their faith, looked up to God as the stay of their fathers and the protector of their privileges! How often on that green, hard by the burialplace of their forefathers, had they pledged themselves to each other to combat manfully for their birthright inheritance of liberty! There they now stood side by side, under the provincial banner, with arms in their hands, silent and fearless, willing to shed their blood for their rights, scrupulous not to begin civil war. The ground on which they trod was the altar of freedom, and they were to furnish the victims.

The British van, hearing the drum and the alarm guns, halted to load; the remaining companies came up; and, at half an hour before sunrise, the advance party hurried forward at double quick time, almost upon a run, closely followed by the grenadiers. Pitcairn rode in front, and, when within five or six rods of the minute-men, cried out: "Disperse, ye villains! ye rebels, disperse! lay down your arms! why don't you lay down your arms and disperse?" The main part of the countrymen stood motionless in the ranks, witnesses against aggression; too few to resist, too brave to fly. At this, Pitcairn discharged a pistol, and with a loud voice cried, "Fire!" The order was followed first by a few guns, which did no execution, and then by a close and deadly discharge of musketry..

In the disparity of numbers, Parker ordered his men to disperse. Then, and not till then, did a few of them, on their own impulse, return the British fire. These random shots of fugitives or dying men did no harm, except that Pitcairn's horse was perhaps grazed, and a private of the tenth light infantry was touched slightly in the leg.

Jonas Parker, the strongest and best wrestler in Lexington, had promised never to run from British troops; and he kept his vow. A wound brought him on his knees. Having discharged his gun, he was preparing to load it again, when he was stabbed by a bayonet, and lay on the post 'which he took at the morning's drum-beat. So fell Isaac Muzzey, and so died the aged Robert Munroe, who in 1758 had been an ensign at Louisburg. Jonathan Harrington, junior, was struck in front of his own house on the north of the common. His wife was at the window as he fell. With blood gushing from his breast, he rose in her sight, tottered, fell again, then crawled on hands and knees toward his dwelling; she ran to meet him, but only reached him as he expired on their threshold. Caleb Harrington, who had gone into the meeting-house for powder, was shot as he came out. Samuel Hadley and John Brown were pursued, and killed after they had left the green. Asahel Porter, of Woburn, who had been taken prisoner by the British on the march, endeavoring to escape, was shot within a few rods of the common. Seven men of Lexington were killed, nine wounded; a quarter part of all who stood in arms on the green.

Day came in all the beauty of an early spring. The trees were budding; the grass growing rankly a full month before its time; the bluebird and the robin gladdening the genial season, and calling forth the beams of the sun which on that morning shone with the warmth of summer; but distress and horror gathered over the inhabitants of the peaceful town. There on the green lay in death the gray-haired and the young; the grassy field was red "with the innocent blood of their brethren slain," crying unto God for vengeance from the ground.

These are the village heroes, who were more than of noble blood, proving by their spirit that they were of a race divine. They gave their lives in testimony to the rights of mankind, bequeathing to their country an assurance of success in the mighty struggle which they began. The expanding millions of their countrymen renew and multiply their praise from generation to generation. They fulfilled their duty not from an accidental impulse of the moment; their action was the ripened fruit of Providence and of time. The light that led them on was combined of rays from the whole history of the race; from the traditions of the Hebrews in the gray of the world's morning; from the heroes and sages of republican Greece and Rome; from the example of Him who died on the cross for the life of humanity; from the religious creed which proclaimed the divine presence in man, and on this truth, as in a life-boat, floated the liberties of nations over the dark flood of the middle ages; from the customs of the Germans transmitted out of their forests to the councils of Saxon England; from the burning faith and courage of Martin Luther; from trust in the inevitable universality of God's sovereignty as taught by Paul of Tarsus and Augustine, through Calvin and the divines of New England; from the avenging fierceness of the Puritans, who dashed the mitre on the ruins of the throne; from the bold dissent and creative self-assertion of the earliest emigrants to Massachusetts; from the statesmen who made, and the philosophers who expounded, the revolution of England; from the liberal spirit and analyzing inquisitiveness of the eighteenth century; from the cloud of witnesses of all the ages to the reality and the rightfulness of human freedom. All the centuries bowed themselves from the recesses of the past to cheer in their sacrifice the lowly men who proved themselves worthy of their forerunners, and whose children rise up and call them blessed.

Heedless of his own danger, Samuel Adams, with the voice of a prophet, exclaimed: "Oh, what a glorious morning is this!" for he saw his country's independence hastening on, and, like Columbus in the tempest, knew that the storm bore him more swiftly toward the undiscovered world.

FORT MOULTRIE.

[From the Same.]

THE HE people of Charleston, as they looked from the battery with senses quickened by the nearness of danger, beheld the Sphinx, the Acteon, and the Syren, each of twenty-eight guns, sailing as if to get between Haddrell's point and the fort, so as to enfilade the works, and, when the rebels should be driven from them, to cut off their retreat. It was a moment of danger, for the fort on that side was unfinished; but the pilots, keeping too far to the south, ran all the three upon a bank of sand, known as the Lower Middle Ground. Seeing the frigates thus entangled, the beholders in the town were swayed alternately by fears and hopes; the armed inhabitants stood every one at his post, uncertain but that they might be called to immediate action, hardly daring to believe that Moultrie's small and ill-furnished garrison could beat off the squadron, when behold! his flag disappears. Fearing that his colors had been struck, they prepared to meet the invaders at the water's edge.

In the fort, William Jasper, a sergeant, perceived that the flag had been cut down by a ball from the enemy, and had fallen over the ramparts. "Colonel," said he to Moultrie, "don't let us fight without a flag."

What can you do?" asked Moultrie; "the staff is broken off." "Then," said Jasper, "I'll fix it to a halberd, and place it on the merlon of the bastion next the enemy;" and, leaping through an embrasure, and braving the thickest fire from the ship, he took up the flag, returned with it safely, and planted it, as he had promised, on the summit of the merlon.

The sea gleamed with light; the almost vertical sun of midsummer glared from a cloudless sky; and the intense heat was increased by the blaze from the cannon on the platform. All of the garrison were without coats during the action, and some were nearly naked; Moultrie and several of the officers smoked their pipes as they gave their orders. They knew that their movements were observed from the house-tops of Charleston; by the veteran Armstrong and the little army at Haddrell's point; by Gadsden, who at Fort Johnson was chafing with discontent at not being in the centre of danger. Exposed to an incessant cannonade, which seemed sufficient to daunt the bravest veterans, they stuck to their guns with the greatest constancy.

Hit by a ball which entered through an embrasure, Macdaniel cried out to his brother soldiers: "I am dying, but don't let the cause of liberty expire with me this day." Jasper removed the mangled corpse

from the sight of his comrades, and cried aloud: "Let us revenge that brave man's death!"

The slow and skilfully directed fire against the Bristol shattered that ship, and carried wounds and death. Neither the tide nor the wind suffered the British squadron to retire. Once the springs on the cables of the Bristol were swept away; as she swung round with her stern toward the fort, she drew upon herself the fire of every gun that could be brought to bear upon her. Of all who in the beginning of the action were stationed on her quarter-deck, not one escaped being killed or wounded. For a moment, it is said, the commodore stood alone. Morris, his captain, having the fore-arm shattered by a chain-shot, and receiving a wound in the neck, was taken into the cockpit; but, after submitting to amputation, he insisted on being carried on the quarterdeck once more, where he resumed command till he was shot through the body, when, feeling dissolution near, he commended his family to the providence of God and the generosity of his country. Meantime, the eyes of the commodore and of all on board his fleet were "frequently and impatiently" and vainly turned toward the army. If the troops. would but coöperate, he was sure of gaining the island; for at about one o'clock he believed that he had silenced the guns of the rebels, and that the fort was on the point of being evacuated. But the pause was owing to the scarcity of powder, of which the little that remained to Moultrie was reserved for the musketry, as a defence against an expected attack from the land forces. Lee should of himself have replenished his stock; Moultrie had seasonably requested it, but in the heat of the action he received from Lee this answer: แ If you should unfortunately expend your ammunition without beating off the enemy or driving them on ground, spike your guns and retreat."

A little later a better message came from Rutledge, at Charleston: "I send you five hundred pounds of powder. You know our collection is not very great. Honor and victory to you and our worthy countrymen with you. Do not make too free with your cannon. Be cool and do mischief." These five hundred pounds of powder, with two hundred pounds from a schooner lying at the back of the fort, were all the supplies that Moultrie received. At three in the afternoon, Lee, on a report from his aide-de-camp, Byrd, sent Muhlenberg's Virginia riflemen to reenforce Thomson. A little before five, Moultrie was able to renew his fire. At about five, the marines in the ships' tops, seeing a lieutenant with eight or ten men remove the heavy barricade from the gateway of the fort, thought that Moultrie and his party were about to retreat; but the gateway was unbarred to receive a visit from Lee. The officers, half naked, and begrimed with the hot day's work, respectfully laid down their pipes as he drew near. The general himself pointed two or three

guns, after which he said to Moultrie: "Colonel, I see you are doing very well here; you have no occasion for me; I will go up to town again; and thus he left the fort.

When, at a few minutes past seven, the sun went down in a blaze of light, the battle was still raging, though the British showed signs of weariness. The inhabitants of Charleston, whom the evening sea-breeze collected on the battery, could behold the flag of liberty still proudly waving; and they continued gazing anxiously, till the short twilight was suddenly merged in the deep darkness of a southern night, when nothing was seen but continual flashes, followed by peals as it were of thunder coming out from a heavy cloud. Many thousand shot were fired from the shipping, and hardly a hut or a tree on the island remained unhurt; but the works were very little damaged, and only one gun was silenced. The firing from the fort continued slowly; and the few shot they were able to send were heard to strike against the ships' timbers. Just after nine o'clock, a great part of his ammunition being expended in a cannonade of about ten hours, his people fatigued, the Bristol and the Experiment made nearly wrecks, the tide of ebb almost done, with no prospect of help from the army, Sir Peter Parker resolved to withdraw. At half-past nine his ships slipped their cables, and dropped down with the tide to their previous moorings.

Of the four hundred and thirty-five Americans in the fort who took part in this action, all but eleven remained alive, and but twenty-six were wounded. At so small a cost of life had Charleston been defended, and the colony saved.

EUROPE AND AMERICA AT THE TIME OF WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION.

То

[From the Same.]

O the president's inaugural speech one branch of the legislature thus responded: "The senate will at all times cheerfully co-operate in every measure which may strengthen the union and perpetuate the liberties of this great confederated republic."

The representatives of the American people likewise addressed him: "With you we adore the invisible hand which has led the American people through so many difficulties; and we cherish a conscious responsibility for the destiny of republican liberty. We join in your fervent supplication for our country; and we add our own for the choicest blessings of heaven on the most beloved of her citizens."

In the same moments of the fifth day of May, 1789, when these words.