FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS.

129

were sworn to maintain. Awed by a feeling of the tremendous results which depended upon their conduct, a long and deep silence fell on all the members of the Assembly. It was broken by Patrick Henry," of Virginia, the greatest orator of his day, and perhaps the greatest that America has yet produced,-who recited the wrongs of the colonies with magnificent eloquence, and yet with strict adherence to the truth.

231. A petition to the king and separate addresses to the people of Great Britain and of Canada were voted. While expressing unshaken loyalty and affection to the king, Congress protested against the keeping of armies in America without the

Patrick Henry.

consent of the people, and resolved to hold no commercial intercourse with England until a different policy should be adopted.

Companies of "minute-men" were now formed and drilled in all the towns. In the midst of their preparations came news that the British were cannonading Boston. In two days 30,000 volunteers were on the march for that city.

232. The Battle of Lexington.-On the evening of April 18th, 1775, General Gage, commanding at Boston, sent 800 men to destroy some military stores which the Americans had collected at Concord. The movement was signaled by a beacon-light hung in the North Church tower, and all night long the farmers were gathering to oppose it. At dawn the British, arriving at Lexington,

U.S. H.-9.

found a company of minute-men drawn up to receive them, and here the first blood was shed in the War of American Independence.

233. The British pressed on and destroyed the stores at Concord; but by this time the whole country' was under arms, and on their return they were so hard pressed by the colonists that their retreat became a flight, and all would, perhaps, have been killed or captured had not fresh troops with cannon come out from Boston to aid and protect them. Before long General Gage was besieged in Boston by 20,000 men. 10

Point out on Map No. 4, Narragansett Bay. Providence. Boston. Salem. Concord. Lexington.

Read Wirt's "Life of Patrick Henry;" Parton's "Life of Jefferson;" Jesse's "Life of George III.; " Greene's "Historical View of the American Revolution;" Lossing's "Field-Book of the American Revolution."

NOTES.

1. This was Choiseul. The other French nobleman was Vergennes, the French embassador to Constantinople, a man noted for his calm, equable temperament.

2. William Pitt (b. 1708, d. 1778) first Earl of Chatham, was America's warmest champion in England during the troubles that led to the Revolution. He had the reputation of being "one of the most powerful, vigilant, and patriotic opponents in Parliament of unconstitutional and unwise measures." He opposed the stamp act of 1766, and from 1755 to 1757 his voice rang warning and prophecy to the British ministry in their oppression of the colonies. In 1778 he rose from a sick-bed to speak in the House of Lords against a motion to acknowledge the independence of America. At the close of his speech, he fell in an apoplectic fit, from which he never recovered.

3. This affair is known as the "Boston Massacre:" it grew out of a fight between a soldier and a laborer in a rope-walk. The soldier being whipped brought other soldiers, who were again and again beaten off by the laborers. The following night, March 5th, 1770, the soldiers, infuriated by talking the affair over amongst themselves, rushed about the streets insulting and striking unoffending citizens. An angry mob gathered, and six soldiers under an officer charged through the crowd. A soldier was struck, and the order to fire was given. Three persons were killed outright, and eight were wounded, two of them mortally. "Of all the eleven, not more than one had had any share in the disturbance." This shedding of innocent blood caused the wildest excitement, not only in Boston but throughout the country, and Governor Hutchinson was compelled to remove the soldiers from their quarters in the city.

4. The most prominent among these settlers was James Robertson, who two years before this time had settled in Tennessee. Bancroft says of him: "This year [1770], James Robertson, from the home of the Regulators

in North Carolina, a poor and unlettered forester, of humble birth but of inborn nobleness of soul, cultivated maize on the Wautauga. The frame of the heroic planter was robust, his constitution hardy; he trod the soil as if he were its rightful lord. Intrepid, loving virtue for its own sake, and emulous of honorable fame, he had self-possession, quickness of discernment, and a sound judgment. Wherever he was thrown, on whatever he was engaged, he knew how to use all the means within his reach, whether small or great, to their proper end, seeing at a glance their latent capacities, and devising the simplest and surest way to bring them forth; and so he became the greatest benefactor of the early settlers of Tennessee."

5. Faneuil Hall was built in 1740, and was a gift to the town of Boston from Peter Faneuil. The latter was a Boston merchant, born at New Rochelle, New York, of a French Huguenot family. The lower floor of the hall was a market-house; above that was a town-hall, with other rooms attached. This hall was a great place of rendezvous for the patriots at the outbreak of the Revolution, and came to be known as The Cradle of Liberty."

6. Patrick Henry (b. 1736, d. 1799) was a man of limited education, and in early years displayed few indications of his future greatness. He was exceedingly fond of fishing and hunting, and of social pleasures, all of which were allowed to interfere with his duties. He married at eighteen, failed twice in business, once in an attempt at farming, and finally, when twenty-four years of age, entered the profession of law after six weeks study of the subject. Of course he was ignorant of the simplest details of the profession he had undertaken, but his wonderful gift of oratory stood him in good stead, and after the first trial in which he appeared, at the age of twenty-seven, he never lacked for business, although he was never considered remarkable as a lawyer.

Henry was a man of high moral courage, and the instinctive champion of the wronged and the oppressed. The opening scenes of the Revolution fired his patriotic soul; evidently the time and purpose for which he had been born had arrived. His speech before the Virginia House of Burgesses (2221) electrified the country, and gained him the reputation, at the age of twenty-nine, of being "the greatest orator and political thinker of a land abounding with public speakers and statesmen." From this time forth he was prominent in the political conventions and congresses of the colonies, and, in 1776, he was elected the first republican governor of the state of Virginia. He held this office until 1779, when, being no longer eligible, he returned to the legislature. At the close of the war he was again chosen governor, and served until 1786, when he resigned. In 1794 he retired from the law, and removed to his estate. After this he declined several honorable positions in public life, but was finally persuaded by Washington and others to become a candidate for the Virginia senate, in 1799, in order to oppose certain measures there. He was easily elected, but death interposed before he could take his seat.

7. The minute-men were so called from the terms of their enlistment. They were to serve whenever called upon, and at a moment's notice. 8. This was the occasion of "Paul Revere's Ride" made celebrated by Longfellow's poem. As soon as Warren, an American patriot in Boston, discovered Gage's plan, he dispatched William Dawes through Roxbury, and Revere by way of Charlestown, to spread the alarm. Revere had the beacon-lights hung in the North Church tower, as stated, and then with muffled oars rowed over to Charlestown only five minutes before the sentinels received orders to allow no one to pass. At Charlestown Neck he was stopped by two British officers, but escaped them through the speed of his horse, and proceeded on his way to Lexington and Concord, rousing each household as he passed.

"A hurry of hoofs in a village street,

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of a nation was riding that night;

And the spark struck out by that steed, in its flight,

Kindled the land into flame with its heat."

9. "The Americans who joined in the pursuit, which began at the old North Bridge in Concord, came from Acton, Bedford, Billerica, Brookline, Beverly, Concord, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Cambridge, Charlestown, Danvers, Dedham, Dorchester, Framingham, Lexington, Lincoln, Lynn, Littleton, Medford, Milton, Needham, Newton, Pepperell, Roxbury, Reading, Sudbury, Stowe, Salem, Woburn, Watertown, and Westford. Thirty-one towns! Such is the distinguished roll of honor represented in the opening fight of the Revolution."-Austin's "History of Massachusetts."

Fatal collisions between the colonists and the British had indeed occurred in the streets of New York and Boston, and in North Carolina (22 222, 223). But these had more or less of a local character, while the armed resistance to a regular British army at Lexington was distinctly a battle for American independence.

10. General Gage was not only military commandant at Boston, but civil governor of Massachusetts. His instructions from the king required him to seize and condignly punish Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Joseph Warren, and other leading patriots, "but he stood in such dread of them that he never so much as attempted their arrest." "He had promised the king that with four regiments he would play the lion," but in truth his arrogance and presumption far surpassed his practical abilities, and "he inspired neither confidence nor fear." It is impossible to say how different might have been the result to the colonies if the king had been better served. America has reason to be thankful that her courage and resources were underrated at this critical time, when even her own best men little understood the gravity of the conflict that was impending.