AMERICA TAKES UP ARMS FOR SELF-DEFENCE

AND ARRIVES AT INDEPENDENCE.

CHAPTER I.

AMERICA SUSTAINS THE TOWN OF BOSTON.

MAY 1774.

THE hour of the American revolution was come. The people of the continent obeyed one general impulse, as the earth in spring listens to the command of nature and without the appearance of effort bursts into life. The movement was quickened, even when it was most resisted; and its fiercest adversaries worked with the most effect for its fulfilment. Standing in manifold relations with the governments, the culture, and the experience of the past, the Americans seized as their peculiar inheritance the traditions of liberty. Beyond any other nation, they had made trial of the possible forms of popular representation, and respected individual conscience and thought. The resources of the country in agriculture and commerce, forests and fisheries, mines and materials for manufactures, were so diversified and complete that their development could neither be guided nor circumscribed by a government beyond the ocean. The numbers, purity, culture, industry, and daring of its inhabitants proclaimed the existence of a people rich in creative energy, and ripe for institutions of their own.

They refused to acknowledge even to themselves the hope that was swelling within them, and yet in their political aspirations they deduced from universal principles a bill of rights, as old as creation and as wide as humanity. The idea of free

dom had always revealed itself at least to a few of the wise whose prophetic instincts were quickened by love of their kind, and its growth can be traced in the tendency of the ages. In America, it was the breath of life to the people. For the first time it found a region and a race where it could be professed with the earnestness of an indwelling conviction, and be defended with the enthusiasm that had marked no wars but those for religion. When all Europe slumbered over questions of liberty, a band of exiles, keeping watch by night, heard the glad tidings which promised the political regeneration of the world. A revolution, unexpected in the moment of its coming, but prepared by glorious forerunners, grew naturally and necessarily out of the series of past events by the formative principle of a living belief. And why should man organize resistance to the grand design of Providence? Why should not the consent of the ancestral land and the gratulations of every other call the young nation to its place among the powers of the earth? Britain was the mighty mother who bred men capable of laying the foundation of so noble an empire, and she alone could have trained them up. celled all the world as the founder of colonies. which entitled them to independence was now fulfilled. Their vigorous vitality refused conformity to foreign laws and external rule. They could take no other way to perfection than by the unconstrained development of that which was within them. They were not only able to govern themselves, they alone were able to do so; subordination visibly repressed their energies. Only by self-direction could they at all times employ their collective and individual faculties in the fullest extent of their ever-increasing intelligence. Could not the illustrious. nation, which had gained no distinction in war, in literature, or in science, comparable to that of having wisely founded distant settlements on a system of liberty, willingly perfect its beneficent work, now when no more was required than the acknowledgment that its offspring was come of age? Why must the ripening of lineal virtue be struck at, as rebellion in the lawful sons? Why is their unwavering attachment to the essential principle of their existence to be persecuted as treason, rather than viewed with delight as the crowning glory of the country

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from which they sprung? If the institutions of Britain were so deeply fixed in its usages and opinions that their deviations. from justice could not as yet be rectified; if the old continent was pining under systems of authority not fit to be borne, and not ripe for amendment, why should not a people be heartened to build a commonwealth in the wilderness, where alone it was offered a home?

So reasoned a few in Britain, who were jeered at "as visionary enthusiasts." Parliament had asserted an absolute lordship over the colonies in all cases whatsoever, and, fretting itself into a frenzy at the denial of its unlimited dominion, was destroying its recognised authority by its eagerness for more. The majority of the ministers, including the most active and resolute, were bent on the immediate employment of force. Lord North, recoiling from civil war, exercised no control over his colleagues, leaving the government to be conducted by the several departments. As a consequence, the king became the only point of administrative union. In him an approving conscience had no misgiving as to his duty. His heart knew no relenting; his will never wavered. Though America were to be drenched in blood and its towns reduced to ashes, though its people were to be driven to struggle for total independence, though he himself should find it necessary to bid high for hosts of mercenaries from the Scheldt to Moscow, and in quest of savage allies go tapping at every wigwam from Lake Huron to the Gulf of Mexico, he was resolved to coerce the thirteen colonies into submission.

On the tenth of May 1774, which was the day of the accession of Louis XVI., the act closing the port of Boston, transferring the board of customs to Marblehead, and the seat of government to Salem, reached the devoted town. The king was confident that the slow torture which was to be applied to its inhabitants would constrain them to cry out for mercy and promise unconditional obedience. Success in resistance could come only from an American union, which was not to be hoped for, unless Boston should offer herself as a willing sacrifice. The mechanics and merchants and laborers, altogether scarcely so many as thirty-five hundred able-bodied men, knew that they were acting not for a province of America, but for free

dom itself. They were inspired by the thought that the Providence which rules the world demanded of them heroic selfdenial as the champions of humanity, and they never doubted the fellow-feeling of the continent.

As soon as the act was received, the Boston committee of correspondence, by the hand of Joseph Warren, invited eight neighboring towns to a conference "on the critical state of public affairs." On the twelfth, at noon, Metcalf Bowler, the speaker of the assembly of Rhode Island, came before them with the cheering news that, in answer to a recent circular letter from the body over which he presided, all the thirteen governments had pledged themselves to union. Punctually, at the hour of three in the afternoon of that day, the committees of Dorchester, Roxbury, Brookline, Newton, Cambridge, Charlestown, Lynn, and Lexington, joined them in Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, where for ten years the freemen of the town had debated the question of justifiable resistance. The lowly men who now met there were most of them accustomed to feed their own cattle, to fold their own sheep, to guide their own ploughs; all were trained to public life in the little democracies of their towns; some of them were captains in the militia and officers of the church according to the discipline of Congregationalists; nearly all of them communicants, under a public covenant with God. They grew in greatness as their sphere enlarged. Their virtues burst the confines of village life. They felt themselves to be citizens not of little municipalities, but of the whole world of mankind. In the dark hour, light broke upon them from their own truth and courage. Placing Samuel Adams at their head, and guided by a report prepared by Joseph Warren of Boston, Thomas Gardner of Cambridge, and others, they agreed unanimously on the injustice and cruelty of the act, by which parliament, without competent jurisdiction and contrary as well to natural right as to the laws of all civilized states, had, without a hearing, set apart, accused, tried, and condemned the town of Boston. The delegates from the eight towns were reminded by those of Boston that that port could recover its trade by paying for the tea which had been thrown overboard; but they held it unworthy even to notice the offer, promising on their

part to join "their suffering brethren in every measure of relief."

The meeting knew that a declaration of independence would have alienated their sister colonies, nor had they as yet found out that independence was the desire of their own hearts. To suggest nothing till a congress could be convened would have seemed to them like abandoning the town to bleed away its life. The king had expected to starve its people into submission; in their circular letter to the committees of the other colonies they proposed, as a counter action, a general cessation of trade with Britain. "Now," they added, "is the time when all should be united in opposition to this violation of the liberties of all. The single question is, whether you consider Boston as suffering in the common cause, and sensibly feel and resent the injury and affront offered to her? We cannot believe otherwise; assuring you that, not in the least intimidated by this inhuman treatment, we are still determined to maintain to the utmost of our abilities the rights of America."

The next day, while Gage was sailing into the harbor, Samuel Adams presided over a very numerous town-meeting, at which many were present who had hitherto kept aloof. The thought of republican Rome, in its purest age, animated their consultations. The port act was read, and in bold debate was pronounced repugnant to law, religion, and common sense. At the same time those, who from loss of employment were to be the first to encounter want, were remembered with tender compassion, and measures were put in train to comfort them. Then the inhabitants, by the hand of Samuel Adams, made their appeal "to all the sister colonies, inviting a universal suspension of exports and imports, promising to suffer for America with a becoming fortitude, confessing that singly they might find their trial too severe, and entreating not to be left to struggle alone, when the very being of every colony, considered as a free people, depended upon the event."

On the seventeenth, Gage, who had remained four days with Hutchinson at Castle William, landed at Long Wharf, amid salutes from ships and batteries. Received by the council and civil officers, he was escorted by the Boston cadets, whom Hancock commanded, to the state-house, where the