repeal, with the declaration of the right to tax America; the landing of troops in Boston, beneath the batteries of fourteen vessels of war, lying broadside to the town, with springs on their cables, their guns loaded, and matches smoking; the repeated insults, and finally the massacre of the fifth of March, resulting from this military occupation; and the Boston Port Bill, by which the final catastrophe was hurried on. Nor can we dwell upon the appointment at Salem, on the seventeenth of June, 1774, of the delegates to the Continental Congress; of the formation at Salem, in the following October, of the Provincial Congress; of the decided measures which were taken by that noble assembly at Concord and at Cambridge; of the preparations they made against the worst, by organizing the militia, providing stores, and appointing commanders. All this was done by the close of the year 1774.

At length the memorable year of 1775 arrived. The plunder of the provincial stores at Medford, and the attempt to seize the cannon at Salem, had produced a highly irritated state of the public mind. The friends of our rights in England made a vigorous effort, in the month of March, to avert the crisis that impended. On the twenty-second of that month, Mr Burke spoke the last word of conciliation and peace. He spoke it in a tone and with a power befitting the occasion and the man; but he spoke it to the north-west wind. Eight days after, at that season of the year when the prudent New England husbandman repairs the enclosures of his field, as the first preparation for the labors of the season, General Gage sent out a party of eleven hundred men to overthrow the stone walls in the neighborhood of Boston, by way of opening and levelling the arena for the approaching contest. With the same view, in the months of February and March, his officers were sent in disguise to traverse the country, to make military surveys of its roads and passes, to obtain accounts of the stores at Concord and Worcester, and to communicate with the disaffected. These disguised officers were here at Concord, on the twentieth of March, and received treacherous or unsuspecting information of the

places where the provincial stores were concealed. I mention this only to show that our fathers, in their arduous contest, had every thing to contend with; secret as well as open foes; treachery as well as power. But I need not add that they possessed not only the courage and the resolution, but the vigilance and care demanded for the crisis. In November, 1774, a society had been formed at Boston, principally of the mechanics of that town, a class of men to whom the revolutionary cause was as deeply indebted as to any other in America, for the express purpose of closely watching the movements of the open and secret foes of the country. In the long and dreary nights of a New England winter, they patrolled the streets; and not a movement which concerned the cause escaped their vigilance. Not a measure of the royal governor but was in their possession, in a few hours after it was communicated to his confidential officers. was manly patriotism alone aroused in the cause.. daughters of America were inspired with the same noble temper that animated their fathers, their husbands, and their brothers. The historian tells us, that the first intimation communicated to the patriots, of the impending commencement of hostilities, came from a "daughter of liberty, unequally yoked with an enemy of her country's rights.'

Nor The

With all these warnings, and all the vigilance with which the royal troops were watched, none supposed the fatal moment was so near. On Saturday, April fifteenth, the Provincial Congress adjourned their session in this place, to meet on the tenth of May. On the very same day, Saturday, the fifteenth of April, the companies of grenadiers and light infantry in Boston - the flower not merely of the royal garrison, but of the British army-were taken off their regular duty, under the pretence of learning a new military exercise. At the midnight following, the boats of the transport ships, which had been previously repaired, were launched, and moored for safety under the sterns of the vessels of war. Not one of these movements least of all, that which took place under cover of midnight was unobserved by the vigilant "sons of liberty." The next morning, Colonel Paul

Revere, a very active member of the patriotic society just mentioned, was despatched, by Dr Joseph Warren, to John Hancock and Samuel Adams, then at Lexington, whose seizure was threatened by the royal governor. So early did these distinguished patriots receive the intelligence, that preparations for an important movement were on foot ! Justly considering, however, that some object besides the seizure of two individuals was probably designed in the movement of so large a force, they advised the Committee of Safety to order the distribution, into the neighboring towns, of the stores collected at Concord. Colonel Revere, on his return from this excursion on the sixteenth of April, in order to guard against any accident which might make it impossible at the last moment to give information from Boston of the departure of the troops, concerted with his friends in Charlestown, that, whenever the British forces should embark in their boats to cross into the country, two lanterns should be lighted in the North Church steeple; and one, should they march out by Roxbury.

Thus was the meditated blow prepared for, before it was struck; and the caution of the British commander was rendered unavailing, who, on Tuesday, the eighteenth of April, despatched ten sergeants, with orders to dine at Cambridge, and at nightfall to scatter themselves on the roads from Boston to Concord, to prevent notice of the projected expedition from reaching the country.

At length the momentous hour arrives, as big with consequences to man as any that ever struck in his history. The darkness of night still shrouds the rash and fatal measures with which the liberty of America is hastened on. The highest officers in the British army are as yet ignorant of the nature of the meditated blow. At nine o'clock in the evening of the eighteenth, Lord Percy is sent for by the governor, to receive the information of the design. On his way back to his lodgings, he finds the very movements, which had been just communicated to him in confidence by the commanderin-chief, a subject of conversation in a group of patriotic citizens in the street. He hastens back to General Gage, 11

VOL. I.

instantly given

But the order is president of the

and tells him he is betrayed; and orders are to permit no American to leave the town. five minutes too late. Dr Warren, the Committee of Safety, though he had returned only at nightfall from the meeting at West Cambridge, was already in possession of the whole design; and instantly despatched two messengers to Lexington - Mr William Dawes, who went out through Roxbury, and Colonel Paul Revere, who crossed to Charlestown. The latter received this summons at ten o'clock, on Tuesday night; the lanterns were immediately lighted up in North Church steeple; and in this way, before a man of the soldiery was embarked in the boats, the news of their coming was travelling with the rapidity of light through the country.

*

Having accomplished this precautionary measure, Colonel Revere repaired to the north part of the town, where he constantly kept a boat in readiness, in which he was now rowed by two friends across the river, a little to the eastward of the spot where the Somerset man-of-war was moored, between Boston and Charlestown. It was then young flood, the ship was swinging round upon the tide, and the moon was just rising upon this midnight scene of solemn anticipation. Colonel Revere was safely landed in Charlestown, where his signals had already been observed. He procured a horse from Deacon Larkin, for the further pursuit of his errand. That he would not be permitted to accomplish it, without risk of interruption, was evident from the information which he received from Mr Richard Devens, a member of the Committee of Safety, that on his way from West Cambridge, where the committee sat, he had encountered several British officers, well armed and mounted, going up the road.

At eleven o'clock, Colonel Revere started upon his errand. After passing Charlestown Neck, he saw two men on horseback under a tree. On approaching them, he perceived them by the light of the moon to be British officers. One of them

* See note A.

immediately tried to intercept, and the other to seize him. The colonel instantly turned back towards Charlestown, and then struck into the Medford road. The officer in pursuit of him, endeavoring to cut him off, plunged into a clay pond, in the corner between the two roads, and the colonel escaped. He pursued his way to Medford, awoke the captain of the minute men there, and giving the alarm at every house on the road, passed on through West Cambridge to Lexington. There he delivered his message to Messrs Hancock and Adams, and there also he was shortly after joined by Mr William Dawes, the messenger who had gone out by Roxbury.

After staying a short time at Lexington, Messrs Revere and Dawes, at about one o'clock of the morning of the nineteenth of April, started for Concord, to communicate the intelligence there. They were soon overtaken on the way by Dr Samuel Prescott, of Concord, who joined them in giving the alarm at every house on the road. About half way from Lexington to Concord, while Dawes and Prescott were alarming a house on the road, Revere, being about one hundred rods in advance, saw two officers in the road of the same appearance as those he had escaped in Charlestown. He called to his companions to assist him in forcing his way through them, but was instantly surrounded by four officers. These officers had previously thrown down the wall of an adjoining field, and the Americans, prevented from forcing their way onward, passed into the field. Dr Prescott, although the reins of his horse had been cut in the struggle with the officers, succeeded, by leaping a stone wall, in making his escape from the field, and reaching Concord. Revere aimed at a wood, but was there encountered by six more officers, and was, with his companion, made prisoner. The British officers, who had already seized three other Americans, having learned from their prisoners that the whole country was alarmed, thought it best for their own safety to hasten back, taking their prisoners with them. Near Lexington meeting-house, on their return, the British officers heard the militia, who were on parade, firing a volley of guns. Alarmed at this, they compelled Revere to