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Sept.

CHAP. the moment when it was adopted in practice. The commission to Carleton, as governor of the province of Que1774. bec under the act of parliament, conveyed full authority to levy, 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."

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 from despair at their own relative inferiority in numbers, had in former wars increased their strength by Indian alliances. These alliances the British king and his ministers now revived; and against their own colonies and kindred, wished to loose from the leash their terrible auxiliaries.

The ruthless policy was hateful to every rightminded Englishman, and as soon as the design 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

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covetous and cruel of the old French partisans. CHAP. Carleton, from the first, abhorred the measure, which he was yet constrained to promote. "You know," 1774. Sept. 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 his opinions of their falseness and cruelty in the most impassioned language of reprobation. But partly from the sense of his own impotence for offensive war, partly from a moral feebleness which could not vividly picture to itself the atrocity of his orders, Gage was unsusceptible of the suggestions of mercy; and 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 Choctaws 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

Sept.

CHAP. kind of warfare there could be no parity between the X. English and the Americans. The cannibal Indian 1774. 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.

While Gage was writing for troops from England, from New York, and from Quebec, for French Canadian regiments, 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. On the smallest computation 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. Sending forward 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

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1774.

Sept.

that at present nothing was to be attempted. In re- CHAP. turn, 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."

"How soon we may need your most effectual aid," 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 any 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

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CHAP. doubt that all resistance would be crushed by the massive power of Britain, were silent from fear, or 1774 fled to Boston, as their "only asylum." Even there they did not feel safe.

Sept.

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 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