daily practised the manual exercise of the musket. One of them was raised from the Quakers; another, known as "the Old Men's," consisted of about fourscore German emigrants who had served in Europe.

1775. May.

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." At a banquet, the toast was given: "A speedy and happy issue to the present disturbances;" to which Charles Lee, overacting his part, responded: "A speedy and general insurrection in Great Britain and Ireland." On the fifth, Franklin arrived after a voyage over the smoothest seas; and the next morning he was unanimously elected a deputy to the congress; but the delegation, to which Thomas Willing and James Wilson were added, were still instructed to combine, if possible, a redress of grievances with "union and harmony between Great Britain and the colonies." Wilson was one of the first in arms, and was in this month elected captain of a company of volunteers.

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 dispassionate moderation; and its delegates to congress went determined to labor for a reconciliation.

Virginia was still angry at the seizure of its magazine, and at the menace of Dunmore to encourage a rising of slaves, when on the second 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, kindled at his words, elected him their chief, and marched for Williamsburg. On the way, his army increased to several thousand.

Alarmed by the "insurrections," Dunmore convened the council, and in a proclamation of the third 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. Lady Dunmore, in dread of being retained as a hostage, retired with her family to the "Fowey" man-of-war. The governor first resolved to resist, and then thought it best to yield. At sunrise on the fourth, his messenger met Henry at New Kent, and, as a compensation for the gunpowder taken out of the magazine, paid him three hundred and thirty pounds, 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 restored.

Two days after the return of the volunteers, Dunmore issued a proclamation against a "certain Patrick Henry " and his "deluded followers;" and secretly denounced him to the ministry as "a man of desperate circumstances, who had been very active in encouraging disobedience and exciting a spirit of revolt among the people for many years past.” On the other hand, Louisa county, on the eighth, sent the insurgents its thanks. On the ninth, Spottsylvania approved their prudent, firm, and spirited conduct; and Orange county, in a letter signed among others by the young and studious James Madison, a recent graduate of Princeton College, declared: "The blow struck in Massachusetts is a hostile attack on this and every other colony, and a sufficient warrant to use reprisal."

On the eleventh, Patrick Henry set off for the 1775. continental congress; and his progress was a tri- May 11. umph. Amidst salutes and huzzas, a volunteer guard accompanied him to the Maryland side of the Potomac; where, as they said farewell, they invoked God's blessing on the champion of their "dearest rights and liberties."

The message from Lexington was borne to Newbern in twelve or thirteen days, and "wrought a great change." The governor of North Carolina, in his panic, ordered the cannon in that 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 himself to Fort Johnston, where a sloop of war had its station.

CHAPTER XXXII.

EFFECTS OF THE DAY OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD CONTICONDEROGA TAKEN.

1775. May.

TINUED.

MAY, 1775.

THE people of South Carolina, who had hoped relief through the discontinuance of importations from Britain, did not falter on learning the decision of parliament. On the instant, Charles Pinckney, 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 twenty-first 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 eight hundred 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 menbers, on the second 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. To this end, one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling were issued in bills of credit, which for a year and a half the enthusiasm of the people did not suffer to fall in value. "We are ready to give freely half or the whole of our estates for the security of our liberties," was the universal language.

The militia officers threw up their commissions from the royal governor, and submitted to the orders of congress. A council of safety was charged with executive powers.

1775.

In the midst of these proceedings, Lord William Campbell, their new governor, arrived, and the provincial congress thus addressed him: "No lust of independence June 20. has had the least influence upon our counsels; no subjects more sincerely desire to testify their loyalty and affection. We deplore the measures, which, if persisted in, must rend the British empire. Trusting the event to Providence, we prefer death to slavery." "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 tenth of May, and added Georgia to the union. At that time, she had about seventeen thousand white inhabitants and fifteen thousand Africans. Her militia was not less than three thousand. Her frontier, which extended from Augusta to St. Mary's, was threatened by the Creeks, with four thousand warriors; the Chickasaws, with four hundred and fifty; the Cherokees, with three thousand; the Choctaws, with twenty-five hundred. But danger could not make her people hesitate. On the night of the eleventh, 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 five hundred pounds of powder. To the Boston wanderers, they sent sixty-three barrels of rice and one hundred and twenty-two pounds in specie; and they kept the king's birthday by raising a liberty pole. "A general rebellion throughout America is coming on suddenly and swiftly," reported Sir James Wright, the governor; "matters will go to the utmost extremity."

The great deed, which in the mean time was April. achieved in the north, began in Connecticut, was planned by her sons and executed at her cost. Parsons of that colony, on his way to Hartford, crossing Arnold who was bound for Massachusetts, obtained of him an account of the state of Ticonderoga, and the great number of its brass cannon. At Hartford, on the twentyseventh of April, Parsons, taking as his advisers Apr. 27. Samuel Wyllys and Silas Deane, with the assistance

1775. May.

of three others projected the capture of the fort; and, without formally consulting the assembly or the governor and council, they, on their own receipts, obtained money from the public treasury, and on the twenty-eighth sent forward Noah Phelps and Bernard Romans to carry forward their design. The next day, Captain Edward Mott, of Preston, was added as chairman of the Connecticut committee, and with five associates he proceeded on his mission. To prevent being discovered by a long march through the country, it was proposed to raise the men chiefly in the New Hampshire Grants; and Ethan Allen was encouraged by an express messenger to hold them in readiness. On the morning of the first of May, the party, which had grown to the number of sixteen, left Salisbury; and at Pittsfield in Massachusetts they were joined by John Brown, the young lawyer of that village, by Colonel James Easton, and by a body of volunteers from Berkshire. At Bennington they found Ethan Allen, who was certainly "the proper man to head his own people; " and they "were the proper persons for the job." Repairing to the north, he sent the alarm through the hills and valleys of Vermont; and on Sunday, the seventh of May, about one hundred Green Mountain Boys and near fifty soldiers from Massachusetts, under the command of Easton, rallied at Castleton. Just then arrived Arnold, with only one attendant. He brought a commission from the Massachusetts committee of safety, which was disregarded; and the men unanimously elected Ethan Allen their chief.

On the eighth of May, the party began the march; late on the ninth, they arrived at Orwell. With the utmost difficulty, a few boats were brought together; and eighty-three men, crossing the lake with Allen, landed near the garrison. The boats were sent back for Seth Warner and the rearguard; but, if they were to be waited for, there could be no surprise. The men were therefore at once drawn up in three ranks; and, as the first beams of morning broke upon the mountain peaks, Allen addressed them: "Friends and fellow-soldiers, we must this morning quit our pretensions to valor, or possess ourselves of this fortress; and, inas