On the day of Lexington, Greene, who was then a captain, started to share in the conflict; but, being met by tidings of the retreat of the British, he went back to take his seat in the Rhode Island legislature. He served as a commissioner to concert military plans with Connecticut; and, when in May the Rhode Island brigade of fifteen hundred men was enlisted, he was elected its general. None murmured at the advancement, which was due to his ability.

On the twenty-third of April, the day after the dissolution of the provincial congress of New York, the news from Lexington burst upon the city. Though it was Sunday, the inhabitants speedily unloaded two sloops which lay at the wharfs, laden with flour and supplies for the British at Boston, of the value of eighty thousand pounds. The next day Dartmouth's despatches arrived with Lord North's conciliatory resolve, and with lavish promises of favor. But the royal government lay hopelessly prostrate. Isaac Sears concerted with John Lamb to stop all vessels going to Quebec, Newfoundland, Georgia, or Boston, where British authority was still supreme. The people shut up the custom-house, and the merchants whose vessels were cleared out dared not let them sail.

In the following days the military stores of the city of New York were secured, and volunteer companies paraded in the streets. Small cannon were hauled from the city to King's Bridge; churchmen as well as Presbyterians took up arms. As the old committee of fifty-one lagged behind the zeal of the multitude, on the first of May the people, at the usual places of election, chose for the city and county a new general committee of one hundred, who "resolved in the most explicit manner to stand or fall with the liberty of the continent." All parts of the colony were summoned to send delegates to a provincial convention, to which the city and county of New York deputed one-and-twenty as their representatives.

Eighty-three members of the new general committee met as soon as they were chosen; and, on the motion of John Morin Scott, seconded by Alexander Macdougall, an association was set on foot, engaging, by all the ties of religion, honor, and love of country, to submit to committees and to congress, to withhold supplies from British troops, and at the risk of lives and

fortunes to repel every attempt at enforcing taxation by parliament. Fourteen members of the New York assembly, most of them supporters of the ministry, entreated General Gage to cease hostilities till fresh orders could be received from the king, and especially to land no military force in New York. The royal council despatched two agents to represent to the ministry how severely the rash conduct of the army at Boston had injured the friends of the king, while the New York committee thus addressed the lord mayor and corporation of London, and through them the people of Great Britain:

"Born to the bright inheritance of English freedom, the inhabitants of this extensive continent can never submit to slavery. The disposal of their own property with perfect spontaneity is their indefeasible birthright. This they are determined to defend with their blood, and transfer to their posterity. The present machinations of arbitrary power, if unremittedly pursued, will, by a fatal necessity, terminate in a dissolution of the empire. This country will not be deceived by measures conciliatory in appearance. We cheerfully submit to a regulation of commerce by the legislature of the parent state, excluding in its nature every idea of taxation. When our unexampled grievances are redressed, our prince will find his American subjects testifying, by as ample aids as their circumstances will permit, the most unshaken fidelity to their sovereign. America is grown so irritable by oppression that the least shock in any part is, by the most powerful sympathetic affection, instantaneously felt through the whole continent. This city is as one man in the cause of liberty. We speak the real sentiments of the confederated colonies, from Nova Scotia to Georgia, when we declare that all the horrors of civil war will never compel America to submit to taxation by authority of parliament." The letter was signed by the chairman and eighty-eight others of the committee, of whom the first was John Jay.

On the sixth the delegates to the continental congress from Massachusetts and Connecticut drew near. Along roads which were crowded as if the whole city had come out to meet them, they made their entry amid loud acclamations, the ringing of bells and every demonstration of sympathy.

VOL. IV.-12

On Monday the delegation from Massachusetts, with a part of that of New York, were escorted across the IIudson river by two hundred of the militia under arms, and three hundred citizens. Triumphal honors awaited them at Newark and Elizabethtown. The governor of New Jersey could not conceal his chagrin that Gage "had risked commencing hostilities." On the second of May the New Jersey committee of correspondence called a provincial congress for the twentythird at Trenton. To anticipate its influence, the governor convened the regular assembly eight days earlier at Burlington, and laid before them the project of Lord North. The assembly could see in the proposition no avenue to reconciliation, and declared their intention to "abide by the united voice of the continental congress."

Such, too, was the spirit of Pennsylvania. "Let us not have it said of Philadelphia that she passed noble resolutions and neglected them," were the words of Mifflin, youngest of the orators who on the twenty-fifth of April addressed the town-meeting called in that city on receiving the news from Lexington. Thousands were present, and agreed "to associate for the purpose of defending with arms their lives, their property, and liberty." Thomas Paine from that day "rejected the sullen Pharaoh of the British throne forever." Each township in Berks county resolved to raise and discipline its company. The inhabitants of Westmoreland organized themselves into regiments. Reading formed a company of men who wore crape for a cockade, in token of sorrow for the slaughter of their brethren. In Philadelphia, thirty companies, with fifty to one hundred in each, daily practiced the manual exercise of the musket. One of them was raised from the Quakers; another, known as "the Old Men's," consisted of about fourscore German emigrants who had served in Europe.

The Pennsylvania assembly, which met on the first day of May, rejecting the overtures of the governor, "could form no prospect of lasting advantages for Pennsylvania but from a communication of rights and property with the other colonies." At a banquet the toast was given: "A speedy and happy issue to the present disturbances;" to which Charles Lee, over

acting his part, responded: "A speedy and general insurrection in Great Britain and Ireland." On the fifth, Franklin arrived after a voyage over the smoothest seas, and the next morning was unanimously elected a deputy to the congress; but the delegation, to which Thomas Willing and James Wilson were added, were still instructed to combine, if possible, a redress of grievances with "union and harmony between Great Britain and the colonies." Wilson was one of the first in arms, and was elected captain of a company of volunteers.

In Maryland, at the request of the colonels of militia, Eden, at Annapolis, gave up the arms and ammunition of the province to the freemen of the county. Pleased with his concession, the provincial convention distinguished itself by its moderation; and its delegates to congress determined to labor for a reconciliation.

In Virginia, on the second of May, at the cry from Lexington, the independent company of Hanover and its county committee were called together by Patrick Henry. The soldiers, most of them young men, elected him their chief, and marched for Williamsburg, on the way greatly increasing in numbers.

Alarmed by the "insurrections," Dunmore convened the council, and in a proclamation of the third pretended that he had removed the ammunition, lest it should be seized by slaves. Message after message could not arrest the march or change the purpose of Henry. Lady Dunmore retired to the Fowey man-of-war. At sunrise on the fourth the governor's messenger met Henry at New Kent, and, as a compensation for the gunpowder taken out of the magazine, paid him three hundred and thirty pounds, for which he was to account to the convention of Virginia. The sum was found to be more than the value of the powder, and the next Virginia convention directed the excess to be paid back.

Two days after the return of the volunteers Dunmore issued a proclamation against a "certain Patrick Henry" and his "deluded followers;" and secretly denounced him to the ministry as "a man of desperate circumstances, who had been very active in exciting a spirit of revolt among the people for many years past." But Louisa county, on the eighth, sent the

insurgents its thanks; on the ninth, Spottsylvania approved their prudent, firm, and spirited conduct; and Orange county, in a letter signed among others by the young and studious James Madison, a recent graduate of Princeton college, declared: "The blow struck in Massachusetts is a hostile attack on this and every other colony, and a sufficient warrant to use reprisal."

On the eleventh, Patrick Henry set off for the continental congress. Amid salutes and huzzas, a volunteer guard accompanied him to the Maryland side of the Potomac, where, as they said farewell, they invoked God's blessing on the champion of their "dearest rights and liberties."

In twelve or thirteen days the message from Lexington was borne to Newbern, in North Carolina, where it "wrought a great change." The governor, in his panic, ordered the cannon in the town to be dismounted; and, after a remonstrance made in the name of the inhabitants by Abner Nash, "the oracle of their committee and a principal promoter of sedition," he shipped his wife to New York, and fled to Fort Johnston, where a sloop-of-war had its station.

In South Carolina, Charles Pinckney, on learning the inflexibility of parliament using power intrusted to him by the provincial congress, appointed a committee of five to place the colony in a state of defence; on the twenty-first of April, the very night after their organization, men of Charleston, without disguise, under their direction, seized all the powder in the public magazines, and removed eight hundred stand of arms and other military stores from the royal arsenal. The tidings from Lexington induced the general committee to hasten the meeting of the provincial congress, whose members, on the second of June, Henry Laurens being their president, associated themselves for defence against every foe; "ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes to secure her freedom and safety." They resolved to raise two regiments of infantry and a regiment of rangers. To this end, one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling were issued in bills of credit, which for a year and a half did not fall in value. "We are ready to give freely half or the whole of our estates for the security of our liberties," was the universal language.