sentative bodies, because each consisted of delegates from a small community who were immediately acquainted with its wants. These could readily be made known. Yet satisfaction of many of these wants conflicted with English law, and especially the laws in restraint of trade. The political ideal of the Americans at this time was that of a colony whose laws should be made by an assembly chosen by the people. This seems simple until we come to analyze it, and then it proves to mean industrial as well as political independence. In 1765 the Americans had more political than industrial rights and privileges.

The Americans complained more of Parliament than of the royal governors or the proprietors. The civil organization was thoroughly established, life and property were safe, taxes were light. Connecticut and Rhode Island, which elected all their officials, were no more prosperous than Pennsylvania, which had a lord proprietor, or Virginia, which had a royal governor. Franklin went to the root of the matter when he told a member of the House of Commons that it was not the amount of the tax, but its principle, that the Americans considered. If there were no principle behind the expostulations and petitions of the assemblies, and the addresses and declarations of Congress, then the Americans were only law-breakers. The whole dispute turned on the interpretation of the principles of government.

The material instruments, the resources which the Americans had to aid them in the interpretation, seem now as simple as Franklin's kite and string, key and bottle. The American civil experiment derives its value from the people who tried it. In spite of much illiteracy; in spite of slavery, bad roads, and infrequent mails; in spite of unskilled labor in the arts, of homespun clothes; in spite of few cities, of clumsy tools, a scarcity of books and newspapers; in spite of plain living, wretched inns, and awkward chaises, of ox-teams and smuggling; in spite of a limited suffrage and rough frontiersmen, our ancestors from 1765 to 1776 managed to get to the bottom of the principles of representative government, and also to get fairly started in the way of applying them.

CHAPTER XIII

INDEPENDENCE DECLARED

1774-1776

The king, the Parliament, and the ministry were determined to punish Massachusetts, and particularly the people of Boston, for their open defiance. The port of Boston should be closed; grass should grow in its streets; the city should be brought to its senses. As for the troublesome assembly, it should never again be suffered to foment rebellion in America. The government of Massachusetts had been of too popular a character. Henceforth, the governor should be a military man sent over by the king, and should have soldiers from the British army to support him. There should be no assembly unless he ordered one to be elected. The judges should be paid by the king, not by the assembly. In fine, Massachusetts should be governed by a British soldier. Representative government should be abolished, and a military system should take its place. The colony should be treated as a conquered province. These provisions were the substance of the Massachusetts Bill passed by Parliament in 1774, and its execution was at once attempted. General Thomas Gage was appointed military governor of the colony, and accompanied by several regiments of soldiers, he reached Boston in May, 1774.

He was astonished to find the people in arms. Obeying his instructions, he ordered the assembly to meet at Salem in October, but as he became better acquainted with the state of public feeling, he decided that an assembly would only make matters worse, and countermanded the order. His ships could command Boston on three sides. The land approach, Boston Neck, he fortified. To the Americans this looked like war. The assembly denied his right to dissolve it before it met, and under the lead of Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other patriots, met at Salem, sent news

of the condition of affairs to the other colonies, and prepared to organize a government for the colony after the model of its charter of 1629. For nearly three years the government had been independent of the king. The assembly had organized committees, through whom the public business was conducted. The collectors paid the taxes to a treasurer named by the assembly, and Samuel Adams devised a "Committee of Correspondence" to keep other colonies informed.

General Gage found himself merely at the head of a few British regiments in Boston, instead of being military governor of "the Province of Massachusetts Bay." Of course the assembly would refuse to obey his orders. It went further. Having adjourned to Cambridge, it voted to collect powder and guns and to put the colony in position to defend itself. In June it ordered twelve thousand men to be enrolled and be ready for service at any minute. New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were asked to raise troops for the common cause. All this meant war. Gage saw that the people were determined to fight for their rights.

The supplies were collected at several places, among them at Concord, a town about twenty miles from Boston. Secretly, Gage prepared an expedition that should go by way of Lexington, where John Hancock and Samuel Adams were reported to be staying with a friend, should arrest them, and push on to Concord and destroy the powder, guns, and provisions. Shortly before midnight of April 18, 1775, the eight hundred regulars started. But Boston was full of patriots, and none of Gage's movements escaped them. Before the order to march was given, mounted messengers were stationed by the Americans at Charleston, waiting for the signal that the troops were in motion. Paul Revere caused lights to be hung from the Old North Church tower as a signal that the troops had started.

At once the messengers flew along the roads, rousing the people. Adams and Hancock were warned. On the messengers galloped, giving warning to all. At sunrise, the troops reached the village green at Lexington. Instead of surprising the town, they found the minute-men in arms.

1775]

CONCORD

161

They refused to disperse; the English fired, and sixteen men lay dead or wounded. Scarcely delaying, the king's troops hurried on to Concord, where they destroyed what supplies the Americans had not been able to conceal in places of safety, burned the court-house, and began their march back to Boston. But since midnight the minutemen had been gathering from all the country round. Seizing their flint-locks and powder-horns, they hurried on to find the "redcoats.'

In fine order these were marching back to their barracks; but now from Concord bridge, from behind stone fences and the tall elm-trees, from the hay-stacks and the bushes, there poured a deluge of farmers' fire such as no British army had ever felt before. Every farmer was a marksman, with no bullets to waste. The stately march of the redcoats became a retreat, and the retreat turned into a flight, like Braddock's twenty years before. Their numbers were vanishing under the deadly fire, and they ran all the way to Lexington. Here reinforcements met them. Three hundred dead or dying soldiers were left behind, and fourteen hundred strong, they reached Boston just as the sun was setting. Close on their heels were the minute-men; and now it seemed as if the whole province was with them. Next morning, as the echoes of the British drum-beat reverberated over the bay, General Gage found himself and his army shut up in Boston. At Chelsea, at Charleston, at Cambridge, at Roxbury, and back at Lexington and Concord, the minute-men were gathering.

Boston was besieged; the war for American independence had opened. A hundred years after the stand of the patriots at Concord bridge, their fidelity and courage were commemorated, and the "Concord Hymn," written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was sung. One of its verses tells the whole story:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;

Here the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world."

On the 10th of May, as had been agreed, the second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. Nearly all the

members of the last Congress had been again chosen delegates, and all the colonies were represented. They thought, a year before, when they sent their humble petition to the king and their addresses to Parliament, to the English people, to Canada, and to the colonies, and a declaration of rights as a postscript, that they had satisfied every reasonable man that the English were wrong and the Americans right. But now winter and spring had passed, and the unexpected had happened: the king would not even receive their petition. Parliament would not retreat a single inch.

The people of England and the Canadians paid no attention to their address. Concord and Lexington had been fought. The British commander-in-chief and his troops were hardly safe in Boston. All New England was in arms. On the very day Congress met, the Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen, surprised and captured Fort Ticonderoga with all its military stores, and next day captured Crown Point. Thus, instead of gracious words from George III. and the repeal of the intolerable acts, Congress, a good deal to its surprise, and much to the regret of many of its members, found a civil war actually begun. It saw Massachusetts with an independent government, and New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut quite ready to follow its example. Messages were arriving from the Massachusetts Assembly with fateful requests.

What would Congress do? Would it ignore the state of the country and again humbly petition the king, or would it take charge of affairs, assume leadership, and proceed to direct the public business? No questions could be graver than these. Yet Congress was a peculiar body. Its members were elected by the assemblies and not directly by the people. It was created by the assemblies. It had no laws or constitution to guide it. Whatever it did must be approved or disapproved in the end by the assemblies. But its members knew the assemblies and believed that they would support them. More than this, the course of affairs in Massachusetts and the tone of public opinion in other colonies confirmed Congress in the belief that the whole country would support its actions. Because of the power of this public sentiment, Congress decided to act as the