Chapter CDXLIX: Act 8: Parliament 1. repeated in Act 99. Parliament 7 (46)

"The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of
war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate
and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal
discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire;
not peace to depend on the juridical determination of
perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy
boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought
in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace
sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely
pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference,
and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the
colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satisfaction
to your people,—and (far from a scheme of ruling by discord)
to reconcile them to each other in the same act and by the
bond of the very same interest which reconciles them to
British government. My idea is nothing more. Refined policy
ever has been the parent of confusion,—and ever will be so, as
long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as
easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely
detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the
government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is an
healing and cementing principle. … The capital leading
questions on which you must this day decide are these two:
First, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your
concession ought to be. On the first of these questions we
have gained … some ground. But I am sensible that a good deal
more is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to
determine both on the one and the other of these great
questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be
necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the
peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us:
because, after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we
must govern America according to that nature and to those
circumstances, and not according to our own imaginations, not
according to abstract ideas of right, by no means according to
mere general theories of government, the resort to which
appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant
trifling. … The first thing that we have to consider with
regard to the nature of the object is the number of people in
the colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal of pains
on that point. I can by no calculation justify myself in
placing the number below two millions of inhabitants of our
own European blood and color,—besides at least 500,000 others,
who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence
of the whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true number.
There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so
much weight and importance. But whether I put the present
numbers too high or too low is a matter of little moment.
{3219}
Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part
of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will,
whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we
are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it.
Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of
governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to
manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to
manhood than they spread from families to communities, and
from villages to nations. … But the population of this
country, the great and growing population, though a very
important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if not
combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your
colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the
people. … The trade with America alone is now within less than
£500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial nation,
Eng]and, carried on at the beginning of this century with the
whole world! … But, it will be said, is not this American
trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the juices
from the rest of the body? The reverse. It is the very food
that has nourished every other part into its present
magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly augmented, and
augmented more or less in almost every part to which it ever
extended, but with this material difference: that of the six
millions which in the beginning of the century constituted the
whole mass of our export commerce the colony trade was but one
twelfth part; it is now (as a part of sixteen millions)
considerably more than a third of the whole. … I choose, Sir,
to enter into these minute and particular details; because
generalities, which in all other cases are apt to heighten and
raise the subject, have here a tendency to sink it. When we
speak of the commerce of our colonies, fiction lags after
truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and
barren. … I pass … to the colonies in another point of
view,—their agriculture. This they have prosecuted with such a
spirit, that, besides feeding plentifully their own growing
multitude, their annual export of grain, comprehending rice,
has some years ago exceeded a million in value. Of their last
harvest, I am persuaded, they will export much more. At the
beginning of the century some of these colonies imported corn
from the mother country. For some time past the Old World has
been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have felt would
have been a desolating famine, if this child of your old age,
with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put
the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its
exhausted parent. As to the wealth which the colonies have
drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter
fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those
acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your
envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment
has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised
your esteem and admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world
is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the
manner in which the people of New England have of late carried
on the whale-fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling
mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest
frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we
are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that
they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that
they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen
serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote
and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is
but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their
victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more
discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the
poles. … I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in
my detail is admitted in the gross, but that quite a different
conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is a
noble object,—it is an object well worth fighting for.
Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of
gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their
choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those
who understand the military art will of course have some
predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state
may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I
confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is
much more in favor of prudent management than of
force,—considering force not as an odious, but a feeble
instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so
growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate
connection with us. First, Sir, permit me to observe, that the
use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a
moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing
again: and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be
conquered. My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not
always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory.
If you do not succeed, you are without resource: for,
conciliation failing, force remains; but, force failing, no
further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority
are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged
as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. A further
objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very
endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the
thing which you recover, but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and
consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me than
whole America. I do not choose to consume its strength along
with our own; because in all parts it is the British strength
that I consume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign
enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict, and still less
in the midst of it. I may escape, but I can make no insurance
against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly
to break the American spirit; because it is the spirit that
has made the country. Lastly, we have no sort of experience in
favor of force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies.
Their growth and their utility has been owing to methods
altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said to
be pursued to a fault. It may be so; but we know, if feeling
is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our
attempt to mend it, and our sin far more salutary than our
penitence. These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining
that high opinion of untried force by which many gentlemen,
for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great
respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is still
behind a third consideration concerning this object, which
serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which
ought to be pursued in the management of America, even more
than its population and its commerce: I mean its temper and
character.
{3220}
In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is the
predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole.
… This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English
colonies, prob·ably, than in any other people of the earth,
and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to
understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction
which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open
somewhat more largely. First, the people of the colonies are
descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which
still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The
colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character
was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction
the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not
only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English
ideas and on English principles. … Your mode of governing
them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or
mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well
as you, had an interest in these common principles. They were
further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their
provincial legislative assemblies. Their governments are
popular in an high degree: some are merely popular; in all,
the popular representative is the most weighty; and this share
of the people in their ordinary government never fails to
inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion
from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief importance.
If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the
form of government, religion would have given it a complete
effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new
people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of
professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The
people are Protestants, and of that kind which is the most
adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. … All
Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of
dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern
colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is
the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the
Protestant religion. … Permit me, Sir, to add another
circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part
towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit: I
mean their education. In no country, perhaps, in the world is
the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous
and powerful, and in most provinces it takes the lead. The
greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were
lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to
obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an
eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after
tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the
law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen
into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that
they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's 'Commentaries'
in America as in England. General Gage marks out this
disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He
states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or
smatterers in law,—and that in Boston they have been enabled,
by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of
your capital penal constitutions. … The last cause of this
disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less powerful
than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the
natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean
lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the
effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll,
and months pass, between the order and the execution; and the
want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to
defeat an whole system. … Then, Sir, from these six capital
sources, of descent, of form of government, of religion in the
northern provinces, of manners in the southern, of education,
of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of
government,—from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty
has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in
your colonies, and increased with the increase of their
wealth: a spirit, that, unhappily meeting with an exercise of
power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable
to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled
this flame that is ready to consume us. … The question is not,
whether their spirit deserves praise or blame,—what, in the
name of God, shall we do with it? You have before you the
object, such as it is,—with all its glories, with all its
imperfections on its head. You see the magnitude, the
importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. By all
these considerations we are strongly urged to determine
something concerning it. We are called upon to fix some rule
and line for our future conduct, which may give a little
stability to our politics, and prevent the return of such
unhappy deliberations as the present. … It should seem, to my
way of conceiving such matters, that there is a very wide
difference, in reason and policy, between the mode of
proceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals,
or even of bands of men, who disturb order within the state,
and the civil dissensions which may, from time to time, on
great questions, agitate the several communities which compose
a great empire. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to
apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great
public con·test. I do not know the method of drawing up an
indictment against an whole people. … I am not ripe to pass
sentence on the gravest public bodies, intrusted with
magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged with
the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title
that I am. I really think that for wise men this is not
judicious, for sober men not decent, for minds tinctured with
humanity not mild and merciful."

In the closing part of his speech, Mr. Burke introduced
successively and commented upon the following propositions, or
resolutions, which formed in their entirety his plan of
conciliation. At the end of his speaking they were rejected by
a vote of 270 against 78:

"That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North
America, consisting of 14 separate governments, and containing
two mil·lions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had
the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights
and burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court
of Parliament.

{3221}

That the said colonies and plantations have been made liable
to, and bounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates, and
taxes, given and granted by Parliament, though the said
colonies and plantations have not their knights and burgesses
in the said high court of Parliament, of their own election,
to represent the condition of their country; by lack whereof
they have been oftentimes touched and grieved by subsidies,
given, granted, and assented to, in the said court, in a
manner prejudicial to the common wealth, quietness, rest, and
peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same.

That, from the distance of the said colonies, and from other
circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for
procuring a representation in Parliament for the said
colonies.

That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body,
chosen, in part or in the whole, by the freemen, freeholders,
or other free inhabitants thereof, commonly called the General
Assembly, or General Court, with powers legally to raise,
levy, and assess, according to the several usages of such
colonies, duties and taxes towards defraying all sorts of
public services.

That the said general assemblies, general courts, or other
bodies legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times
freely granted several large subsidies and public aids for his
Majesty's service, according to their abilities, when required
thereto by letter from one of his Majesty's principal
Secretaries of State; and that their right to grant the same,
and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said grants,
have been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament. That it
hath been found by experience, that the manner of granting the
said supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath
been more agreeable to the inhabitants of said colonies, and
more beneficial and conducive to the public service, than the
mode of giving and granting aids and subsidies in Parliament,
to be raised and paid in the said colonies.

That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the 7th year
of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 'An act for
granting certain duties in the British colonies and
plantations in America; for allowing a drawback of the duties
of customs, upon the exportation from this kingdom, of coffee
and cocoa-nuts, of the produce of the said colonies or
plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks payable on China
earthen ware exported to America; and for more effectually
preventing the clandestine running of goods in the said
colonies and plantations.'

That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the 14th year
of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 'An act to
discontinue, in such manner and for such time as are therein
mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping, of
goods, wares, and merchandise, at the town and within the
harbor of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in
North America.'

That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the 14th year
of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 'An act for
the impartial administration of justice, in the cases of
persons questioned for any acts done by them, in the execution
of the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults, in
the province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England.'

That it may be proper to repeal an act, made in the 14th year
of the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, 'An act for
the better regulating the government of the province of the
Massachusetts Bay, in New England.'

That it may be proper to explain and amend an act, made in the
35th year of the reign of King Henry VIII., intituled, 'An act
for the trial of treasons committed out of the king's
dominions.'

That, from the time when the general assembly, or general
court, of any colony or plantation in North America, shall
have appointed, by act of assembly duly confirmed, a settled
salary to the offices of the chief justice and other judges of
the superior courts, it may be proper that the said chief
justice and other judges of the superior courts of such colony
shall hold his and their office and offices during their good
behaviour, and shall not be removed therefrom, but when the
said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in council, upon
a hearing on complaint from the general assembly, or on a
complaint from the governor, or the council, or the house of
representatives, severally, of the colony in which the said
chief justice and other judges have exercised the said
offices.

That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty or
vice-admiralty, authorized by the 15th chapter of the 4th
George III., in such a manner as to make the same more
commodious to those who sue or are sued in the said courts;
and to provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges
of the same."

_Edmund Burke,
Works,
volume 2._

ALSO IN:
_T. MacKnight,
Life and Times of Edmund Burke,
chapter 21 (volume 2)._

_J. Adolphus,
History of England, Reign of George III.,
chapter 25 (volume 2)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (January-April).
Aims at independence disclaimed.

"The denial that independence was the final object, was
constant and general. To obtain concessions and to preserve
the connection with England was affirmed everywhere; and John
Adams, after the peace, went farther than this, for he
said:—'There was not a moment during the Revolution, when I
would not have given everything I possessed for a restoration
to the state of things before the contest began, provided we
could have had a sufficient security for its continuance.' If
Mr. Adams be regarded as expressing the sentiments of the
Whigs, they were willing to remain Colonists, provided they
could have had their rights secured to them; while the Tories
were contented thus to continue, without such security. Such,
as it appears to me, was the only difference between the two
parties prior to hostilities. … Franklin's testimony, a few
days before the affair at Lexington, was, that he had 'more
than once travelled almost from one end of the continent to
the other, and kept a variety of company, eating, drinking,
and conversing with them freely, [and] never had heard from
any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for
a separation, or a hint that such a thing would be
advantageous to America.' Mr. Jay is quite as explicit.
'During the course of my life,' said he, 'and until the second
petition of Congress in 1775, I never did hear an American of
any class, or of any description, express a wish for the
independence of the Colonies.' 'It has always been, and still
is, my opinion and belief, that our country was prompted and
impelled to independence by necessity, and not by choice.'
{3222}
Mr. Jefferson affirmed, 'What, eastward of New York, might
have been the dispositions towards England before the
commencement of hostilities, I know not; but before that I
never heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from Great
Britain; and after that its possibility was contemplated with
affliction by all.' Washington, in 1774, fully sustains these
declarations, and, in the 'Fairfax County Resolves,' it was
complained that 'malevolent falsehoods' were propagated by the
ministry to prejudice the mind of the king: 'particularly that
there is an intention in the American Colonies to set up for
independent States.' Mr. Madison was not in public life until
May, 1776, but he says, 'It has always been my impression,
that a reëstablishment of the Colonial relations to the parent
country, as they were previous to the controversy, was the
real object of every class of the people, till the despair of
obtaining it,' &c. … The only way to dispose of testimony like
this, is to impeach the persons who have given it."

_L. Sabine,
Biographical Sketches of Loyalists
of the American Revolution,
volume 1, pages 64-66._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (January-September).
Revolution in South Carolina.

See SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1775.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April).
The Beginning of the War of the American Revolution.
Lexington.
Concord.

"On April 19, 1775, the Committees of safety could only count
up twelve field-pieces in Massachusetts; and there had been
collected in that colony 21,549 fire-arms, 17,441 pounds of
powder, 22,191 pounds of ball, 144,699 flints, 10,108
bayonets, 11,979 pouches, 15,000 canteens. There were also
17,000 pounds of salt fish, 35,000 pounds of rice, with large
quantities of beef and pork. Viewed as an evidence of the
forethought of the colonists, these statistics are remarkable;
but there was something heroic and indeed almost pathetic in
the project of going to war with the British government on the
strength of twelve field-pieces and seventeen thousand pounds
of salt fish. Yet when, on the night of the 18th of April,
1775, Paul Revere rode beneath the bright moonlight through
Lexington to Concord, with Dawes and Prescott for comrades, he
was carrying the signal for the independence of a nation. He
had seen across the Charles River the two lights from the
church-steeple in Boston which were to show that a British
force was going out to seize the patriotic supplies at
Concord; he had warned Hancock and Adams at Reverend Jonas
Clark's parsonage in Lexington, and had rejected Sergeant
Monroe's caution against unnecessary noise, with the
rejoinder, 'You'll have noise enough here before long—the
regulars are coming out.' As he galloped on his way the
regulars were advancing with steady step behind him, soon
warned of their own danger by alarm-bells and signal-guns.
When Revere was captured by some British officers who happened
to be near Concord, Colonel Smith, the commander of the
expedition, had already halted, ordered Pitcairn forward, and
sent back prudently for reinforcements. It was a night of
terror to all the neighboring Middlesex towns, for no one knew
what excesses the angry British troops might commit on their
return march. The best picture we have of this alarm is in the
narrative of a Cambridge woman, Mrs. Hannah Winthrop,
describing 'the horrors of that midnight cry,' as she calls
it. The women of that town were roused by the beat of drums
and ringing of bells; they hastily gathered their children
together and fled to the outlying farm-houses; seventy or
eighty of them were at Fresh Pond, within hearing of the guns
at Menotomy, now Arlington. The next day their husbands bade
them flee to Andover, whither the college property had been
sent, and thither they went, alternately walking and riding,
over fields where the bodies of the slain lay unburied. Before
5 A. M. on April 19, 1775, the British troops had reached
Lexington Green, where thirty-eight men, under Captain Parker,
stood up before six hundred or eight hundred to be shot at,
their captain saying, 'Don't fire unless you are fired on; but
if they want a war let it begin here.' It began there; they
were fired upon; they fired rather ineffectually in return,
while seven were killed and nine wounded. The rest, after
retreating, reformed and pursued the' British towards Concord,
capturing seven stragglers—the first prisoners taken in the
war. Then followed the fight at Concord, where four hundred
and fifty Americans, instead of thirty-eight, were rallied to
meet the British. The fighting took place between two
detachments at the North Bridge, where 'once the embattled
farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.'
There the American captain, Isaac Davis, was killed at the
first shot—he who had said, when his company was placed at the
head of the little column, 'I haven't a man that is afraid to
go.' He fell and Major Buttrick gave the order, 'Fire! for
God's sake fire!' in return. The British detachment retreated
in disorder, but their main body was too strong to be
attacked, so they disabled a few cannon, destroyed some
barrels of flour, cut down the liberty-pole, set fire to the
court-house and then began their return march. It ended in a
flight; they were exposed to a constant guerilla fire;
minute-men flocked behind every tree and house; and only the
foresight of Colonel Smith in sending for reinforcements had
averted a surrender. At 2 P. M., near Lexington, Percy with
his troops met the returning fugitives, and formed a hollow
square, into which they ran and threw themselves on the ground
exhausted. Then Percy in turn fell back. Militia still came
pouring in from Dorchester, Milton, Dedham, as well as the
nearer towns. A company from Danvers marched sixteen miles in
four hours. The Americans lost ninety-three in killed, wounded
and missing that day; the British, two hundred and
seventy-three. But the important result was that every
American colony now recognized that war had begun."

_T. W. Higginson,
History of the United States of America,
chapter 10._

ALSO IN:
_R. Frothingham,
History of the Siege of Boston,
chapter 2._

_E. H. Goss,
Life of Paul Revere,
volume 1, chapter 7._

_J. L. Watson,
Paul Revere's Signal
(Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings,
November 1876)._

_P. Force, editor,
American Archives,
series 4, volume 2. _

_E. Phinney,
History of Battle at Lexington._

_C. Hudson,
History of Lexington,
chapters 6-8._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April).
The first Provincial Convention in New York.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1775 (APRIL).

{3223}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April-May).
The siege of Boston begun.

"Reinforcements of foreign troops and supplies were constantly
arriving in Boston. Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne came, as
generals, on the 25th of May. Bitterness, ridicule, and
boasting, with all the irritating taunts of a mercenary
soldiery, were freely poured on the patriots and on the 'mixed
multitude' which composed the germ of their army yet to be.
The British forces had cooped themselves up in Bos·ton, and
the provincials determined that they should remain there, with
no mode of exit save by the sea. The pear-shaped peninsula,
hung to the mainland only by the stem called the 'Neck,' over
which the tide-waters sometimes washed, was equally an
inconvenient position for crowding regiments in war-like
array, and a convenient one for the extemporized army which
was about to beleaguer them there. … The town of Charlestown,
which lay under the enemy's guns, had contained a population
of between two and three thousand. The interruption of all the
employments of peace, and the proximity of danger, had brought
poverty and suffering upon the people. They had been steadily
leaving the town, with such of their effects as they could
carry with them. It proved to be well for them that they had
acted upon the warning. It would seem that there were less
than 200 of its inhabitants remaining in it at the time of the
battle, when the flames kindled by the enemy and bombs from a
battery on Copp's Hill laid it in ashes. On the third day
after the affair at Concord, the Provincial Congress again
assembled, voted to raise at once 13,000 men, to rally at
Cambridge and the neighborhood, and asked aid from the other
provinces, to which Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New
Hampshire responded. The forts, magazines, and arsenals, such
as they then were, were secured for the country. … Of the
15,000 men then gathered, by the cry of war, at Cambridge and
Roxbury, all virtually, but not by formal investment, under
the command of General Ward, nearly 10,000 belonged to
Massachusetts, and the remainder to New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, and Connecticut. They have been designated since, at
various times and by different writers, under the extreme
contrast of terms, as an 'organized army,' and a 'mob.' Either
of these terms would be equally inappropriate. … Our troops
were 'minute-men' extemporized into fragmentary companies and
skeleton regiments. The officers, chosen on the village-green
or in its public-house, paying for the honor by a treat, or
perhaps because they kept the premises where the treat could
be most conveniently furnished, were not commissioned or
ranked as the leaders of an army for campaign service. The
yeomen of town and village had not come together at the
summons of a commander-in-chief through adjutant, herald, or
advertisement. They came unbidden, at an alarm from the bell
on their meeting-house, or from a post-rider, or from the
telegrams transmitted by tongue and ear. … And for the most
part they were as free to go away as they had been to come.
They were enlisted after a fashion, some prime conditions of
which were their own convenience or pleasure. … Such of them
as came from the seaboard might bring with them old sails for
tents, while the midsummer days made it scarcely a hardship to
many to have only the heavens for a roof. Generally their
towns were expected to keep them supplied with food. … The
forces then mustered at Cambridge as a central camp, and,
stretching from the left at Chelsea almost round to Dorchester
on the right, for nearly three quarters of a circle, were
indeed not organized, nor yet had they any characteristic of a
mere mob. They combined in fact four inde·pendent armies,
united in resistance to a foreign enemy. … Each of the
Provinces had raised, commissioned, and assumed the supply of
its respective forces, holding them subject to their several
orders. After the battle in Charlestown, the Committee of War
in Connecticut ordered their generals, Spencer and Putnam,
while they were on the territory of this Province, to regard
General Ward as the commander-in-chief, and suggested to Rhode
Island and New Hampshire to issue the same instructions to
their soldiers. … General Artemas Ward was a conscientious and
judicious patriot. In the French war he had earned some
military experience and fame. … On October 27, 1774, the
Provincial Congress, in which he was a delegate, appointed him
a general officer, and on May 19 following,
Commander-in-chief. As such he served at Cambridge till the
arrival of Washington. On the very day of the battle in
Charlestown, when the great chieftain was selected for his
high service, Ward was chosen by the Continental Congress as
its first major-general. Though he was only in his 48th year
when he was burdened with the responsibility of the opening
warfare, his body was infirm from disease and exposure.
Lieutenant-General Thomas, two years the senior of Ward, was
second in command. … General Israel Putnam preceded his
Connecticut troops in hurrying to the scene of war on the news
of the affair at Lexington and Concord. His men soon followed
him, with like enthusiasm. The New Hampshire troops, on their
arrival at Medford, made choice of Colonel John Stark as their
leader. Colonel Nathaniel Greene commanded a regiment from
Rhode Island. … A few days after the affair at Lexington, when
virtually the siege began, General Gage, the British
commander, at the solicitation of some of the leading citizens
assembled in Faneuil Hall, had, by a mutual understanding,
entered into an agreement that such of the inhabitants as
wished to depart from the town should be at liberty to do so,
if they would leave their arms behind them and covenant not to
engage in any hostility against his army. The agreement was
availed of by many of the suffering and frightened people. …
But the original freedom and fulness of this understanding, on
the part of General Gage, were soon reduced by a very strict
examination of those who sought to go out of the town, and by
a rigid search of the effects which they wished to take with
them. … Several of the inhabitants remained in it from
different motives: some as devoted loyalists; some as timid
neutrals; some as spies, to watch each hostile movement and to
communicate it to their friends outside. … After hostilities
commenced, General Gage, of course, regarded the citizens as
alike prisoners, either in the same sense in which he was
himself under restraint, or as abettors of those who were his
enemies. … The population of the town, independent of the
military, was then about 18,000. To all those who were not in
sympathy with them the British behaved in an insulting and
exasperating manner. … To show, as members of the English
Church establishment, their contempt of congregational places
of worship, they removed the pews and pulpit from the Old
South meeting-house, and, covering the floor with earth, they
converted it into a riding-school for Burgoyne's squadron of
cavalry.
{3224}
The two eastern galleries were allowed to remain, one for
spectators, the other for a liquor-shop, while the fire in the
stove was occasionally kindled by books and pamphlets from the
library of a former pastor, Dr. Prince, which were in a room
in the tower. … At the time of the skirmishes at Lexington and
Concord there were about 4,000 British troops in Boston and at
the Castle. The number was increased to more than 10,000
before the action in Charlestown."

_G. E. Ellis,
History of the Battle of Bunker's Hill,
pages 4-26._

ALSO IN:
_R. Frothingham,
History of the Siege of Boston,
chapter 3._

_George Washington,
Writings,
edited by W. C. Ford,
volume 3._

_Joseph Reed,
Life and Correspondence,
volume 1._

_C. Stedman [English],
History of the American War,
volume 1, chapters 1 and 5._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (April-June).
The spreading of revolt.
All the colonies in line with New England.

"On the 23d of April, the day after the dissolution of the
provincial Congress of New York, the news from Lexington burst
upon the city. Though it was Sunday, the inhabitants speedily
unloaded two sloops which lay at the wharfs, laden with flour
and supplies for the British at Boston, of the value of
£80,000. … The royal government lay hopelessly prostrate.
Isaac Sears concerted with John Lamb to stop all vessels going
to Quebec, Newfoundland, Georgia, or Boston, where British
authority was still supreme. The people shut up the
custom-house, and the merchants whose vessels were cleared out
dared not let them sail. In the following days the military
stores of the city of New York were secured, and volunteer
companies paraded in the streets. … On the 1st of May the
people, at the usual places of election, chose for the city
and county a new general committee of one hundred, who
'resolved in the most explicit manner to stand or fall with
the liberty of the continent.' All parts of the colony were
summoned to send delegates to a provincial convention, to
which the city and county of New York deputed one-and-twenty
as their representatives. … On the 2d of May the New Jersey
committee of correspondence called a provincial congress for
the 23d at Trenton. To anticipate its influence, the governor
convened the regular assembly eight days earlier at
Burlington, and laid before them the project of Lord North
[adopted by the British parliament in February, offering to
each colony freedom from taxation on its making satisfactory
provision for the general defense and for support of
government]. The assembly could see in the proposition no
avenue to reconciliation, and declared their intention to
'abide by the united voice of the continental congress.' Such,
too, was the spirit of Pennsylvania. 'Let us not have it said
of Philadelphia that she passed noble resolutions and
neglected them,' were the words of Mifflin, youngest of the
orators who on the 25th of April addressed the town-meeting
called in that city on receiving the news from Lexington.
Thousands were present, and agreed 'to associate for the
purpose of defending with arms their lives, their property,
and liberty.' Thomas Paine from that day 'rejected the sullen
Pharaoh of the British throne forever.' … In Philadelphia,
thirty companies, with 50 to 100 in each, daily practiced the
manual exercise of the musket. One of them was raised from the
Quakers. … The Pennsylvania assembly, which met on the first
day of May, rejecting the overtures of the governor, 'could
form no prospect of lasting advantages for Pennsylvania but
from a communication of rights and property with the other
colonies.' … On the 5th Franklin arrived, after a voyage over
the smoothest seas, and the next morning was unanimously
elected a deputy to the congress. … In Maryland, at the
request of the colonels of militia, Eden, at Annapolis, gave
up the arms and ammunition of the province to the freemen of
the county. Pleased with his concession, the provincial
convention distinguished itself by its moderation; and its
delegates to congress determined to labor for a
reconciliation. In Virginia [where, in the night of April
20th, Governor Dunmore had carried off the gunpowder stored in
the colony's magazine at Williamsburg, and where, as a
consequence, the excited people were already in arms, though
no further action had yet been taken], on the 2d of May, at
the cry from Lexington, the independent company of Hanover and
its county committee were called together by Patrick Henry.
The soldiers, most of them young men, elected him their chief,
and marched for Williamsburg, on the way greatly increasing in
numbers. Alarmed by the 'insurrections,' Dunmore convened the
council, and in a proclamation of the 3d pretended that he had
removed the ammunition, lest it should be seized by slaves.
Message after message could not arrest the march or change the
purpose of Henry. … At sunrise on the 4th the governor's
messenger met Henry at New Kent, and, as a compensation for
the gunpowder taken out of the magazine, paid him £330, for
which he was to account to the convention of Virginia. The sum
was found to be more than the value of the powder, and the
next Virginia convention directed the excess to be paid back.
… In twelve or thirteen days the message from Lexington was
borne to Newbern, in North Carolina, where it 'wrought a great
change.' The governor, in his panic, ordered the cannon in the
town to be dismounted; and, after a remonstrance made in the
name of the inhabitants by Abner Nash, 'the oracle of their
committee and a principal promoter of sedition,' he shipped
his wife to New York and fled to Fort Johnston, where a
sloop-of-war had its station. In South Carolina, Charles
Pinckney, on learning the inflexibility of parliament, using
power intrusted to him by the provincial congress, appointed a
committee of five to place the colony in a state of defence;
on the 21st of April, the very night after their organization,
men of Charleston, without disguise, under their direction,
seized all the powder in the public magazines, and removed 800
stand of arms and other military stores from the royal
arsenal. The tidings from Lexington induced the general
committee to hasten the meeting of the provincial congress,
whose members, on the 2d of June, Henry Laurens being their
president, associated themselves for defence against every
foe; 'ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes to secure
her freedom and safety.' They resolved to raise two regiments
of infantry and a regiment of rangers. … The people of
Charleston are as mad as they are here in Boston,' was the
testimony of Gage. The skirmish at Lexington became known in
Savannah on the 10th of May, and added Georgia to the union.
At that time she had about 17,000 white inhabitants and 15,000
Africans. Her militia was not less than 3,000.
{3225}
Her frontier, which extended from Augusta to St. Mary's, was
threatened by the Creeks, with 4,000 warriors; the Chickasas,
with 450; the Cherokees, with 3,000; the Choctas, with 2,500.
But danger could not make her people hesitate. On the night of
the 11th, Noble Wimberley Jones, Joseph Habersham, Edward
Telfair, and others, broke open the king's magazine in the
eastern part of the city, and took from it over 500 pounds of
powder. To the Boston wanderers they sent 63 barrels of rice
and £122 in specie; and they kept the king's birthday by
raising a liberty-pole."

_G. Bancroft,
History of the United States
(Author's last revision),
volume 4, chapter 11._

ALSO IN:
_T. Jones,
History of New York during the Revolution,
volume 1, chapter 2._

_W. Wirt,
Life of Patrick Henry,
section 5._

_W. B. Stevens,
History of Georgia,
book 4, chapter 1 (volume 2)._

_Proceedings of New York Provincial Congress
(New York State Archives, volume 1)._

_W. H. Egle,
History of Pennsylvania,
chapter 8._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (May).
The surprising of Ticonderoga and Crown Point.

"Early in the year 1775, as soon as it was made manifest by
the attitude assumed on the part of the British government
against the colonies, and by the conduct of General Gage in
Boston, that open hostilities must inevitably commence in a
short time, it began to be secretly whispered among the
principal politicians in New England that the capture of
Ticonderoga was an object demanding the first attention. In
the month of March, Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren, as
members of the Committee of Correspondence in Boston, sent an
agent privately into Canada, on a political mission, with
instructions to ascertain the feelings of the people there in
regard to the approaching contest, and to make such reports as
his observations should warrant. … This agent sent back
intelligence from Montreal, and among other things advised,
that by all means the garrison of Ticonderoga should be seized
as quickly as possible after the breaking out of hostilities,
adding that the people of the New Hampshire Grants had already
agreed to undertake the task, and that they were the most
proper persons to be employed in it. This hint was given three
weeks anterior to the battle of Lexington, and how far it
influenced future designs may not be known; but it is certain
that, eight days after that event, several gentlemen at that
time attending the Assembly in Hartford, Connecticut,
concerted a plan for surprising Ticonderoga and seizing the
cannon in that fortress, for the use of the army then marching
from all quarters to the environs of Boston."

_J. Sparks,
Life of Ethan Allen
(Library of American Biographies, volume 1),
page 270._

The gentlemen above mentioned "borrowed of the Connecticut
Treasury some 1,800 dollars, and enlisted Mott and Phelps of
Hartford, and Blagden of Salisbury, to beat up recruits. With
these they went northward, and at Pittsfield got the
co-operation of Captains Easton and Brown. No time was to be
lost, and they pushed on with some forty men to find that
Vermont giant, Ethan Allen, at Bennington. Allen at once
agreed to go; he sought out Seth Warner, and roused the 'Green
Mountain Boys,' who were mostly Connecticut and Massachusetts
men; so that, in a few days, there gathered at Castleton (7th
of May, 1775) two hundred and seventy strong men. Allen was
their first leader, Easton second, and Warner third. Their
larger body was to cross the Lake in boats from Shoreham, and
surprise 'Ty.' Captain Herrick, with thirty men, was to seize
the pass of Skenesborough (now Whitehall) at the head of the
Lake, and Captain Douglass was to search for and seize all
boats and batteaux. While these things were in progress, the
ambitious, active, and daring Benedict Arnold heard of this
expedition, and at once got leave from the Committee of Safety
at Cambridge, to lead it. He rode post-haste through
Massachusetts to raise men, and, with a single follower,
reached Castleton, and claimed the command. These rough cubs
of the forest could not well understand why he should lead
them, for had they not Allen, and Warner, and Easton, and
Phelps, and Biggelow, and others? But they consented that he
should join Allen as an equal; and so forward they went. On
the 8th of May Captain Noah Phelps, disguised with rough
farmer clothes, and a long beard, blundered into the fort at
Ticonderoga, pretending he wanted to be shaved. He found the
gates open, and discipline loose; for no telegraph had carried
the Lexington news to them, nor had the winds wafted the smell
of blood, or the sounds of muskets there. When the darkness
was deepest on the night of the 9th, Allen and Arnold, with 83
men, pulled across the Lake, landed near the fort, and then
sent back the boats for Warner and his men. They had a boy,
Nathan Beman, for a guide, and were full of courage. Allen
formed his men, made them a little speech, and all was ready,
when the question arose as to who should have the honor of
entering the fort first. The dispute was warm between Arnold
and Allen, but was finally quieted; and, side by side, at
daylight, they rushed through the gate of the fort, defended
only by sleeping men. The sentinel snapped his musket, and
ran, giving the alarm; the garrison hastily turned out, to
find themselves in the face of superior numbers. Allen sought
and found the Commander's bed-room, and when Captain Delaplace
waked, he saw any thing but an Angel of Mercy with white
wings. Delaplace opened the door, with trowsers in hand, and
there the great gaunt Ethan stood, with a drawn sword in his
hand. 'Surrender!' said Ethan. 'To you?' asked Delaplace.
'Yes, to me, Ethan Allen.' 'By whose authority?' asked
Laplace. Ethan was growing impatient, and raising his voice,
and waving his sword, he said: 'In the name of the Great
Jehovah, and of the Continental Congress, by God!' Delaplace
little comprehended the words, but surrendered at once. Thus,
on the morning of 10th of May, the strong fortress of
Ticonderoga was taken by the border-men, and with it 44
prisoners, 120 iron cannon, with swivels, muskets, balls, and
some powder, without the loss of a single man. The surprise
was planned and paid for by Connecticut, and was led by Allen,
a Connecticut-born man, but was carried out by the 'Green
Mountain Boys.' Skenesborough (Whitehall) was surprised and
seized, while Major Skene was out shooting. Arnold at once
manned a schooner, taken at Skenesborough, and led an attack
against an armed sloop at St. John's; he took her and the
place, and returned in triumph to meet Allen, who, in
batteaux, was coming to sustain him. Warner led a party
against Crown Point, and took it, with its hundred cannon, and
small garrison of 12 men.

{3226}

News of these things was carried to the Continental Congress,
reassembled at Philadelphia, which caused almost as much
surprise there, as Allen's demand did to Captain Delaplace,
and more exultation. They requested the Committees of Safety
of New York and Albany, to have an inventory made of the
stores, so that they might be returned 'when the restoration
of harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies' should
render it safe."

_C. W. Elliott,
The New England History,
volume 2, chapter 18._

ALSO IN:
_J. Fiske,
The American Revolution,
chapter 3 (volume 1)._

_W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay,
Popular History of the United States,
volume 3, chapter 17._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (May).
The Mecklenburg Declaration.

See NORTH CAROLINA:. A. D. 1775 (MAY).

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775 (May-August).
The Second Continental Congress and its work.
Its powers, theoretical and actual.
Its opportunity.
Its influence.
The New England Army adopted as the "Continental Army,"
and Washington made Commander-in-chief.