which was one of the fullest in the besieging army, became a model for its discipline.

By the twenty-third there were already about two thousand men from the interior parts of New Hampshire, desirous "not to return before the work was done." Many who remained near the upper Connecticut threw up the civil and military commissions held from the king; for, said they, "the king has forfeited his crown, and all commissions from him are therefore vacated."

In Connecticut, Trumbull, the governor, sent out writs to convene the legislature of the colony at Hartford on the Wednesday following the battle. On the morning of the twentieth, Israel Putnam of Pomfret, in leather frock and apron, was assisting hired men to build a stone wall on his farm, when he heard the cry from Lexington. He set off instantly to rouse the militia officers of the nearest towns. On his return, he found hundreds who had mustered and chosen him their leader. Issuing orders for them to follow, he pushed forward without changing the check shirt he had worn in the field, and reached Cambridge at sunrise the next morning, having ridden the same horse a hundred miles within eighteen hours. He brought to the service of his country courage, and a heart than which none throbbed more honestly or warmly for American freedom.

From Wethersfield a hundred young volunteers marched for Boston on the twenty-second, well armed and in high spirits. From the neighboring towns men of the largest estates, and the most esteemed for character, seized their firelocks and followed. By the second night, several thousands from the colony were on their way. Some had fixed on their standards and drums the colony arms, and round it, in letters of gold, the motto, that God who brought over their fathers would sustain the sons.

In New Haven, Benedict Arnold, captain of a volunteer company, agreed with his men to march the next morning for Boston. "Wait for proper orders," was the advice of Wooster; but their self-willed commander, brooking no delay, extorted supplies from the committee of the town, and on the twentyninth reached the American head-quarters with his company.

There was scarcely a town in Connecticut that was not represented among the besiegers.

The nearest towns of Rhode Island were in motion before the British had finished their retreat. At the instance of Hopkins and others, Wanton, the governor, though himself inclined to the royal side, called an assembly. Its members were all of one mind; and when Wanton, with several of the council, showed hesitation, they resolved, if necessary, to proceed alone. The council yielded, and confirmed the unanimous vote of the assembly for raising an army of fifteen hundred men. "The colony of Rhode Island," wrote Bowler, the speaker, to the Massachusetts congress, "is firm and determined; and a greater unanimity in the lower house scarce ever prevailed." Companies of the men of Rhode Island preceded this early message.

Massachusetts gained confidence now that New Hampshire and Connecticut and Rhode Island had come to its support. The New England volunteers were men of substantial worth, of whom almost every one represented a household. The members of the several companies were well known to each other, as to brothers, kindred, and townsmen; known to the old men who remained at home, and to all the matrons and maidens. They were sure to be remembered weekly in the exercises of the congregations; and morning and evening, in the usual family devotions, they were commended with fervent piety to the protection of heaven. Every young soldier lived and acted, as it were, under the keen observation of all those among whom he had grown up, and was sure that his conduct would occupy the tongues of his village companions while he was in the field, and be remembered his life long. The camp of liberty was a gathering in arms of schoolmates, neighbors, and friends; and Boston was beleaguered round from Roxbury to Chelsea by an unorganized, fluctuating mass of men, each with his own musket and his little store of cartridges, and such provisions as he brought with him, or as were sent after him, or could be contributed by the people round about.

The British officers, from their own weakness and from fear of the American marksmen, dared not order a sally. Their confinement was the more irksome, for it came of a sudden before

their magazines had been filled, and was followed by "an immediate stop to supplies of every kind." They had scoffed at the Americans as cowards who would run at their sight; and they had saved themselves only by the rapidity of their retreat. Re-enforcements and three new general officers were already on the Atlantic, and these would have to be received into straitened quarters by a defeated army. England, and even the ministers, would condemn the inglorious expedition which had brought about so sudden and so fatal a change. The officers shrunk from avowing their own acts; and, though no one would say that he had seen the Americans fire first, they tried to make it pass current that a handful of countrymen at Lexington had begun a fight with a detachment that outnumbered them as twelve to one.

The Americans, slowly provoked and long-suffering, treated the prisoners with tenderness, nursed the wounded as though they had been kinsmen, and invited Gage to send out British surgeons for their relief. Yet Percy could degrade himself so far as to calumniate the country people who gave him chase, and officially lend himself to the falsehood that "the rebels scalped and cut off the ears of some of the wounded who fell into their hands." He should have respected the name which he bore; and he should have respected the men before whom he fled.

To the inhabitants of Boston, Gage made the offer that, if they would promise not to join in an attack on his troops, and would lodge their arms with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall, the men, women, and children, with all their effects, should have safe conduct out of the town. The proposal was accepted. For several days the road to Roxbury was thronged with wagons and trains of exiles; but they were not allowed to take with them any food. The provincial congress devised measures for distributing five thousand of the poor among the villages of the interior. But the loyalists of Boston, of whom two hundred entered the king's service, soon prevailed with Gage to violate his word.

On the twenty-seventh of April the assembly of Connecticut read the vote of Massachusetts, that New England should bring into the field thirty thousand men. On the next day

they despatched two envoys to Gage to plead for peace, yet to assure him of their most firm resolution to defend their rights to the last extremity and to aid their brethren. The mission was fruitless; but in the mean time the populous colony made ready to treat with sword in hand.

In the American camp there was no unity. At Roxbury, John Thomas had commanded, and received encomiums for the good order which prevailed in his division; but Ward, the general who was at Cambridge, had the virtues of a magistrate rather than of a soldier. He was old, unused to a separate military command, too infirm to appear on horseback, and wanting in "quick decision and activity." The troops from other colonies, under leaders of their own, did not as yet form an integral part of one "grand American" army.

Of the Massachusetts volunteers, the number varied from day to day. Many of them returned home almost as soon as they came, for want of provisions or clothes, or from the pressure of affairs which they had left so suddenly. Of those who enlisted in the Massachusetts army, a very large number absented themselves on furlough. Ward feared that he should be left alone. Of artillery, there were no more than six threepounders and one six-pounder in Cambridge, besides sixteen pieces in Watertown, of different sizes, some of them good for nothing. There was no ammunition but for the six threepounders, and very little even for them. After scouring five principal counties, the whole amount of powder that could be found was less than sixty-eight barrels. The other colonies were equally unprovided. In the colony of New York there were not more than one hundred pounds of powder for sale.

Notwithstanding these obstacles, the scheming genius of New England was in the highest activity. While the expedition against Ticonderoga was sanctioned by a commission granted to Benedict Arnold, the Massachusetts congress, which was then sitting in Watertown, received from Jonathan Brewer, of Waltham, a proposition to march with a body of five hundred volunteers to Quebec, by way of the rivers Kennebec and Chaudière, in order to draw the governor of Canada, with his troops, into that quarter, and thus secure the northern and western frontiers from inroads. He was sure it "could be

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executed with all the facility imaginable." The design did not pass out of mind.

Next to the want of military stores, the poverty of the Massachusetts treasury, which during the winter had received scarcely five thousand pounds of currency to meet all expenses, gave just cause for apprehension. For more than twenty years she had endeavored by legislative penalties to exclude the paper currency of other provinces, and had issued no notes of her own but certificates of debt, in advance of the revenue. These certificates were for sums of six pounds and upward, bearing interest; they had no forced circulation, and were kept at par by the high condition of her credit and her general prosperity. The co-operation of neighboring colonies compelled her congress, in May, to legalize the paper money of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and to issue her own treasury notes. Of her first emission of one hundred thousand pounds, there were no notes under four pounds, and they all preserved the accustomed form of certificates of public debt, of which the use was not made compulsory. But, in less than three weeks, an emission of twenty-six thousand pounds was authorized for the advance pay to the soldiers; and these "soldiers' notes," of which the smallest was for one dollar, were made a legal tender "in all payments without discount or abatement." Rhode Island put out twenty thousand pounds in bills, of which the largest was for forty shillings, the smallest for sixpence.

On the fifth of May the provincial congress resolved "that General Gage had disqualified himself for serving the colony in any capacity; that no obedience was in future due to him; that he ought to be guarded against as an unnatural and inveterate enemy." To take up the powers of civil government was an instant necessity; but the patriots of the colony checked their eagerness to return to their ancient custom of annually electing their chief magistrate, and resolved to await "explicit advice" from the continental congress.

New Hampshire agreed to raise two thousand men, of whom perhaps twelve hundred reached the camp. Folsom was their brigadier, but John Stark was the most trusty officer. Connecticut offered six thousand men; and about twenty-three