rence of mobs and riots, and of the destruction of private property. Their conduct showed how capable they were of regular movements, and how formidable they might prove in the field; but rumors reached England of their cowardice and defeat. “What a dismal piece of news!" said Charles Fox to Edmund Burke; "and what a melancholy consideration for all thinking men, that no people, animated by what principle soever, can make a successful resistance to military discipline. I was never so affected with any public event, either in history or in life. The introduction of great standing armies into Europe has made all mankind irrecoverably slaves. The particular business I think very far from being decided; but I am dejected at heart from the sad figure that men make against soldiers." Fox was misinformed. In the British camp in Boston, an apprehension prevailed of an invasion from armed multitudes. The guards were doubled; cannon were placed at the entrance of the town, and the troops lay on their arms through the night. 1774. Sept. Gage wrote home that, "to reduce New England, a very respectable force should take the field." He already had five regiments at Boston, one more at the castle, and another at Salem; two more he summoned hastily from Quebec ; he sent transports to bring another from New York; he still required re-enforcements from England; and resolving also to raise "irregulars, of one sort or other, in America," he asked of Carleton, who was just then expected to arrive from England at Quebec, "what measures would be most efficacious to raise a body of Canadians and Indians to form a junction with the king's forces." The threat to employ the savages against the colonists had been thrown out at the time of Tryon's march against the regulators of North Carolina, and may be traced still further back, at least to the discussions in the time of Shirley on remedies for the weakness of British power. This is the moment when it was adopted in practice. The commission to Carleton, as governor of the province of Quebec under the act of parlia ment, conveyed authority to arm and employ not the Canadians only, but "all persons whatsoever," including the Indian tribes from the coast of Labrador to the Ohio; and to march them against rebels "into any one of the plantations in America." 1774. Sept. It was pretended that there were English precedents for the practice; but it was not so. During the French war, England had formed connections with the Indian tribes, through whose territory lay the march of the hostile armies; and warriors of the Six Nations were enrolled and paid rather to secure neutrality than service. But this system had never been extended beyond the bounds of obvious prudence as a measure of self-defence. No war-party of savages was ever hounded at Canadian villages. The French, on the other hand, from their superior skill in gaining the love of the red men, and their own inferiority in numbers, had in former wars increased their strength by Indian alliances. The alliances the British king and his ministers now revived; and, against their own colonies and kindred, loosed from the leash these terrible auxiliaries. The ruthless policy was hateful to every right-minded Englishman, and, as soon as it roused attention, the protest of the nation was uttered by Chatham and Burke, its great representatives; meantime, the execution of the sanguinary scheme fell naturally into the hands of the most unscrupulous and subservient English officers, and the most covetous and cruel of the old French partisans. Carleton, from the first, abhorred the measure, which he was yet constrained to promote. "You know," wrote he of the Indians to Gage, "what sort of people they are.' It was true: Gage had himself, in the west and in Canada, grown thoroughly familiar with their method of warfare; and his predecessor in the chief command in America had recorded their falseness and cruelty in the most impassioned language of reprobation. But yet, without much compunction, he gave directions to propitiate and inflame the Indians by gifts, and to subsidize their war-parties. Before he left America, his commands to employ them pervaded the wilderness to the utmost bounds of his military authority, even to the south and south-west; so that the councils of the Cherokees and Choc taws and Mohawks were named as currently in the correspondence of the secretary of state as the German courts of Hesse and Hanau and Anspach. In the hope to subdue by terror, the intention of employing Indians was ostentatiously proclaimed. Simultaneously with the application of Gage to the province of Quebec, the president of Columbia College, an Englishman by birth and education, published to the world that, in case submission to parliament should be withheld, civil war would follow, and the Indians would be let loose upon the back settlements to scalp the inhabitants along the border. In this kind of warfare, there could be no parity between the English and the Americans. The cannibal Indian was a dangerous incumbrance in the camp of a regular army, and not formidable in the array of battle; he was a deadly foe only as he skulked in ambush; or prowled on the frontier; or burned the defenceless farm-house; or struck the laborer in the field; or smote the mother at her household task ; or crashed the infant's head against a rock or a tree; or tortured the prisoner on whose flesh he was to gorge. The women and children of England had an ocean between them and the Indian's tomahawk, and had no share in the terror that went before his path, or the sorrows that he left behind. 1774. While Gage was writing for troops from England, New York, and Quebec, for French Canadian regi- Sept. ments, and for war-parties of Indians, the militia of Worcester county, hearing of the removal of the powder belonging to the province, rose in a mass and began the march to Boston. On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, the volunteers from Hampshire county advanced eastward as far as Shrewsbury. At least twenty thousand were in motion. The rumor of the seizure reached Israel Putnam, in Connecticut, with the addition that the British troops and men-of-war had fired on the people and killed six men at the first shot. Despatching the report to Norwich, New London, New Haven, New York, and so to Philadelphia, he summoned the neighboring militia to take up arms. Thousands started at his call; but these, like the volunteers of Massachusetts, were stopped by expresses from the patriots of Boston, who sent word that at present nothing was to be attempted. In return, assurances were given of most effectual support, whenever it might be required. "Words cannot express,' wrote Putnam and his committee in behalf of five hundred men under arms at Pomfret, "the gladness discovered by every one at the appearance of a door being opened to avenge the many abuses and insults which those foes to liberty have offered to our brethren in your town and province. But for counter intelligence, we should have had forty thousand men, well equipped and ready to march this morning. Send a written express to the foreman of this committee, when you have occasion for our martial assistance; we shall attend your summons, and shall glory in having a share in the honor of ridding our country of the yoke of tyranny, which our forefathers have not borne, neither will we; and we much desire you to keep a strict guard over the remainder of your powder, for that must be the great means, under God, of the salvation of our country." 1774. "How soon we may need most effectual aid,” your Sept. answered the Boston committee, "we cannot determine; but, agreeably to your wise proposal, we shall give you authentic intelligence on such contingency. The hour of vengeance comes lowering on; repress your ardor, but let us adjure you not to smother it." This rising was followed by many advantages. Every man was led to supply deficiencies in his equipments; the people gained confidence in one another; and a method was concerted for calling them into service. Outside of Boston, the king's rule was at an end; no man dared to invoke his protection. The wealthy royalists, who entertained no doubt that all resistance would soon be crushed, were silent from fear, or fled to Boston as their "only asylum." Even there they did not feel safe. By the fifth of September, Gage had ordered ground to be broken for fortifications on the Neck, which formed the only entrance by land into Boston. In the evening, the selectmen remonstrated, but with no effect. The next day 1774. Sept. the convention of Suffolk county, which it had been agreed between Samuel Adams and Warren should send a memorial to the general congress, met in Dedham. Every town and district was represented; and their grand business was referred to a committee, of which Warren was the chairman. While their report was preparing, the day came for holding the county assize at Worcester. On that morning, the main street of the town was occupied on each side by about five thousand men, arranged under their leaders in companies, six deep, and extending for a quarter of a mile. Through this great multitude, the judges and their assistants passed safely to the court house; but there they were compelled to stay proceedings, and promise not to take part in executing the unconstitutional act of parliament. An approval of the resistance of the people was embodied in the careful and elaborate report which Warren on the ninth presented to the adjourned Suffolk convention. "On the wisdom and on the exertions of this important day," such were its words, "is suspended the fate of the new world and of unborn millions." The resolutions which followed declared that the sovereign who breaks his compact with his people forfeits their allegiance. By their duty to God, their country, themselves, and posterity, they pledged the county to maintain their civil and religious liberties, and to transmit them entire to future generations. They rejected as unconstitutional the regulating act of parliament and all the officers appointed under its authority. They enjoined the mandamus councillors to resign their places within eleven days. Attributing to the British commander in chief hostile intentions, they directed the collectors of taxes to pay over no money to the treasurer whom he recognised. The governor and council had formerly appointed all military officers; now that the legal council was no longer consulted, they advised the towns to elect for themselves officers of their militia from such as were inflexible friends to the rights of the people. For purposes of provincial government they advised a provincial congress, while they promised respect and submission |