated to have been relinquished, because it was believed that concessions of this kind would impair many arguments which had been used in favour of independence, and disunite the people.

It was next proposed to offer a monopoly of certain enumerated articles; but the unequal operation of this measure gave to the proposition a speedy negative.