The stand for independence wrought powerfully for good, both at home and abroad. At home it assisted vacillating minds to a decision, as well as bound all the colonies more firmly together by committing them. irreconcilably to an aggressive policy. Abroad it tended to lift the colonies out of the position of rebels and to gain them recognition among the nations of the earth.

Let us now inquire into the political character of these bodies of people which this Declaration by their delegates had erected into "free and independent States.”

Five colonies had adopted constitutions, revolutionary of course, before the decisive manifesto. There was urgent need for such action. The few remaining fragments of royal governments were powerless and decadent. Anarchy was threatening everywhere. Some of the royal governors had fled. In South Carolina the judges refused to act. In other places, as western Massachusetts, they had been forcibly prevented from act ing. In most of the colonies only small

parts of the old assemblies could be gotten together.

New Hampshire led off with a new constitution in January, 1776. South Carolina followed in March. By the close of the year nearly all the colonies had established governments of their own. New York and Georgia did not formally adopt new constitutions until the next year. In Massachusetts a popular assembly assumed legislative and executive powers from July, 1775, till 1780, when a new constitution went into force. Connecticut and Rhode Island, as we have seen already, continued to use their royal charters—the former till 1818, the latter till 1842.

Nowhere was the general framework of government greatly changed by independence. The governors were of course now elected by the people, and they suffered some diminution of power. Legislatures were composed of two houses, both elective, no hereditary legislators being recognized. All the States still had Sunday laws; most of them had religious tests. In South Car

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olina only members of a church could vote. In New Jersey an office-holder must profess belief in the faith of some Protestant sect. Pennsylvania required members of the legislature to avow faith in God, a future state, and the inspiration of the Scriptures. The new Massachusetts constitution provided that laws against plays, extravagance in dress, diet, etc., should be passed. Property qualifications continued to limit suffrage. Virginia and Georgia changed their land laws, abolishing entails and primogeniture.

The sole momentous novelty was that every one of the new constitutions proceeded upon the theory of popular sovereignty. The new governments derived their authority solely and directly from the people. And this authority, too, was not surrendered to the government, but simply -and this only in part-intrusted to it as the temporary agent of the sovereign people, who remained throughout the exclusive source of political power.

The new instruments of government were

necessarily faulty and imperfect. All have since been amended, and several entirely remodelled. But they rescued the colonies from impending anarchy and carried them. safely through the throes of the Revolution.

CHAPTER IV.

OUTBREAK OF WAR: WASHINGTON'S MOVE

MENTS

By the spring of 1775 Massachusetts was practically in rebellion. Every village green was a drill-ground, every church a town arsenal. General Gage occupied Boston with 3,000 British regulars. British regulars. The flames were smouldering; at the slightest puff they would flash out into open war.

On the night of April 18th people along the road from Boston to Concord were roused from sleep by the cry of flying couriers "To arms! The redcoats are coming!" When the British advance reached Lexington at early dawn, it found sixty or seventy minute-men drawn up on on the "Disperse, ye rebels!" shouted the British officer. A volley was fired, and seven Americans fell dead. The king's troops,

green.