Excerpt from Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Vol. 4: January 1 to December 31, 1779

During the period covered by this volume, the year 1779, Congress was occupied with a multitude of matters, some Of them for a large part Of its time during the whole or nearly the whole of the year, others occasionally and for briefer periods. Some of the problems that engrossed that body were Of vital importance; other questions - and the space which they occupy in the Journals is large in the total - were of a minor sort that might more properly have been relegated to committees or to one or another of the executive boards, but which Congress had not yet quite learned to separate from its own immediate control. In the survey of the activities of Congress which follows it has not been deemed needful to do more than to endeavor to bring into clearer view some of the more important subjects that came under consideration during the year and to give a measure Of sequence to the proceedings upon them.

With the ratification by New Jersey Of the Articles Of Confederation at the end of November, 1778, there was hope that the consummation of the Confederation was close at hand. There had been little doubt of Delaware's accession, and agreeably to this expectation Congress was informed on February 8 that that state had authorized her delegates to subscribe to the Articles. But hopes Of Maryland's early accession had already all but vanished; for on January 6 the Maryland delegates laid before Congress a declaration Of the assembly of their state, adopted in the preceding December, refusing to join the Confederation unless the conditions stipulated should be complied with. Instructions to the delegates were adopted at the same time, but these instructions. Were not presented to Congress until the following May.

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