there were not more than one hundred pounds of CHAP powder for sale.

1775.

1.

Notwithstanding these obstacles, the scheming May genius of New England was in the highest activity. While the expedition against Ticonderoga was sanctioned by a commission granted to Benedict Arnold, the congress, which was then sitting in Watertown, received from Jonathan Brewer, of Waltham, a proposition to march with a body of five hundred volunteers to Quebec, by way of the rivers Kennebeck and Chaudiere, in order to draw the governor of Canada, with his troops, into that quarter, and thus secure the northern and western frontiers from inroads. He was sure it "could be executed with all the facility imaginable." The design was not then favored, but it did not pass out of mind.

Now that Massachusetts had entered into war with Great Britain, next to the want of military stores, the poverty of her treasury, which during the whole winter had received scarcely five thousand pounds of currency to meet all expenses, gave just cause for apprehension. For more than twenty years, she had endeavored by legislative penalties to exclude the paper currency of other provinces, and had issued no notes of her own but certificates of debt, in advance of the revenue. These certificates were for May 5. sums of six pounds and upwards, bearing interest, and had no forced circulation, and were kept at par by the high condition of her credit and her general prosperity. The co-operation of neighboring colonies compelled her congress in May to legalize the paper money of Connecticut and Rhode Island; and from fiscal necessity to issue her own treasury notes. Of

XXX.

CHAP. her first emission of one hundred thousand pounds, there were no notes under four pounds, and they all 1775. preserved the accustomed form of certificates of pub

May. lic debt, of which the use was not made compulsory.

But in less than three weeks, an emission of twentysix thousand pounds was authorized for the advance pay to the soldiers, and these "soldiers' notes," of which the smallest was for one dollar, were made a legal tender "in all payments without discount or abatement." Rhode Island put out twenty thousand pounds in bills, of which the largest was for forty shillings, the smallest for sixpence.

On the fifth of May, the provincial congress resolved: "that General Gage had disqualified himself for serving the colony in any capacity, that no obedience was in future due to him, that he ought to be guarded against as an unnatural and inveterate enemy." To provide for order was an instant necessity; but the patriots of the colony checked their eagerness to renovate the ancient custom of annually electing their chief magistrate, and resolved to wait till they could receive from the continental congress "explicit advice respecting the taking up and exercising the powers of civil government." They were ready to receive a plan, or with the consent of congress, to establish a form for themselves.

"After the termination of the present struggle," wrote Warren, "I hope never more to be obliged to enter into a political war. I would, therefore, wish the government here to be so happily constituted, that the only road to promotion may be through the affections of the people. I would have such a government as should give every man the greatest liberty

XXX.

to do what he pleases, consistent with restraining him CHAP. from doing any injury to another, or such a government as would most contribute to the good of the 1775. whole, with the least inconvenience to individuals."

To form the grand American army, New Hampshire agreed to raise two thousand men, of whom perhaps twelve hundred reached the camp. Folsom was their brigadier, but John Stark was the most trusty officer. Connecticut offered six thousand men, and about twenty-three hundred remained at Cambridge, with Spenser as their chief commander, and Putnam as second brigadier.

Rhode Island voted an army of fifteen hundred men, and probably about a thousand of them appeared round Boston, under Nathaniel Greene as their commander. He was one of eight sons, born in a house of a single story, near the Narragansett Bay in Warwick. In that quiet seclusion, Gorton and his followers, untaught of universities, had reasoned on the highest questions of being. They had held, that in America Christ was coming to his temple, that outward ceremonies, baptism and the eucharist, and also kings and lords, bishops and chaplains, were all but carnal ordinances, sure to have an end; that humanity must construct its church by "the voice of the Son of God," the voice of reason and love. The father of Greene, descended from ancestry of this school, was at once an anchor smith, a miller, a farmer, and, like Gorton, a preacher. The son excelled in diligence and in manly sports. None of his age could wrestle, or skate, or run better than he; or stand before him as a neat ploughman and a skilful mechanic.

May.

CHAP.
XXX.

May.

Aided by intelligent men of his own village, or of Newport, he read Euclid, and learned to apply geometry to surveying and navigation; he studied Watts's logic, Locke on the human understanding, Ferguson on civil society, pored over English versions of the Lives of Plutarch, the Commentaries of Cæsar, and became familiar with some of the best English classics.

When the stamp-act was resisted, he and his brothers never feared to rally at the drum-beat. Simple in his tastes, temperate as a Spartan, and a great lover of order, he rose early, and was indefatigable at study or at work. He married, and his home became the abode of peace and hospitality. His neighbors looked up to him as an extraordinary man, and from 1770, he was their representative in the colonial legislature. Once in 1773, he rode to Plainfield in Connecticut, to witness a grand military parade; and the spectacle was for him a good commentary on Sharp's military guide. In 1774, in a coat and hat of the Quaker fashion, he was seen watching the exercise and manoeuvres of the British troops at Boston, where he used to buy of Henry Knox, a bookseller, treatises on the art of war.

On the day of Lexington, Greene started to share in the conflict; but being met by tidings of the retreat of the British, he went back to take his seat in the Rhode Island legislature. He next served as a commissioner to concert military plans with Connecticut, and when in May the Rhode Island brigade of fifteen hundred men was enlisted, he was elected its general. None murmured at the advancement of the unassuming man whom nature had so gifted with

XXX.

May.

readiness to oblige, and gentleness of disposition, and CHAP. the mildest manners, that every one loved him. "I hope," said he meekly, "God will preserve me in the 1775. bounds of moderation, and enable me to support myself with proper dignity, neither rash nor timorous." He loved to serve his country more than the honor of serving it; and if its good had required it, would have exchanged his command for that of a sergeant, or the place of a soldier in the ranks, without a murmur. As he became familiar with his duty, he never forgot that he was keeping guard for the interests of mankind, looking to the continental congress as the friend of the liberty of the world, and the support of the rights of human nature.