officers to be detested as "traitors cloaked with a pretext of law." As Gage had orders to make arrests, each individual patriot was placed under the protection of his county and of the province. The practice of the military art was declared to be the duty of the people.

Gage looked about him for more troops, recommended the repair of Crown Point, a strong garrison at Ticonderoga, a well-guarded line of communication between New York and Canada.

On the same day began the term of the inferior court at Springfield. But, early in the morning, fifteen hundred or two thousand men, with drums and trumpets, marched into that town, set up a black flag at the court-house, and threatened death to any one who should enter. After some treaty, the judges executed a written covenant not to put their commissions in force; Worthington resigned his office of councillor; those of the lawyers who had sent an address to Gage atoned for their offence by a written confession. Williams, the tory of Hatfield, and others, were compelled successively to go round a large circle and ask forgiveness. Catlin and Warner fell upon their knees; old Captain Mirreck of Monson was drawn in a cart and threatened to be tarred and feathered. The people agreed that the British troops, if they should march to Worcester, should be resisted by at least twenty thousand men from Hampshire county and Connecticut.

The last Tuesday of August was the day for holding the supreme court at Boston. To support Chief Justice Oliver, Gage came expressly from Salem. The day arrived; the judges took their seats and the prescribed proclamations were made. On proceeding to business, the men who had been returned as jurors, one and all, refused to take the oath, Thomas Chase, who was of the petit jury, giving as his reason "that the chief justice of the court stood impeached by the late representatives of the province." A paper offered by the jury disputed the authority of the judges for the further reasons, that the charter of the province had been changed with no warrant but an act of parliament, and that three of the judges, in violation of the constitution, had accepted seats in the new council.

The chief justice and his colleagues, repairing in a body to the governor, represented the impossibility of exercising their office in Boston or in any other part of the province; the army was too small for their protection; and, besides, none would act as jurors. The authority of the new government, as established by act of parliament, perished in the presence of the governor, the judges, and the army.

Gage summoned his council, but only to meet new discomfitures. Its members dared not show themselves at Salem, and he consented to their violating the act of parliament by meeting in Boston. Hutchinson, son of the former governor, withdrew from the council. The few who retained their places advised unanimously to send no troops into the interior, but so to re-enforce the army as to constitute Boston a "place of safe retreat."

On that day the county convention, in which every town. and district of Middlesex was represented, met at Concord. "We must now exert ourselves," said they, "or all those efforts which for ten years past have brightened the annals of this country will be totally frustrated. Life and death, or, what is more, freedom and slavery, are now before us." In behalf, therefore, of themselves and of future generations, they enumerated the violations of their rights by late acts of parliament, which they avowed their purpose to nullify; and they sent their resolves by an express to the continental congress. "We are grieved," said they, "to find ourselves reduced to the necessity of entering into the discussion of those great and profound questions; but we deprecate a state of slavery. Our fathers left us a fair inheritance, purchased by blood and treasure; this we are resolved to transmit equally fair to our children; no danger shall affright, no difficulties intimidate us; and if, in support of our rights, we are called to encounter even death, we are yet undaunted; sensible that he can never die too soon who lays down his life in support of the laws and liberties of his country."

The convention separated in the evening of the last day of August, to await the decisions of the continental congress; but before the next sun was up the aspect of affairs was changed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1774.

THE province kept powder for its militia at Quarry Hill on a point of land between Medford and Cambridge. The towns had been removing their stock, each according to its proportions. On the first day of September, a corps of two hundred and sixty men, embarking from Boston an hour before sunrise, seized all the powder that remained, amounting to two hundred and fifty half-barrels, and transferred it to the castle. A detachment from the corps brought off two field-pieces from Cambridge.

This seizure, secretly planned and suddenly executed, set the country in a flame. The next morning, thousands of freeholders, leaving their guns in the rear, advanced to Cambridge. Warren, accompanied by as many of the Boston committee as came in his way, crossed to Charlestown, and with the committee of that town hastened to meet the committee of Cambridge. On their arrival, they found Danforth, a county judge and mandamus councillor, addressing a very large gathering of people who stood in the open air round the court-house steps; and such order prevailed that the low voice of the feeble old man was heard by the whole multitude. He finished by giving a written promise never "to be any way concerned as a member of the council." Lee, in like manner, confirmed his former resignation. The turn of Phipps, the high sheriff, came next, and he signed an agreement not to execute any precept under the new act of parliament.

Oliver, the lieutenant-governor, who resided at Cambridge,

"It is not a

repaired to Boston in the "greatest distress." mad mob," said he to the British admiral; and he warned Gage that "sending out troops would be attended with the most fatal consequences." Had they marched only five miles into the country, Warren was of opinion that not a man of them would have been saved. Gage remained inactive, writing as his justification to the ministry: "The people are numerous, waked up to a fury, and not a Boston rabble, but the freeholders of the county. A check would be fatal, and the first stroke will decide a great deal. We should therefore be strong before anything decisive is urged."

Oliver returned to Cambridge with the assurance that no troops would appear, and to beg the committee's leave to retain his places. But in the afternoon a great throng surrounded his house and demanded his resignation. "My honor is my first consideration," said Oliver; "the next, my life. Put me to death or destroy my property, but I will not submit." Yet, on the first appearance of danger, he yielded to all their demands.

For three hours, beneath the scorching sun of the hottest day of that summer, the people kept the ranks in which they were marshalled, and their "patience, temperance, and fortitude" were remarked upon as the chief elements "of a good soldier." They allowed the force of the suggestion that the governor, in removing the stores of the province, had broken no law; and they voted unanimously their detestation of mobs and riots, and of the destruction of private property.

Their conduct showed how formidable they might prove in the field, but rumors reached England of their cowardice and defeat. "What a melancholy consideration for all thinking men," said Fox to Burke, "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. I am dejected at heart from the sad figure that men make against soldiers." At that time the British army in Boston feared an invasion; the guards were doubled, cannon were placed at the entrance of the town, and the troops lay on their arms through the night.

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. It was thought that 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, that at present nothing was to be attempted. In return, assurances were given of most effectual support whenever it might be required. "But for this counter intelligence," wrote Putnam and his associates on the committee of Pomfret, "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."

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. 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."

Gage wrote home that, "to reduce New England, a very respectable force should take the field." He had five regiments at Boston, one 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 to employ "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