CHAPTER IV.

THE FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1774.

THE province kept powder for its militia at Quarry Hill on a point of land between Medford and Cambridge. The towns had been removing their stock, each according to its proportions. On the first day of September, a corps of two hundred and sixty men, embarking from Boston an hour before sunrise, seized all the powder that remained, amounting to two hundred and fifty half-barrels, and transferred it to the castle. A detachment from the corps brought off two field-pieces from Cambridge.

This seizure, secretly planned and suddenly executed, set the country in a flame. The next morning, thousands of freeholders, leaving their guns in the rear, advanced to Cambridge. Warren, accompanied by as many of the Boston committee as came in his way, crossed to Charlestown, and with the committee of that town hastened to meet the committee of Cambridge. On their arrival, they found Danforth, a county judge and mandamus councillor, addressing a very large gathering of people who stood in the open air round the court-house steps; and such order prevailed that the low voice of the feeble old man was heard by the whole multitude. He finished by giving a written promise never "to be any way concerned as a member of the council." Lee, in like manner, confirmed his former resignation. The turn of Phipps, the high sheriff, came next, and he signed an agreement not to execute any precept under the new act of parliament.

Oliver, the lieutenant-governor, who resided at Cambridge,

repaired to Boston in the "greatest distress." "It is not a mad mob," said he to the British admiral; and he warned Gage that "sending out troops would be attended with the most fatal consequences." Had they marched only five miles into the country, Warren was of opinion that not a man of them would have been saved. Gage remained inactive, writing as his justification to the ministry: "The people are numerous, waked up to a fury, and not a Boston rabble, but the freeholders of the county. A check would be fatal, and the first stroke will decide a great deal. We should therefore be strong before anything decisive is urged."

Oliver returned to Cambridge with the assurance that no troops would appear, and to beg the committee's leave to retain his places. But in the afternoon a great throng surrounded his house and demanded his resignation. "My honor is my first consideration," said Oliver; "the next, my life. Put me to death or destroy my property, but I will not submit." Yet, on the first appearance of danger, he yielded to all their demands.

For three hours, beneath the scorching sun of the hottest day of that summer, the people kept the ranks in which they were marshalled, and their "patience, temperance, and fortitude" were remarked upon as the chief elements "of a good soldier." They allowed the force of the suggestion that the governor, in removing the stores of the province, had broken no law; and they voted unanimously their detestation of mobs and riots, and of the destruction of private property.

Their conduct showed how formidable they might prove in the field, but rumors reached England of their cowardice and defeat. "What a melancholy consideration for all thinking men," said Fox to Burke, "that no people, animated by what principle soever, can make a successful resistance to military discipline! I was never so affected with any public event, either in history or in life. I am dejected at heart from the sad figure that men make against soldiers." At that time the British army in Boston feared an invasion; the guards were doubled, cannon were placed at the entrance of the town, and the troops lay on their arms through the night.

The militia of Worcester county, hearing of the removal

of the powder belonging to the province, rose in a mass and began the march to Boston. On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning the volunteers from Hampshire county advanced eastward as far as Shrewsbury. It was thought that twenty thousand were in motion. The rumor of the seizure reached Israel Putnam in Connecticut, with the addition that the British troops and men-of-war had fired on the people and killed six men at the first shot. Despatching the report to Norwich, New London, New Haven, New York, and so to Philadelphia, he summoned the neighboring militia to take up arms. Thousands started at his call, but these, like the volunteers of Massachusetts, were stopped by expresses from the patriots of Boston, that at present nothing was to be attempted. In return, assurances were given of most effectual support whenever it might be required. "But for this counter intelligence," wrote Putnam and his associates on the committee of Pomfret, "we should have had forty thousand men, well equipped and ready to march this morning. Send a written express to the foreman of this committee when you have occasion for our martial assistance; we shall attend your summons, and shall glory in having a share in the honor of ridding our country of the yoke of tyranny, which our forefathers have not borne, neither will we."

This rising was followed by many advantages. Every man was led to supply deficiencies in his equipments; the people gained confidence in one another, and a method was concerted for calling them into service. Outside of Boston, the king's rule was at an end. The wealthy royalists, who entertained no doubt that all resistance would soon be crushed, were silent from fear, or fled to Boston as their "only asylum."

Gage wrote home that, "to reduce New England, a very respectable force should take the field." He had five regiments at Boston, one at the castle, and another at Salem; two more he summoned hastily from Quebec; he sent transports to bring another from New York; he still required re-enforcements from England; and resolving to employ "irregulars, of one sort or other, in America," he asked of Carleton, who was just then expected to arrive from England at Quebec, "what measures would be most efficacious to raise a body of Canadians

and Indians to form a junction with the king's forces." The threat to employ the savages against the colonists had been thrown out at the time of Tryon's march against the regulators of North Carolina, and may be traced back to the discussions in the time of Shirley on remedies for the weakness of British power. The commission to Carleton, as governor of the province of Quebec under the act of parliament, conveyed authority to arm and employ not the Canadians only, but "all persons whatsoever," including the Indian tribes from the coast of Labrador to the Ohio, and to march them against rebels "into any one of the plantations in America."

There were no English precedents for the practice. During the French war, Britain had formed connections with the Indian tribes, through whose territory lay the march of the hostile armies, and enrolled and paid warriors of the Six Nations rather to secure neutrality than service. No war-party of savages was ever hounded at Canadian villages. The French, on the other hand, from their superior skill in gaining the love of the red men and their own inferiority in numbers, had increased their strength by Indian alliances. These the British king and his ministers now revived, and, against their own colonies and kindred, loosed from the leash these terrible auxiliaries.

The execution of the sanguinary orders fell naturally into the hands of the most unscrupulous English officers and the most covetous and cruel of the old French partisans. Carleton reprobated the measure, which he was yet constrained to promote. "You know," wrote he of the Indians to Gage, "what sort of people they are." The cannibal Indian was a deadly foe only as he skulked in ambush, or prowled on the frontier, or burned the defenceless farm-house, or struck the laborer in the field, or smote the mother at her household task, or crashed the infant's head against a rock or a tree, or tortured the prisoner on whose flesh he was to gorge. The women and children of England had an ocean between them and the Indian's tomahawk, and had no share in the terror that went before his path, or the sorrows that he left behind. Yet Gage, without much compunction, gave directions to propitiate and inflame the Indians by gifts, and to subsidize their war-parties. His

commands to employ them extended to the utmost bounds of his military authority, so that the councils of the Cherokees and Choctas and Mohawks were named as currently in the correspondence of the secretary of state as the German courts of Hesse and Hanau and Anspach.

By the fifth of September, Gage had ordered ground to be broken for fortifications on the Neck, which formed the only entrance by land into Boston. In the evening the selectmen remonstrated, but with no effect. The next day the convention of Suffolk county, which it had been agreed between Samuel Adams and Warren should send a memorial to the general congress, met in Dedham. Every town and district was represented, and their grand business was referred to a committee, of which Warren was the chairman.

While their report was preparing, the day came for holding the county assize at Worcester. On that morning the main street of the town was occupied on each side by men, arranged under their leaders in companies, six deep, and extending for a quarter of a mile. Through this great multitude the judges and their assistants passed safely to the court-house; but there they were compelled to stay proceedings, and promise not to take part in executing the unconstitutional act of parliament.

An approval of the resistance of the people was embodied in the careful and elaborate report which Warren on the ninth presented to the adjourned Suffolk convention. "On the wisdom and on the exertions of this important day," such were its words, "is suspended the fate of the New World and of unborn millions." The resolutions which followed declared that the sovereign who breaks his compact with his people forfeits their allegiance. By their duty to God, their country, themselves, and posterity, they pledged the county to maintain their civil and religious liberties, and to transmit them entire to future generations. They rejected as unconstitutional the regulating act of parliament and all the officers appointed under its authority. They enjoined the mandamus councillors to resign their places within eleven days. Attributing to the British commander-in-chief hostile intentions, they directed the collectors of taxes to pay over no money to the treasurer whom he recognised. The governor and council had formerly ap