The American Revolution 1x1

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3. From a small spark,

4. kindled in America,

5. a flame has arisen not to be extinguished.

6. Without consuming, it winds its progress

7. from nation to nation,

8. and conquers by a silent operation.

9. Man finds himself changed

10. and discovers that the strength and powers of despotism

11. consist wholly in the fear of resisting it,

12. and that, in order to be free,

13. it is sufficient that he wills it.

14. Thomas Paine.

15. We know our lands are now become more valuable.

16. The White people think we do not know their value,

17. but we are sensible that the land is everlasting.

18. Canasatego, Spokesman for the Six Nations.

19. Long before 13 British colonies

20. made themselves into the United States,

21. the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy—

22. Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Oneida, and Mohawk—

23. had created a union of their own

24. that they called the Haudenosaunee—

25. a democracy that had flourished for centuries.

26. We heartily recommend union.

27. We are a powerful confederacy.

28. And by your observing the same methods

29. our wise forefathers have taken,

30. you will acquire fresh strength and power.

31. Therefore, whatever befalls you,

32. never fall out one with another.

33. In the spring of 1754,

34. the celebrated scientist and writer Benjamin Franklin

35. proposed that the British colonies form a similar union.

36. He printed a cartoon of a snake cut into pieces

37. above the dire warning "Join, or Die."

38. A few weeks later at Albany, New York,

39. Franklin and other delegates from 7 colonies

40. agreed to his Plan of Union—

41. and then went home to try and sell it.

42. But when the plan was presented at the colonial capitals,

43. each of the individual legislatures rejected it

44. because they did not want to give up their autonomy.

45. The plan died, but the idea would survive.

46. 20 years later, "Join, or Die" would be a rallying cry

47. in the most consequential revolution in history.

48. We are in the very midst of a revolution

49. the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable

50. of any in the history of nations.

51. Objects of the most stupendous magnitude,

52. and measures in which the lives and liberties

53. of millions yet unborn are intimately interested,

54. are now before us.

55. John Adams.

56. The American Revolution was not just

57. a clash between Englishmen over Indian land,

58. taxes, and representation,

59. but a bloody struggle that would engage

60. more than 2 dozen nations,

61. European as well as Native American,

62. that also somehow came to be about

63. the noblest aspirations of humankind.

64. It was fought in hundreds of places,

65. from the forests of Quebec

66. to the backcountry of Georgia and the Carolinas;

67. from the rough seas off England, France

68. and in the Caribbean,

69. to the towns and orchards of Indian Country.

70. The fighting would take place on roads

71. and in villages and cities;

72. by woods and fields,

73. and along waterways with old American names:

74. the Susquehanna, the Tennessee, and the Ohio;

75. the Oriskany, the Catawba, and the Chesapeake;

76. and along waters with newer names:

77. the Charles, the Hudson, and the Schuylkill;

78. the Brandywine, the Cooper, and the Ashley;

79. and finally the York.

80. The war grew out of a multitude of grievances

81. lodged against the British Parliament

82. by British subjects

83. living an ocean away in 13

84. otherwise disunited colonies.

85. It was also a savage civil war

86. that pitted brother against brother,

87. neighbor against neighbor, American against American,

88. killing tens of thousands of them.

89. However great the blessings

90. to be derived from a revolution in government,

91. the scenes of anarchy, cruelty, and blood,

92. which usually precede it,

93. and the difficulty of uniting a majority

94. in favor of any system,

95. are sufficient to make every person

96. who has been an eyewitness

97. recoil at the prospect of overturning empires.

98. Abigail Adams.

99. The American Revolution was the first war

100. ever fought proclaiming the unalienable rights

101. of all people.

102. It would change the course of human events.

103. It's our creation myth, our creation story.

104. It tells us who we are, where we came from, uh,

105. what our forebears believed, and, and,

106. and what they were willing to die for.

107. That's the most profound question

108. any people can ask themselves.

109. What the American Revolution gave the United States

110. was an actual idea of a moment of origin,

111. which many other countries in the world don't have.

112. And it has invested these particular years

113. of these particular people with a set of stakes

114. that are so far beyond what any set of events

115. and any set of people can plausibly carry

116. that it has made the way that Americans

117. think about this period very unreal and detached.

118. One of the most remarkable aspects

119. of the Revolutionary War is that you had

120. such different places

121. come together as one nation.

122. I'm not sure there is a state, anywhere in the world,

123. in the late 18th century, that has as wide variety

124. of people who inhabit it, um,

125. and so, it really is actually kind of remarkable,

126. the way that that nation ends up cohering,

127. not around culture, not around religion,

128. not around ancient history.

129. It was coming together around a set of purposes and ideals

130. for one common cause.

131. Events like these have seldom,

132. if ever before, taken place on the stage of human action.

133. For who has before seen a disciplined army

134. formed from such raw materials?

135. Who that was not a witness could imagine that men

136. who came from the different parts of the continent,

137. strongly disposed to despise and quarrel with each other,

138. would become but one patriotic band of brothers?

139. George Washington.

140. We have great reason to believe

141. you intend to drive us away.

142. Why do you come to fight in the land

143. that God has given us?

144. Why don't you fight in the old country and on the sea?

145. Why do you come to fight on our land?

146. Shingas, Lenape Nation.

147. For several generations, violent conquest

148. and Old-World diseases had decimated Native populations

149. between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains,

150. where, by the middle of the 18th century,

151. 13 distinct British colonies were established

152. south of French Canada and north of Spanish Florida.

153. Now, as land speculators and settlers

154. eyed the Ohio River Valley beyond the Appalachians,

155. the paramount question became who would control

156. the North American interior.

157. Both Protestant Britain and Catholic France—

158. ancient enemies that had already fought

159. 3 wars in North America—

160. claimed the region.

161. So did a host of Indian nations

162. who had lived and farmed and hunted there

163. for hundreds of generations.

164. In 1754, to solidify Britain's claim,

165. the Royal Colony of Virginia dispatched militia

166. to protect their interests in the Ohio Country.

167. The small force of militiamen and a handful of Native allies

168. surrounded a group of unsuspecting French soldiers...

169. Fire!

170. and fired into them.

171. Nearly half of the Frenchmen were killed or wounded.

172. The rest surrendered.

173. According to one of the Indians with the Virginians,

174. the militia's 22-year-old commander had been the first

175. to shoot into the enemy's encampment.

176. If so, George Washington fired

177. the very first shot of a global conflict

178. that would come to be called the Seven Years' War

179. and set the stage for the American Revolution.

180. Soon after his surprise attack,

181. a French and Indian force

182. surrounded Washington and his men,

183. forcing him, for the first and only time in his life,

184. to surrender.

185. A less prominent young man's military career

186. might have ended there,

187. but Washington was given a second chance the following year

188. as aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock,

189. the British commander sent to dislodge the French

190. at Fort Duquesne.

191. Braddock was confident his red-coated British regulars

192. could easily defeat anyone who stood between him and the fort.

193. But on July 9, 1755,

194. a much smaller French and Indian force overwhelmed them.

195. The British panicked. Braddock was mortally wounded.

196. The Command fell to Washington.

197. Two horses were shot from under him.

198. Musket balls ripped through his hat and jacket.

199. He ordered a retreat and managed to get most of his men

200. safely off the battlefield.

201. Washington learned two valuable lessons:

202. British troops were not invincible,

203. and there was no shame in retreating

204. if you could live to fight another day.

205. He was hailed as a hero and given overall command

206. of Virginia's militia.

207. But after his appeal for a Royal commission

208. in the British Army was rejected,

209. he retired from military service in 1758

210. and returned to his plantation at Mount Vernon,

211. filled with resentment at how the British had treated him.

212. And he comes to view the people in London

213. as people who have a condescending view of Americans.

214. They think of him as inferior.

215. They didn't give him a commission.

216. I mean, when Washington is told that he didn't get a commission,

217. he doesn't think that means he's inferior.

218. He thinks that means the British are really stupid.

219. There can be no sufficient reason given

220. why we, who spend our blood and treasure

221. in defense of the King's Dominions,

222. are not entitled to equal preferment.

223. We can't conceive that being Americans should deprive us

224. of the benefits of British subjects.

225. The Seven Years' War, against Britain's

226. imperial rivals, France and Spain,

227. is fought not only in North America.

228. It's fought in the Caribbean, it's fought in Africa,

229. it's fought in India, it's fought in the Philippines.

230. So, even though it starts in the Ohio backcountry,

231. with a dispute between colonists

232. and the French and their Indian allies,

233. it mushrooms into a global campaign

234. that touches Europe and all parts of the world.

235. The American colonies are just one piece

236. on a broad, global Imperial chessboard

237. as far as British policymakers are concerned.

238. Remembered in North America

239. as the French and Indian War,

240. the fighting went on for years

241. until a series of British victories,

242. won by regulars and colonial troops,

243. ended the French Empire's presence on the continent,

244. gave Britain Spanish Florida,

245. and more than tripled the lands claimed by England's King.

246. France transfers to Britain

247. all of its territory in North America.

248. But it's a little bit like the Greek myths, you know,

249. never wish for something too much

250. 'cause you might get what you wished for.

251. The British, in North America,

252. have been hoping and praying

253. for the defeat of the French for 80 years.

254. And now they're victorious. Church bells are ringing.

255. This is the moment we've all hoped for.

256. And then it all begins to go to hell in a hand basket.

257. Britishness in America is just everywhere.

258. In Boston, the Town House

259. sits at the center of Queen and King Streets.

260. The London Bookshop was around the corner.

261. The Crown Coffee House.

262. The sort of ideal of, uh, fashion,

263. of political currency,

264. of the basis of one's rights

265. and that sense of home.

266. They talk about Britain even when they have

267. never been there as home.

268. On Saturday, December 27, 1760,

269. a British frigate anchored in Boston harbor.

270. It brought with it big news.

271. King George II had died in October.

272. His 22-year-old grandson now reigned as George III.

273. Crowds cheered.

274. Bostonians were proud to be part of what had become

275. the most far-flung empire on Earth.

276. In the 18th century, the belief was,

277. who in the world has got it right?

278. Only one people on Earth— the British.

279. They have a mixed constitution, constitutional monarch,

280. House of Lords,

281. an elected House of Commons.

282. You got an element of democracy,

283. element of aristocracy, element of monarchy.

284. The 3 of them will check and balance each other

285. and produce the perfect combination.

286. Vincent Brown: We tend to think of the British Empire in America

287. as the 13 North American colonies

288. that became the United States.

289. But Great Britain actually had 26 colonies in America.

290. And, by far, the most important of those,

291. the most profitable, the most militarily significant,

292. and the best politically connected of those colonies

293. were those colonies in the Caribbean.

294. The territories that tended to have the most slaves,

295. and exploit enslaved labor most intensively,

296. tended to be the most profitable colonies.

297. So, if you look at North America, for example,

298. Massachusetts is the least profitable colony

299. in North America and it's got

300. the smallest percentage of slaves in its territory.

301. The most profitable colony in North America

302. is South Carolina.

303. Then, when you get to a place like Jamaica or Barbados,

304. where 90% of the population is enslaved,

305. then you're really talking.

306. That's where the money is being made

307. and that's also why that's where

308. the Royal Navy warships are concentrated.

309. But the 13 contiguous colonies

310. that clung to the Atlantic seaboard were the most populous.

311. The colonists' numbers had doubled every 25 years.

312. By 1763, the population— Black and White—

313. had reached almost 2 million.

314. Christopher Brown: And those settlers produce

315. for the Empire,

316. but they also consume.

317. They provide markets.

318. They purchase goods that are manufactured in Britain.

319. It's the fastest-growing part of the British economy,

320. is the trades with North America.

321. The British Empire expanded enormously

322. as a result of the Seven Years' War.

323. There's real anxiety that unless this empire

324. is tied together more tightly,

325. by central control and direction,

326. it will start to fragment, in much the same way as the

327. Roman Empire was assumed to have collapsed.

328. For more than 150 years,

329. London had treated its North American colonies

330. with what one British politician would call

331. "salutary neglect."

332. Each colony was part of the King's dominions,

333. but in most of them, legislatures,

334. elected by propertied White men,

335. made laws, levied taxes,

336. and decided how they'd be spent.

337. Slavery was legal everywhere, from New Hampshire to Georgia.

338. Many of the Black people living in the colonies

339. had been born there or in the Caribbean.

340. But tens of thousands were from West Africa—

341. captured from what is now Senegal, Gambia, and Gabon;

342. Angola, Congo, and the Ivory Coast;

343. Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana.

344. Christopher Brown: I think it's easy to underestimate

345. the sheer diversity and variety, um, in the colonies.

346. Close to the majority of the population

347. in the southern colonies are African.

348. There are French Huguenots; there are Germans.

349. There's Scots. There's Scots-Irish.

350. There are Native people, not just on the frontiers,

351. but actually living in the heart of the 13 colonies.

352. Most of the population of North America is Indigenous.

353. 70%, 80% of the continent is still controlled

354. by Indigenous people, politically,

355. economically, and militarily.

356. It's not a separate place, it's not this timeless space

357. where Native people are sort of existing in harmony

358. with nature and that they have no interest

359. in the outside world.

360. Native people want the good stuff

361. that Europeans are bringing.

362. Europeans want the wealth

363. that they can get from Native people.

364. Native powers are as important to the global market economy

365. as a place like Virginia or a place like New York.

366. If there is a country in the world

367. where concord, according to common calculation,

368. would be least expected, it is America.

369. Made up as it is of people from different nations,

370. speaking different languages,

371. and more different in their modes of worship,

372. it would appear that the union of such a people

373. was impracticable.

374. Thomas Paine.

375. In Britain, 2% of the population—

376. lords and lesser gentry—

377. owned 2/3 of all the land,

378. and most people had for centuries

379. lived "dependent" lives,

380. either as tenant farmers,

381. working land belonging to aristocrats,

382. or as landless laborers working for an employer.

383. For most free White men in the colonies,

384. North America was a land of opportunity.

385. The people who are coming from Northern Britain,

386. as well as a lot of Scots-Irish,

387. often are bringing the resentments that they'd been

388. pushed off their lands by landlords.

389. And so, there's a great sensitivity

390. about any kind of financial exaction

391. that could be a slippery slope

392. leading to the kinds of dependence

393. that they had escaped from.

394. The colonies were overwhelmingly agricultural.

395. Just 3 seaport towns—

396. Philadelphia, Boston, and New York—

397. were home to more than 10,000 people.

398. And 2 out of 3 farmers were independent,

399. proud owners of their land.

400. Others were indentured servants,

401. hoping that once they fulfilled their contract,

402. that they, too, could prosper on their own.

403. For Americans, land and liberty

404. are completely intertwined.

405. White Americans see their liberty as being founded

406. on not being a peasant on somebody's else's land.

407. Preserving, promoting that liberty for White Americans,

408. to them, means taking Native land.

409. There is no other answer.

410. American colonists had been looking forward

411. to the glorious day when the French and their Indian allies

412. would be defeated,

413. and British subjects would

414. sweep over the Appalachian Mountains,

415. looking for land.

416. Maps at the time show the colonies

417. extending well into the interior.

418. We often see maps as benign,

419. as descriptive, as without argument.

420. But they're aspirational, in many ways.

421. They're an argument rather than a conclusion.

422. Hundreds of Native nations

423. still are completely intact, completely independent.

424. In the north, is the powerful Haudenosaunee League,

425. the Six Nations, including the Mohawks and the Senecas.

426. To their south are the Shawnees,

427. who have retaken the Ohio Valley in recent years

428. and formed a huge confederacy

429. that stretches from the Delawares, or the Lenapes,

430. in the east to the powerful nations,

431. including the Anishinaabe of the Great Lakes.

432. South of there are the Chickasaws, the Cherokees,

433. the Choctaws, the Creek Confederacy, or the Muscogees,

434. and hundreds of other smaller nations.

435. These are nations that fight against each other,

436. but also that increasingly, by the late 18th century,

437. are making some larger confederacies,

438. in part to try to fight against settlers

439. who have been moving onto their land in recent years.

440. Beginning in the spring of 1763,

441. in what was called Pontiac's War,

442. warriors from at least a dozen Native nations

443. overran many of the British forts along the Great Lakes

444. and in the Ohio Valley

445. and raided settlements,

446. killing or capturing 2,000 colonists

447. and driving out some 4,000 more.

448. Many colonists responded by killing

449. any Indian they encountered.

450. The Brits look at this situation and say,

451. "OK, we've just inherited all of this empire.

452. "How on earth are we gonna stop this kind of thing

453. happening again and again, and again?"

454. The British concluded

455. that Native Americans and colonists

456. needed to be separated, at least for a time,

457. and so, in 1763, a Royal Proclamation declared

458. all the territory beyond the Appalachians

459. off-limits to settlement or speculation.

460. That prohibits White settlers

461. from moving into these interior worlds,

462. the same interior worlds that many colonists

463. felt like they had just fought for.

464. And many settlers become outraged

465. that, uh, the British Crown has any form

466. of imperial, um, recognition of these Indigenous populations.

467. A kind of racial animus has formed in the aftermath

468. of the Seven Years' War, in which many British settlers

469. come to resent all Indians.

470. Christopher Brown: It's not because the British Government

471. is especially concerned about Native Americans.

472. It's because they don't want Americans spreading out,

473. where they'll be even more difficult to control.

474. Part of British policy is

475. British settlers will stay near the coast.

476. And part of the colonists' answer is,

477. "No. Sorry, we're not doing that."

478. London hoped the Proclamation

479. would pacify the frontier.

480. Instead, it infuriated those would-be settlers

481. poised to move west

482. and frustrated land speculators

483. who saw fortunes to be made there.

484. And that is a huge slap in the face

485. and a blow to those elite colonial Americans

486. who've been indulging in this investment.

487. Who are these people?

488. Household names: Benjamin Franklin,

489. Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry,

490. George Washington.

491. After abandoning his dream of serving

492. as an officer in the British Army,

493. George Washington had married an enormously wealthy widow,

494. Martha Dandridge Custis, and had made himself still wealthier

495. speculating in western lands.

496. He saw no reason to stop.

497. The law was only a temporary measure

498. to "quiet the minds of the Indians," he said,

499. and he directed his land agent to defy the Proclamation

500. and "secure some of the most valuable Lands"

501. beyond the Appalachians.

502. I think the American Revolution was all about land.

503. It's easy to make the political kinds of arguments,

504. but I think underpinning all of that was

505. the possibility of expansion,

506. um, was the conflict with Indian people.

507. Now to enforce the hated law

508. and to police the frontier,

509. the British government resolved to station

510. an army of 10,000 men in North America.

511. The cost would be enormous—

512. some 360,000 British pounds a year.

513. London did not have the money.

514. Years of war on 4 continents had doubled the national debt.

515. Britain was in the midst of a postwar depression,

516. and British consumers were already burdened

517. with higher taxes than were the subjects

518. of any other European monarch.

519. The average British subject paid

520. 26 shillings a year in taxes;

521. the average New Englander paid just one.

522. So, some bright spark has the idea,

523. "Well, let's tax the American colonists." Right?

524. They should pay their share because, after all,

525. we fought the war for them, and this is to defend them.

526. In 1764, the Prime Minister, George Grenville,

527. proposed a series of 3 parliamentary statutes,

528. all meant to make the colonies

529. help pay for their own defense.

530. The Currency Act, which forbade the colonists

531. from issuing their own money,

532. angered the tobacco-growing gentry of Virginia,

533. who were especially hard-hit.

534. The Sugar Act imposed taxes on imports from the Caribbean,

535. and to enforce it, the British Navy dispatched 44 ships

536. to stop smuggling, enraging New Englanders,

537. whose economy had long profited from it.

538. The rest of the colonies were largely unaffected.

539. London assumed Americans were too disunited,

540. too divided by self-interest,

541. to ever be able to present a united front.

542. But now, Grenville introduced a third tax—

543. the Stamp Act.

544. It would affect nearly every colonist in every colony.

545. No one would be able to obtain a license or a loan,

546. transfer land or draft a will,

547. earn a diploma, purchase a newspaper,

548. or even buy a deck of cards

549. unless it was printed or written on English-made paper

550. that bore a stamp embossed by the Royal Treasury,

551. for which they would have to pay.

552. For the very first time, Parliament planned to tax

553. the 13 colonies directly.

554. The Stamp Act was scheduled to go into effect

555. on November 1, 1765.

556. Colonists said, "No taxation without representation."

557. What they meant was, no taxation except by

558. our elected Legislature, here in our particular colony.

559. These taxes were very small, but the fear was,

560. "If we give into this precedent,

561. "if we pay the small Stamp Tax now,

562. what will they do in the future?"

563. In the Virginia House of Burgesses,

564. Patrick Henry introduced a series of resolutions

565. asserting that only the General Assembly of that colony

566. had the "right and power to lay taxes" on its people.

567. Henry went on to declare that just as Julius Caesar

568. had his assassin Brutus,

569. George III should understand that some American resister

570. was sure "to stand up in favor of his country."

571. When some delegates shouted "Treason!"

572. others who were present remembered he responded,

573. "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

574. In Boston, 42-year-old Samuel Adams

575. helped rally the opposition

576. against implementation of the Stamp Act.

577. A failure as a brewer and as a collector of local taxes,

578. Adams was a master of propaganda.

579. His mission, he once explained,

580. was to "keep the attention of fellow-citizens

581. awake to their grievances."

582. If our trade may be taxed,

583. why not our lands?

584. Why not the produce of our lands

585. and everything we possess or make use of?

586. If taxes are laid upon us in any shape

587. without our having a legal representation

588. where they are paid,

589. are we not reduced from the character of free subjects

590. to the miserable state of tributary slaves?

591. In terms of masters of communication,

592. Samuel Adams was really up there.

593. He has an amazing ability to translate a concept

594. into easily digested words.

595. And, therefore, to make, um, what seem—what could seem

596. like fairly abstract ideas

597. very vital and very urgent, and he's tireless.

598. So, he's able to produce page after page after page,

599. new offenses, new crimes, new injustices.

600. Pamphleteers took up the cause,

601. declaring the Stamp Act illegitimate.

602. Most of the colonies' 24 weekly newspapers—

603. the businesses that would be hit hardest—followed suit.

604. Those that didn't faced being shut down

605. by their journeymen and apprentices.

606. Newspapers are very important.

607. The colonial public is more literate than any other people

608. in the world outside of Scandinavia.

609. There's also word of mouth, conversation,

610. absolutely essential.

611. It became very common to discuss

612. how you govern people and how people are free.

613. These ideas had filtered into the general population.

614. Those ideas now led to protests in the streets.

615. In Boston, in August of 1765, a crowd formed—

616. made up of men and a handful of women,

617. free Blacks and runaway slaves,

618. poorly paid or unemployed workers who resented the rich,

619. and apprentices in their off-hours,

620. just looking for trouble.

621. They hanged in effigy the local man

622. designated to become distributor of stamps

623. and went on to invade the home of the lieutenant governor,

624. destroying everything in sight

625. and carrying off all of his furniture

626. and 900 British pounds in cash.

627. In Newport, Rhode Island, another mob surrounded

628. the stamp distributor, forced him to resign,

629. and to lead them in chants of "Property and Liberty."

630. In Charleston, South Carolina, White anti-Stamp Act protestors

631. marched through the streets chanting, "Liberty!"

632. But when enslaved South Carolinians echoed their cries,

633. frightened enslavers called out the militia

634. to patrol the street.

635. The Maryland appointee was driven from Annapolis

636. with only the clothes on his back.

637. By the time the Stamp Act was supposed to go into effect,

638. none of the 13 colonies had an official in place

639. willing to enforce it.

640. Part of our Revolution I think we have

641. largely sanitized.

642. I think we've forgotten much of the street warfare,

643. of the anarchy, of the provocations that took place.

644. A black cloud seems to hang over us.

645. It appears to me that there will be an end

646. to all government here, for the people are all running mad.

647. James Parker.

648. When a crowd surrounded the British Army

649. headquarters in New York City,

650. General Thomas Gage made sure his men held their fire,

651. for fear, he said, that 50,000 angry colonists

652. would swarm into the city and start a civil war.

653. General Gage was in charge of

654. all British soldiers in North America.

655. He had been sent to maintain peace on the frontier.

656. Instead, he had found himself at loggerheads with colonists

657. convinced they were being denied their rights

658. as Englishmen.

659. Gage understood what was happening.

660. The spirit of democracy

661. is strong amongst them.

662. The question is not of the inexpediency of the Stamp Act

663. or the inability of the colonies to pay the tax,

664. but that it is contrary to their rights and not subject

665. to the legislative power of Great Britain.

666. Thomas Gage was married to an American.

667. He owned land in the colonies.

668. He was, in many ways,

669. embedded within colonial society.

670. So, he was particularly reluctant, I think,

671. to engage in conflict.

672. In the colonial world and the European world,

673. democracy had a bad name.

674. It was a synonym for "anarchy."

675. It had a reputation as being turbulent,

676. as a system exploited by

677. ruthless politicians called "demagogues"--

678. people who pandered to the passions of common people

679. in order to whip them up and get them to do passionate things,

680. and to get government to serve them

681. and to prey upon the property of more wealthy people.

682. So, democracy is not the aspiration

683. that creates the Revolution.

684. The Revolution creates the conditions for people

685. to aspire to have a democracy.

686. Meanwhile, hundreds of merchants

687. in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia

688. pledged to boycott British goods

689. until the Stamp Act was repealed.

690. To keep up the opposition, some lawyers, merchants,

691. and skilled craftsmen established an association,

692. the Sons of Liberty, and soon had chapters

693. from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Charleston, South Carolina

694. working together.

695. The colonies until now were ever at variance

696. and foolishly jealous of each other;

697. they are now united for their common defense

698. against what they believe to be oppression;

699. nor will they soon forget the weight

700. which this close union gives them.

701. Dr. Joseph Warren.

702. The colonies now accounted for

703. 1/3 of Britain's trade.

704. With the boycott, some manufacturers

705. were forced to close their doors.

706. Thousands of workers lost their jobs.

707. The town councils of 27 English trading and manufacturing towns

708. pleaded for repeal.

709. By mid-February 1766, the British cabinet

710. was looking for a way out of the impasse.

711. It asked Benjamin Franklin, then living in London

712. as a lobbyist for Pennsylvania,

713. to appear before the House of Commons,

714. hoping that hearing from the best-known American

715. on Earth would help.

716. Franklin patiently answered 174 questions.

717. What had been the colonists' attitude toward Great Britain

718. before the Stamp Act was enacted?

719. The best in the world.

720. They had not only a respect

721. but an affection for Great Britain;

722. for its laws, its customs, its manners,

723. and even a fondness for its fashions,

724. which greatly increased the commerce.

725. "Would the colonies now accept a compromise?" he was asked.

726. "No," he answered. "It was a matter of principle."

727. "Might a military force compel the colonists to pay the tax?"

728. "No," Franklin said.

729. Suppose a military force

730. is sent into America.

731. They will find nobody in arms.

732. What are they then to do?

733. They cannot force a man to take stamps

734. who chooses to do without them.

735. They will not find a rebellion.

736. They may indeed make one.

737. 8 days after Franklin's testimony,

738. the House of Commons voted to repeal the Stamp Act.

739. British workers would return to their factories.

740. Merchant vessels set sail again for the colonies.

741. When the news reached America in April,

742. the Sons of Liberty disbanded;

743. their rights as Englishmen seemed to have been restored.

744. New York commissioned a statue of King George,

745. wearing a Roman toga, to be placed on the Bowling Green

746. at the tip of Manhattan.

747. But beginning in the summer of 1767, the British government,

748. still struggling with war debt,

749. would win passage of 5 new laws—the Townshend Acts.

750. One of them especially angered colonists.

751. It imposed new taxes on 4 items manufactured in England—

752. glass, lead, paper, and painter's colors—

753. and on a fifth item, tea, grown in China

754. but re-exported from Britain and loved by the colonists,

755. rich and poor alike.

756. Newspaper editors and pamphleteers

757. denounced the new taxes.

758. A revived and more militant Sons of Liberty

759. called for a new boycott of British goods.

760. Women, who normally played a subordinate role

761. in public life and had almost no legal rights,

762. joined the resistance by the thousands

763. as "Daughters of Liberty."

764. Crisis changes people.

765. And it gave women different ideas

766. about what they should be doing.

767. Women were the main consumers in colonial society

768. and they were the ones who made sure the boycotts worked.

769. Women stopped drinking tea.

770. Women started making their own fabric.

771. Women started making toys for their children.

772. And they didn't just stop buying British things

773. and start making their own things; they publicized it.

774. One of the key forms of political theater

775. during the Resistance Movement would be for a local minister

776. to invite the women of the community

777. to come down to the church

778. and to spend the day spinning and weaving cloth.

779. And it would be a competition to see which community

780. could produce the most homespun.

781. It would be published in the newspaper.

782. And these women would be praised as

783. great American Patriots for having produced

784. so much homespun cloth.

785. And reporters would report,

786. "The ladies of Boston,

787. "The ladies of New York

788. "are the most patriotic.

789. They are at the forefront of this protest movement."

790. If women hadn't done that, the protest movement

791. and eventually the Revolution would have gone nowhere.

792. Let the Daughters of Liberty nobly arise,

793. And though we've no voice but a negative here,

794. Stand firmly resolved and bid them to see,

795. That rather than freedom, we'll part with our tea.

796. Hannah Griffitts.

797. I wish to see America boast of Empire—

798. of Empire not established in the thralldom of nations

799. but on a more equitable base.

800. Though such a happy state, such an equal government,

801. may be considered by some as a Utopian dream;

802. yet, you and I can easily conceive of nations and states

803. under more liberal plans.

804. Mercy Otis Warren.

805. The political philosopher and historian

806. Mercy Otis Warren would publish plays and poems

807. that satirized Royal officials

808. with names like Judge Meagre and Sir Spendall.

809. No woman played a more important role

810. in promoting resistance.

811. Tensions with England continued to grow.

812. In Boston, in June of 1768,

813. a ship called the "Liberty" was seized by the Royal Navy.

814. Its owner, John Hancock,

815. was the richest merchant in the city,

816. a prominent member of the Sons of Liberty—

817. and a practiced smuggler.

818. A big, angry crowd formed at the wharf.

819. The mobs here are very different

820. from those in Old England.

821. These Sons of Violence are attacking houses,

822. breaking windows, beating, stoning, and bruising

823. several gentlemen belonging to the Customs.

824. Ann Hulton.

825. The town has been under

826. a kind of democratical despotism

827. for a considerable time.

828. And it has not been safe for people to act

829. or speak contrary to the sentiments

830. of the ruling demagogues.

831. Thomas Gage.

832. On orders from London, General Gage sent

833. two regiments of regulars from Nova Scotia,

834. not to defend Boston, but to police it.

835. Most Bostonians were appalled.

836. An army during wartime makes sense.

837. Of course, you need that.

838. But an army during peacetime is a standing army.

839. And if you have an army during peacetime,

840. the thinking is that its only use

841. is to turn on poor, innocent subjects.

842. To have a standing army! Good God!

843. What can be worse to a people who have tasted

844. the sweets of liberty?

845. Things are come to an unhappy crisis.

846. All confidence is at an end.

847. And the moment there is any bloodshed,

848. all affection will cease.

849. Reverend Andrew Eliot.

850. The spirit of emigration to America,

851. which seems to be epidemic through Great Britain,

852. is likely to depopulate the Mother Country,

853. and leave our ancient kingdom the resort of owls and dragons,

854. and other solitary animals, who shun the light,

855. and seem displeased at the human race.

856. "The Edinburgh Amusement."

857. The steadily rising tensions

858. between England and its North American colonies

859. did not slow the steady stream of

860. English, Scots-Irish, German,

861. and a small number of Jewish immigrants

862. eager to carve out new lives

863. within the North American interior.

864. Christopher Brown: Part of what really sets

865. the North American experience apart

866. is just how many European settlers

867. are coming to North America.

868. And they keep coming. 15,000 a year.

869. A kind of empire was already in view.

870. Thousands of new arrivals

871. and American-born colonists

872. poured down the Great Wagon Road

873. that ran all the way from Philadelphia to the Carolinas.

874. The backcountry there was already the home

875. of Native peoples, including the Catawbas and Cherokees.

876. Upon the whole, it is the best

877. country in the world for a poor man to go to

878. and do well.

879. And the farther they go back in the country,

880. the land turns richer and better.

881. Here, a man of small substance,

882. if upon a precarious footing at home,

883. can, at once, secure to himself a handsome, independent living,

884. and do well for himself and posterity.

885. All modes of Christian worship are here tolerated.

886. "Scotus Americanus."

887. Colonial America is a very Protestant place.

888. And it's founded when the norm in Europe was that

889. whoever your sovereign was got to set

890. what the religion should be.

891. Congregationalism was the established church

892. in nearly all New England colonies.

893. The official religion in much of the South

894. was the Church of England.

895. But those who belonged to other faiths

896. resented being forced by colonial legislatures

897. to pay the salaries of clergymen who did not minister to them.

898. None were more resentful than the backcountry settlers

899. in the Carolinas—

900. Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists.

901. And what they hear from their ministers

902. about whether resisting their sovereign

903. or supporting their sovereign

904. is the right thing to do as a Christian duty,

905. that will matter a lot.

906. I was born in Boston in America

907. in the year 1760.

908. In the time I was at school, the troubles began to come on.

909. And I was told the day of judgment was near at hand,

910. and the moon would turn into blood,

911. and the world would be set on fire.

912. John Greenwood.

913. Shortly before noon on Saturday, October 1, 1768,

914. 8-year-old John Greenwood left his home

915. in Boston's North End

916. and hurried toward the waterfront.

917. There, riding at anchor in a great arc,

918. he saw 14 British warships,

919. their cannon trained upon the city.

920. Boats swarmed between the ships and the end of Long Wharf,

921. ferrying hundreds of British red-coated regulars.

922. General Gage's occupying army had arrived.

923. The crowds that lined the street

924. were for the most part silent and sullen.

925. But it was not the history being made that impressed

926. young John Greenwood that day.

927. It was the irresistible music played by Afro-Caribbean

928. men and boys in colorful uniforms.

929. I was so fond of hearing the fife and drum

930. played by the British that somehow or another,

931. I got an old split fife, and fixed it

932. by puttying up the crack to make it sound,

933. and then learned to play several tunes.

934. I believe it was the sole cause

935. of all my travails and disasters.

936. Before long,

937. the boy was playing well enough

938. to become a fifer for a local militia.

939. "The flag of our company," he remembered,

940. "was an English flag."

941. They would not be English forever.

942. Half the newly arrived troops

943. were housed in barracks on Castle Island,

944. but orders from London had been clear.

945. It was "His Majesty's pleasure," they said,

946. that the rest of the troops "be quartered in that town."

947. For 17 months, Boston was an occupied city.

948. The rattle of drums awakened residents every morning.

949. Passersby were routinely stopped and searched.

950. Many soldiers had brought their wives and children;

951. others courted Boston girls, or were pursued by them.

952. 40 troops were married during the occupation,

953. and more than 100 of their offspring were baptized.

954. But some soldiers got drunk, robbed people,

955. insulted women, profaned the Sabbath.

956. There were brawls, stabbings, suits and countersuits.

957. From London, Benjamin Franklin was concerned.

958. Some indiscretion on the part

959. of Boston's warmer people, or of the soldiery,

960. may occasion a tumult.

961. And if blood is once drawn, there is no foreseeing

962. how far the mischief may spread.

963. On the evening of March 5, 1770,

964. there were tussles between Bostonians and British soldiers

965. all across the city.

966. At the Royal Customs House, a crowd of young men

967. surrounded a lone sentry and pelted him with

968. snowballs and chunks of ice.

969. Convinced a city-wide uprising was underway,

970. Captain Thomas Preston raced

971. several armed grenadiers to the scene.

972. More snowballs and rocks and oyster shells greeted them.

973. They fixed bayonets.

974. Somebody starts ringing the church bells,

975. which in Boston is a sign for fire.

976. Some people are bringing buckets

977. to be part of a bucket brigade.

978. Some people are drawn by the noise.

979. It's very hard, in fact impossible,

980. to know what happened, which is that somebody yells, "Fire."

981. All we know really is that when the smoke cleared,

982. there are 5 people dead or dying.

983. The first was a tall dock-worker—

984. part Native-American, part African-American—

985. named Crispus Attucks.

986. The second was a ropemaker named Samuel Gray,

987. who was standing next to Attucks.

988. The third was James Caldwell, a sailor who was in town,

989. it was said, to call upon the girl he hoped to marry.

990. The terrified crowd began to scatter.

991. John Greenwood's older brother Isaac was there, too,

992. and escaped unharmed, but a ricocheting ball

993. hit their friend Samuel Maverick in the back.

994. He died in agony the following morning.

995. Maverick, an apprentice,

996. had shared a bed in the Greenwood home

997. with the now 9-year-old John,

998. who recalled that after his friend's death,

999. he deliberately slept in pitch-black darkness,

1000. hoping "to see his spirit."

1001. People start arguing, already,

1002. even before they go to bed,

1003. about what happened.

1004. Paul Revere creates probably the most famous engraving

1005. of the 18th century, which he titles the "Bloody Massacre."

1006. The British Army is very anxious to try to spin this

1007. as a story of self-defense...

1008. but the language of massacre is the one that holds.

1009. A fifth man,

1010. a leathermaker named Patrick Carr,

1011. would die several days later.

1012. 10,000 mourners accompanied the coffins of the dead

1013. to the Old Granary Cemetery.

1014. The Fatal Fifth of March

1015. can never be forgotten.

1016. The horrors of that dreadful night

1017. are but too deeply impressed on our hearts—

1018. when our streets were stained with the blood of our brethren;

1019. and our eyes were tormented with the sight

1020. of the mangled bodies of the dead.

1021. Joseph Warren.

1022. Not everyone was grieving.

1023. An Anglican clergyman, Mather Byles,

1024. asked a fellow cleric, "Which is better,

1025. "to be ruled by one tyrant 3,000 miles away

1026. or by 3,000 tyrants not a mile away."

1027. Captain Preston was found not guilty

1028. of ordering his men to fire.

1029. The other 8 soldiers were put on trial separately.

1030. Samuel Adams' younger cousin, John Adams,

1031. risking his reputation, served as the soldiers' attorney.

1032. Most of his clients were acquitted as well.

1033. Two were found guilty of manslaughter.

1034. They were branded on their right thumbs

1035. so that if they were ever charged with another crime,

1036. they could not make a claim of innocence again.

1037. The British government was relieved

1038. by the outcome of the trials.

1039. Most of the regulars were withdrawn to Castle William—

1040. their harbor fortress.

1041. Once again, American colonists

1042. had forced the British to back down

1043. and Parliament had already repealed all but one

1044. of the Townshend Acts.

1045. Only the duty on tea remained.

1046. Yorktown stood unrivaled in Virginia;

1047. its commanding view, its vast expanse of water,

1048. its excellent harbor.

1049. It was the seat of wealth and elegance,

1050. one of the most delightful situations in America,

1051. at least, my infantine imagination painted it so.

1052. Betsy Ambler.

1053. Betsy Ambler was 6 years old in 1771—

1054. the oldest child in a prominent Yorktown, Virginia family.

1055. A young Thomas Jefferson

1056. had once hoped to marry her mother, Rebecca,

1057. but she had married Jacquelin Ambler instead.

1058. He insisted that all his daughters

1059. get a proper education.

1060. He was a planter and merchant in Yorktown,

1061. the bustling deepwater port near Virginia's

1062. colonial capital at Williamsburg.

1063. On Yorktown docks, enslaved Africans entered America,

1064. and the tobacco they harvested went out to the world.

1065. Though Betsy's father was the Royal Collector of Customs,

1066. he and his family had grown more and more sympathetic

1067. to their neighbors' calls for liberty.

1068. Young as I was,

1069. the word "liberty" so constantly sounding in my ears

1070. seemed to convey an idea of everything

1071. that was desirable on Earth.

1072. True, that in attaining it,

1073. I was to see every comfort abandoned.

1074. Thomas Hutchinson,

1075. Governor of Massachusetts:

1076. There is now a disposition in all the colonies

1077. to let the controversy with the kingdom subside.

1078. Hancock and most of the party are quiet

1079. and all of them abate of their virulence, except Samuel Adams.

1080. For 2 years, Samuel Adams

1081. kept up a steady stream of essays,

1082. in which he warned again and again

1083. that the lull was only temporary,

1084. that Parliament remained bent on imposing tyranny.

1085. Those who have interests

1086. in keeping the political story alive and growing,

1087. have to really work to keep it front and center,

1088. to define the problem as something present

1089. in the minds of ordinary people.

1090. Why would I care about this as a—as a woman?

1091. Why would I care about this as a small farmer?

1092. In 1772, events beyond Boston

1093. gave Adams the ammunition he needed

1094. to spread his radical message throughout the colonies.

1095. In April, when a sawmill owner in New Hampshire

1096. was charged with commandeering pine trees

1097. earmarked for the masts of royal warships,

1098. a mob drove the British officials

1099. who came to arrest him out of town.

1100. In June, when the "Gaspée,"

1101. a British customs schooner,

1102. ran aground while chasing smugglers,

1103. angry Rhode Islanders set it afire.

1104. And that fall, Adams learned that

1105. beginning the following year, the British Treasury

1106. would use the revenue from tea to pay the salaries

1107. of the most important Massachusetts officials,

1108. including all the colony's judges.

1109. The judges' first loyalty would now be to the Crown,

1110. not the colonists.

1111. There would be no way to ensure impartial justice.

1112. Adams drafted a fiery response.

1113. Among the natural rights

1114. of the colonists are these:

1115. First, a right to life; secondly, to liberty;

1116. thirdly to property; together with the right

1117. to support and defend them in the best manner they can.

1118. Printed copies of his writings

1119. were sent to town meetings throughout the colony.

1120. So-called Committees of Correspondence

1121. soon linked advocates of resistance

1122. in more than 100 Massachusetts towns and districts.

1123. Eventually, their network would spread into other colonies.

1124. "Committees of Correspondence"

1125. is an effort to try to bring

1126. all of the colonies onto the same page,

1127. to make them feel as if they have a common cause,

1128. words which had really not been used before.

1129. And it's through those committees that, essentially,

1130. the Revolutionary spirit diffuses itself

1131. throughout the colonies.

1132. Let not the iron hand of tyranny

1133. ravish our laws and seize the badge of freedom.

1134. Is it not high time for the people of this country

1135. explicitly to declare whether they will be freemen or slaves?

1136. Samuel Adams.

1137. I need not point out the absurdity

1138. of your exertions for liberty,

1139. while you have slaves in your houses.

1140. If you are sensible that slavery is, in itself,

1141. and in its consequences, a great evil,

1142. why will you not pity and relieve

1143. the poor, distressed, enslaved Africans?

1144. Caesar Sarter.

1145. Slavery as a metaphor is in the conversation

1146. from the beginning.

1147. Everywhere there's slavery,

1148. there are people thinking about freedom.

1149. Nothing shows the desire for freedom

1150. like the struggles of subject peoples.

1151. I, young in life,

1152. by seeming cruel fate

1153. Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat:

1154. What pangs excruciating must molest,

1155. What sorrows labour in my parent's breast?

1156. Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd

1157. That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd:

1158. Such, such my case. And can I then but pray

1159. Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

1160. Phillis Wheatley.

1161. Phillis Wheatley, who was stolen from Senegambia

1162. in West Africa and taken to Massachusetts as a young girl,

1163. was renamed for the slave ship the "Phillis" that brought her

1164. and the Wheatley family that bought her.

1165. In Boston, the Wheatleys saw to her education,

1166. and as a teenager, still enslaved,

1167. her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral"

1168. won favor on both sides of the Atlantic.

1169. It was the first published book

1170. by an African-American writer.

1171. How well the cry for liberty,

1172. and the reverse disposition

1173. for the exercise of oppressive power over others agree,

1174. I humbly think it does not require

1175. the penetration of a philosopher to determine.

1176. I wish most sincerely

1177. there was not a slave in the province.

1178. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—

1179. fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering

1180. from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.

1181. You know my mind upon this subject.

1182. Abigail Adams.

1183. Ye men of sense and virtue—

1184. Ye advocates for American liberty—

1185. Bear a testimony against a vice which degrades human nature

1186. and dissolves that universal tie of benevolence

1187. which should connect all the children of men together

1188. in one great family.

1189. The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature

1190. that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery.

1191. Benjamin Rush.

1192. Christopher Brown: Part of what happens in the years before

1193. the American War is that liberties are kind of broken out

1194. of a national context.

1195. These are not English liberties.

1196. These are transcendent liberties.

1197. These are liberties that all individuals have

1198. by the nature of being human.

1199. Heave away!

1200. The Americans have made a discovery,

1201. or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them.

1202. We have made a discovery, or think we have made one,

1203. that they intend to rise in rebellion.

1204. Our severity has increased their ill behavior.

1205. We know not how to advance. They know not how to retreat.

1206. Some party must give way.

1207. Edmund Burke.

1208. In October of 1773, 7 ships set out

1209. from Plymouth, England for North American ports.

1210. The cargo hold of each was filled with crates of tea.

1211. It all belonged to the Crown- chartered East India Company,

1212. which was on the brink of bankruptcy.

1213. To save the company, Lord North, the Prime Minister,

1214. had won passage of a new Tea Act,

1215. designed to undercut smuggling and reduce the cost of tea.

1216. It seemed to Parliament like a "Win-Win-Win."

1217. Shore up the East India Company, take it more in-house

1218. as a governmental organization,

1219. and give Americans cheaper, non-smuggled tea

1220. at the same time.

1221. But colonial merchants

1222. who had profited handsomely from smuggling

1223. portrayed the new law as yet another assault

1224. on American rights.

1225. John Adams wrote that immediate resistance was necessary

1226. because of its "attack upon a fundamental principle

1227. of the constitution."

1228. No American had consented to the tea tax;

1229. therefore, no American need pay it.

1230. Government-appointed tea agents were to be persuaded—

1231. or coerced—into refusing to receive any tea.

1232. In Charleston, South Carolina,

1233. the Sons of Liberty "convinced" an agent

1234. not to accept the shipment meant for him.

1235. In Philadelphia, the Governor of Pennsylvania

1236. talked a ship's captain into sailing back to Britain.

1237. In Boston, when 3 of the ships loaded with tea arrived,

1238. thousands of Bostonians and supporters from outlying towns

1239. gathered at the Old South Meeting House

1240. and declared that the tea should remain on board

1241. and be sent back to Britain.

1242. On December 16, 1773, hundreds looked on from shore

1243. as between 50 and 60 men— rich as well as poor—

1244. all crudely disguised as Native Americans,

1245. climbed into boats and headed for the ships.

1246. They dress like Indians, kinda.

1247. It's an expression of what it is to be American.

1248. When you claim to be Indian,

1249. you're claiming to be here, aboriginal,

1250. part of this continent.

1251. And you're drawing a really bright line

1252. between yourself and the Mother Country.

1253. The men banged open 342 crates

1254. and poured more than 46 tons of tea into the harbor.

1255. No other property was disturbed.

1256. And when one of the boarders was seen

1257. filling his coat pockets with fistfuls of tea,

1258. he received a "severe bruising."

1259. This is an assault on the property

1260. of the East India Company,

1261. and it's an assault upon the pride

1262. and the power of Parliament.

1263. So, it's a very big deal.

1264. Protesting taxes is one thing.

1265. Destroying private property

1266. worth thousands of pounds sterling,

1267. that's something else.

1268. In Manhattan, the King had grown so unpopular

1269. in some quarters that royal officials thought it prudent

1270. to surround his statue with an iron fence.

1271. A law warning of the dire consequences for anyone

1272. who dared deface the statue...

1273. did not prevent one New Yorker

1274. from firing a musket ball through its cheek...

1275. and another one through its neck.

1276. The study of the human character

1277. opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul.

1278. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of man.

1279. But when the checks of conscience are thrown aside,

1280. or the moral sense weakened, humanity is obscured.

1281. Mercy Otis Warren.

1282. The most shocking cruelty

1283. was exercised a few nights ago

1284. upon a poor old man named Malcolm.

1285. There's no law that knows a punishment

1286. for the greatest crimes beyond what this is, of cruel torture.

1287. Ann Hulton.

1288. In Boston, in January of 1774,

1289. a small boy on a sled accidentally ran into

1290. a minor customs official named John Malcolm,

1291. who cursed and threatened to beat him.

1292. When George Hewes, who had helped dump the tea

1293. into Boston harbor, tried to intervene,

1294. Malcolm knocked him unconscious with his cane.

1295. Malcolm was hauled from his house.

1296. He was stripped nearly naked,

1297. hot tar was poured over him, scalding his flesh,

1298. and then he was covered with feathers.

1299. Tarring and feathering is something that has

1300. come down to us as an almost kind of comical thing

1301. because you see these people with chicken feathers on them,

1302. but this is hideous stuff.

1303. Boiling pitch is poured onto somebody's skin.

1304. The burns are unbelievable.

1305. And it's all part, also, of a kind of spectacle of violence

1306. that is a really important part of this.

1307. And this is why the feathers are put on, in part.

1308. It's that you are trying to humiliate

1309. and shame the victim.

1310. Hundreds jeered as Malcolm was pulled

1311. through the freezing streets for 5 hours.

1312. His assailants stopped here and there to whip him.

1313. It would be 8 weeks before he was able to leave his bed.

1314. Boston has been the ringleader

1315. of all violence and opposition

1316. to the execution of the laws of this country.

1317. Boston has not only therefore to answer for its own violence

1318. but for having incited other places to tumults.

1319. Lord North, Prime Minister.

1320. Lord North hoped, he said,

1321. to make America lie "prostrate at his feet."

1322. They "must fear you," he added, "before they will love you."

1323. Now that they had destroyed Crown property,

1324. it was clear that much of America was not afraid.

1325. North would do his best to change that.

1326. In the process, he would try to end every vestige of self-rule

1327. prized by the people of Massachusetts.

1328. First, the Prime Minister convinced the Parliament

1329. to repeal that colony's long-standing charter,

1330. then dissolved the elected assembly again

1331. and limited each town and village

1332. to just one town meeting a year.

1333. The port of Boston would be closed until all its residents

1334. had paid in full for the tea just 60 of them had destroyed.

1335. That came to nearly 5 British pounds per taxpayer—

1336. more than a craftsman made in a month.

1337. It means no ships going in, no ships going out,

1338. no work for sailors, no work for merchants.

1339. It means hunger in Boston.

1340. British officers were also now empowered

1341. to commandeer vacant homes and barns

1342. to quarter their troops.

1343. Americans would denounce the new laws

1344. as the "Intolerable Acts."

1345. In England on leave,

1346. General Gage was summoned by George III.

1347. He told the King what he wanted to hear.

1348. The people of Massachusetts

1349. pretended to be "lyons," he said.

1350. But if England sent in enough troops,

1351. they would undoubtedly "prove very meek."

1352. General Gage was given a new title—

1353. Governor of Massachusetts

1354. in addition to Commander-in-Chief—

1355. and a new mission: to enforce the new Acts,

1356. end Boston's resistance,

1357. and demonstrate to all the colonies

1358. the folly of defying their King and Parliament.

1359. Gage and 4 fresh regiments set sail for Boston

1360. in mid-April, 1774.

1361. Christopher Brown: The British Government sees this

1362. as a police action,

1363. that if they can punish Boston

1364. and shut down Massachusetts, contain the rebellion,

1365. that the other colonies would get the message

1366. and that order could be restored with some grumbling.

1367. I think the British Government is genuinely surprised, um,

1368. to see the ways that the other 12 colonies

1369. rally to Massachusetts' cause.

1370. You are not gonna have an American Revolution

1371. unless you have Virginia on board.

1372. And the leaders of Massachusetts understood this.

1373. It was not going to be easy.

1374. There were deep prejudices between the two regions

1375. because of the differences in their ethnic mix

1376. and in the nature of their cultures.

1377. And they hadn't previously had any kind of trust

1378. for one another.

1379. But in Virginia, the House of Burgesses

1380. declared a day of "fasting, humiliation and prayer"

1381. in solidarity with the people of Massachusetts.

1382. And when the royal governor Lord Dunmore

1383. declared the very idea an insult to the King

1384. and dissolved the assembly,

1385. its members reconvened in Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern.

1386. The Virginians warned that "an attack made

1387. "on one of our sister colonies is an attack made

1388. on all British America"

1389. and called for a "Continental Congress"

1390. to meet in Philadelphia in September

1391. to see how the colonies might resist together.

1392. All the 13 colonies except Georgia—

1393. where people were afraid to lose British protection

1394. in the event of an Indian war—

1395. agreed to take part.

1396. The Prime Minister's effort to intimidate the other colonies

1397. by punishing Massachusetts

1398. had instead begun to unite them.

1399. Lebanon, Connecticut.

1400. Yesterday, the bells of the town

1401. early began to toll a solemn peal,

1402. and continued the whole day.

1403. The shops in town were all shut and silent.

1404. Our brethren in Boston are suffering

1405. for their noble exertions in the cause of liberty—

1406. the common cause of all America—

1407. and we are heartily willing to unite our little powers

1408. for the just rights and privileges of our country.

1409. Now news of a new offense

1410. by the King's ministers— The Quebec Act—

1411. would bind them still more tightly together.

1412. The British decide that it would make sense

1413. to grant a degree of civil liberties

1414. to those French-speaking Catholics in Quebec

1415. in order to integrate them into British governance

1416. and make sure that they have a population

1417. that can sort of live with British authority.

1418. Protestants,

1419. who equated the Papacy with despotism,

1420. were outraged.

1421. The Act also extended Quebec's borders west and south,

1422. adding to the fury of land speculators

1423. and would-be settlers.

1424. To British colonists, the Quebec Act

1425. was another slap in the face.

1426. The British Government is looking more and more,

1427. with each of these acts, like the problem,

1428. instead of the protector that it's supposed to be.

1429. That summer,

1430. beginning in Western Massachusetts,

1431. in town after town, crowds of angry armed men

1432. forced the resignations of the councilors, judges,

1433. and magistrates appointed by General Gage.

1434. Juries refused to serve. Courts closed down.

1435. When Gage learned that rebels in the towns surrounding Boston

1436. had quietly begun to remove some of the precious gunpowder

1437. every town was allotted for its defense,

1438. he sent 250 soldiers to the stone powder-house

1439. in Charles Town to confiscate it.

1440. Angry colonists saw the raid as yet another provocation.

1441. The Massachusetts Assembly

1442. defiantly reconstituted itself and soon set about

1443. creating a clandestine provincial fighting force,

1444. tens of thousands strong.

1445. March!

1446. There had been organized town militias

1447. in New England since the earliest days

1448. in case of trouble with Indians.

1449. Every man between the ages of 16 and 60

1450. was expected to arm himself and take part.

1451. It was also now suggested that each town

1452. assign a quarter of its militiamen to a special company,

1453. ready to act, they said, at "a minute's warning."

1454. Neighboring colonies followed the Massachusetts example.

1455. The Connecticut Assembly urged every town

1456. to double its supply of gunpowder, ball, and flints.

1457. Rhode Island ordered all militia officers

1458. to make their men ready to "march to the assistance

1459. of any Sister Colony" whenever they were needed.

1460. The line of conduct

1461. seems now chalked out.

1462. The New England governments are in a state of rebellion.

1463. Blows must decide whether they are to be subject

1464. to this country or independent.

1465. King George III.

1466. Philadelphia—

1467. The regularity and elegance of this city are very striking.

1468. It is situated upon a neck of land about 2 miles wide

1469. between the River Delaware and the River Schuylkill.

1470. And the uniformity of this city is disagreeable to some.

1471. I like it.

1472. Front Street is near the river, then 2nd Street,

1473. 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th.

1474. The cross streets are named for forest and fruit trees—

1475. Pear Street, Apple Street, Walnut Street,

1476. Chestnut Street, et cetera.

1477. John Adams.

1478. In the autumn of 1774,

1479. when 12 colonies sent delegates

1480. to the Continental Congress,

1481. Philadelphia was the logical place to assemble.

1482. It was home to some 40,000 people

1483. and was the most populous city in British America—

1484. larger than New York, more than twice the size of Boston.

1485. The delegates met in the newly constructed Carpenters' Hall,

1486. hoping to develop a common means of resistance

1487. while still somehow remaining within the Empire.

1488. It would not be easy.

1489. Adjacent colonies quarreled over borders.

1490. Small ones feared domination by large ones.

1491. And half the delegates were lawyers, fond of arguing.

1492. This assembly is like

1493. no other that ever existed.

1494. Every man in it is a "great man"--

1495. an orator, a critic, a statesman—and therefore

1496. every man upon every question must show his oratory,

1497. his criticism, and his political abilities.

1498. You have a group of men who have hailed from

1499. essentially different countries,

1500. who observe different religions,

1501. who conform to different habits,

1502. who are really meeting each other for the first time.

1503. No one is really sure what to do, at first.

1504. Is this meant to be a negotiation?

1505. Is this meant to be another boycott effort?

1506. Is this meant to be some kind of serious rupture

1507. with the Mother Country?

1508. Their plan is to frighten and intimidate.

1509. But supposing the worst, you have nothing to fear

1510. from anyone but the New England provinces.

1511. As for the Southern people, they talk very high,

1512. but it's nothing more than words.

1513. Their numerous slaves in the bowels of their country

1514. and the Indians at their backs will always keep them quiet.

1515. Thomas Gage.

1516. General Gage assured London

1517. the Congress was a "motley crew,"

1518. unlikely to achieve anything.

1519. The "motley crew" included some of the colonies'

1520. leading political figures—

1521. Samuel and John Adams from Massachusetts;

1522. John Jay, a young attorney from New York,

1523. convinced some solution short of war with the Mother Country

1524. must still be found;

1525. and Patrick Henry, who argued that ties with Britain

1526. had already been severed.

1527. "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians,

1528. New Yorkers and New Englanders, are no more," Henry said.

1529. "I am not a Virginian, but an American."

1530. But a fellow delegate from Virginia spoke for many.

1531. "Independency" was not the wish

1532. of any "thinking man in all North America."

1533. I shall not undertake to say

1534. where the line between Great Britain

1535. and the colonies should be drawn,

1536. but I am clearly of opinion

1537. that one ought to be drawn.

1538. The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights

1539. or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us;

1540. till custom and use will make us as tame and abject slaves

1541. as the Blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.

1542. George Washington.

1543. Most people in 1774 would say they're British.

1544. They wouldn't say they're Americans.

1545. The change happens in '75, '76, and the major source of it

1546. is a thing that's created called the "Continental Association."

1547. The Association is an engine for creating revolution.

1548. The Continental Association was not a committee,

1549. but a phased program that forbade Americans

1550. from importing British goods as of December 1, 1774,

1551. from consuming British goods as of March 1, 1775,

1552. and barred them from exporting American goods to Britain

1553. beginning on September 10th—

1554. if London still had not given in to their demands.

1555. Among the so-called "British goods"

1556. the delegates intended to boycott

1557. were enslaved Africans—

1558. whom they agreed not to import

1559. after December 1, 1775.

1560. The delegates made plans to hold a second

1561. Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 6 months.

1562. "We must change our Habits," John Adams wrote,

1563. "our Prejudices, our Palates,

1564. "our Taste in Dress, Furniture,

1565. Equipage, Architecture, et cetera."

1566. To make sure Americans did so,

1567. every community was expected to establish its

1568. own Committee of Safety in order to

1569. "attentively observe the conduct of all persons."

1570. By the spring of 1775,

1571. some 7,000 men had been elected to serve on such committees

1572. throughout the colonies,

1573. tasked with spying on their neighbors, opening their mail,

1574. poring over merchants' records

1575. in search of suspicious transactions.

1576. Most of those suspected of failing to observe the boycott

1577. or who were overheard criticizing resistance

1578. were ostracized, their names and supposed crimes

1579. printed in the local newspaper,

1580. their neighbors forbidden even to speak with them.

1581. Every town, every hamlet, every village

1582. has a Committee of Safety and Inspection.

1583. And they go house to house.

1584. You have to take a "Loyalty Oath."

1585. There's millions of conversations.

1586. And that's when the change happens.

1587. If we must be enslaved,

1588. let it be by a King at least,

1589. not by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen.

1590. If I must be devoured, let me be devoured

1591. by the jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death

1592. by rats and vermin.

1593. Reverend Samuel Seabury.

1594. Harassed, shamed, shunned, censored,

1595. sometimes attacked, opponents of resistance—

1596. called "Loyalists"-- saw the Committees of Safety

1597. as more tyrannical than Parliament could ever be.

1598. Nathaniel Philbrick: There was a sense of brutality

1599. that went with the Patriot cause that said,

1600. "No, you are wrong, and we are right."

1601. To be a Loyalist didn't mean that you were evil.

1602. It just meant that you felt a great sense of loyalty

1603. to the country that had made the prosperity

1604. that was the American colonies at this point possible.

1605. The Loyalists are essentially the conservatives.

1606. They're the people who believe in law and order.

1607. They don't like mobs. They don't like committees

1608. telling them what to do.

1609. They don't see King George III as a tyrant.

1610. We are preparing for war.

1611. To fight with whom?

1612. Not with France and Spain,

1613. whom we have been used to think our natural enemies—

1614. but with Great Britain, our parent country.

1615. My heart recoils at the thought.

1616. Andrew Eliot.

1617. If a civil war commences

1618. between Great Britain and her colonies,

1619. either the Mother Country, by one great exertion,

1620. may ruin both herself and America,

1621. or the Americans, by a lingering contest,

1622. will gain an independency.

1623. And in this case and whilst a new, a flourishing,

1624. and an extensive empire of freemen is established

1625. on the other side of the Atlantic,

1626. you will be left to the bare possession

1627. of your foggy islands.

1628. Catharine Macaulay.

1629. General Gage now warned London:

1630. "The whole Continent has embraced the cause

1631. of the town of Boston."

1632. If you think 10,000 men sufficient,

1633. send 20,000.

1634. You will save both blood and treasure in the end.

1635. A large force will terrify and engage many to join you.

1636. A middling one will encourage resistance

1637. and gain no friends.

1638. But General Gage was sent far fewer men

1639. than he'd hoped for.

1640. And he was ordered to move decisively

1641. against the rebels and arrest their leaders.

1642. Samuel Adams and John Hancock had fled Boston

1643. and found refuge with friends in Lexington, a small town—

1644. just 750 people and 400 cows—

1645. on the road to the larger town of Concord,

1646. some 18 miles northwest of Boston.

1647. Gage planned to send troops

1648. through Lexington to Concord,

1649. where he had been told arms and provisions

1650. meant for a sizeable rebel army were hidden.

1651. Success would depend on the strictest secrecy.

1652. Late on the evening of April 18, 1775,

1653. 700 British regulars were awakened,

1654. not told where they were going,

1655. and silently marched through the dark empty streets of Boston.

1656. A fleet of boats was waiting to row them across

1657. the Charles River to the Cambridge marshes.

1658. For all the care the British had taken

1659. to keep their plans secret, Dr. Joseph Warren,

1660. one of Boston's leading rebels, got wind of it.

1661. You don't move 1,000 men out of Boston

1662. in the middle of the night without arousing a response.

1663. American rebel leaders send warning.

1664. Two men, William Dawes and a silversmith named Paul Revere,

1665. are sent in different routes to alert Samuel Adams and others

1666. in Lexington that

1667. the British, in fact, are coming.

1668. Before the two men left,

1669. Revere saw to it that 2 lanterns appeared

1670. in the belfry of the Old North Church just long enough

1671. to alert sympathizers on the mainland that the regulars

1672. were crossing by water to Cambridge,

1673. not marching overland through Roxbury.

1674. Time will never erase

1675. the horrors of that midnight cry,

1676. when we were roused from the benign slumbers of the season

1677. with the dire alarm,

1678. that 1,000 of the troops of George III were gone forth

1679. to murder the peaceful inhabitants

1680. of the surrounding villages.

1681. Hannah Winthrop.

1682. Just after midnight

1683. on the morning of April 19, 1775,

1684. Revere reached Lexington and the house

1685. where Adams and Hancock were hiding.

1686. "The Regulars are coming out!" he shouted.

1687. The two rebel leaders fled into the night.

1688. Lexington's militiamen, summoned from their beds,

1689. dressed, gathered up whatever weapons they happened to own,

1690. and hurried to the town green.

1691. Their commander was Captain John Parker, a farmer,

1692. who, like many of his 70 men, had fought alongside the British

1693. in the French and Indian War.

1694. Then, shortly before dawn,

1695. someone spotted 6 companies of redcoats—

1696. about 250 men—approaching at a rapid clip.

1697. On horseback in the lead was Major John Pitcairn,

1698. a Scottish veteran with nothing but scorn for colonists.

1699. Captain Parker knew he could not stop the British,

1700. but he wanted to impress them with his men's resolve.

1701. Parker told them not to fire first.

1702. A British officer shouted, "Throw down your arms,

1703. ye villians, ye rebels, and disperse."

1704. They begin to disperse.

1705. Many of them turn their backs and start to walk away.

1706. A shot rings out.

1707. No one knows where the shot came from.

1708. Fire!

1709. That leads to promiscuous shooting...

1710. mostly by the British.

1711. It's not a battle. It's not a skirmish.

1712. It's a massacre.

1713. Now blood has been shed.

1714. Now the man on your left has been shot through the head.

1715. Your neighbor on the right has been badly wounded.

1716. You can't put that genie back in the bottle.

1717. 8 militiamen died on the Lexington Green.

1718. 9 more were wounded. The rest fled.

1719. The fact that the British have fired on

1720. their own people, which is how it's viewed by the Americans,

1721. causes an outrage that takes it to a new level

1722. in terms of resistance, a feeling that, um...

1723. "They're killing us, and the only thing

1724. "that we can do in response is to kill them

1725. as quickly as we can in numbers as profound as we can."

1726. Charge!

1727. The British resumed their march toward Concord,

1728. now just 61/2 miles away.

1729. Meanwhile, other riders fanned out across the countryside

1730. to spread word of what had happened.

1731. Militiamen from nearby towns rushed toward Concord.

1732. "It seemed as if men came down from the clouds," one man said.

1733. It was not memories of the Stamp Act

1734. or the tax on tea that rallied them.

1735. "We always had governed ourselves," one man remembered,

1736. "and we always meant to."

1737. In Acton, 6 miles to the west of Concord,

1738. 40 Minutemen gathered at the home of their commander,

1739. Captain Isaac Davis, a 30-year-old gunsmith.

1740. My husband said but little

1741. that morning.

1742. He seemed serious and thoughtful.

1743. As he led the company from the house,

1744. he turned himself round

1745. and seemed to have something to communicate.

1746. He only said, "Take good care of the children,"

1747. and was soon out of sight.

1748. Hannah Davis.

1749. The British seized 2 bridges

1750. spanning the Concord River

1751. and spread throughout the town.

1752. They entered houses,

1753. broke into barns and outbuildings.

1754. Most of the arms and provisions they'd hoped to find

1755. had either been shifted elsewhere

1756. or successfully hidden.

1757. But they did smash open 60 barrels of flour

1758. and destroyed several wooden gun carriages

1759. before setting it all ablaze.

1760. The decision is made by the American commanders

1761. on the scene that we're not gonna fight in Concord.

1762. We will retreat across the Concord River,

1763. across the North Bridge,

1764. and we will wait for them on the other side.

1765. By then, some 450 militiamen

1766. were clustered together on a hillside

1767. overlooking the North Bridge,

1768. still under strict orders not to fire upon the King's troops

1769. unless fired upon.

1770. But when they saw smoke rising from town,

1771. they concluded that Concord itself was burning.

1772. At North Bridge, the American soldiers,

1773. the militiamen, see this and they say to each other,

1774. "They're burning down our town.

1775. Are we gonna let them burn down our town?"

1776. And that's when they march to the bridge.

1777. 3 companies of British regulars

1778. now guarded the bridge.

1779. Isaac Davis, the gunsmith from Acton,

1780. was picked to head the column sent towards it.

1781. Suddenly, without orders, a redcoat fired his musket.

1782. The front line of British troops followed with a ragged volley.

1783. A musket ball tore through Isaac Davis' chest,

1784. severing an artery and spraying blood

1785. on two men coming up behind him.

1786. Abner Hosmer, another member of his company,

1787. was shot through the head.

1788. "God damn them," a militia captain shouted.

1789. "Fire men, fire!"

1790. At least 8 redcoats were hit, including 4 officers.

1791. The British began to back away, then to run.

1792. When one wounded soldier struggled to his feet

1793. and tried to follow,

1794. a militiaman split his skull with a hatchet.

1795. The British regulars regrouped and began the long march

1796. back to Boston.

1797. Before the whole had quitted the town,

1798. we were fired on from houses and behind trees.

1799. And before we had gone half a mile,

1800. we were fired on from all sides, but mostly from the rear,

1801. where people had hid themselves in houses

1802. till we had passed and then fired.

1803. Every step of the way becomes more intense.

1804. The sound of bullets winging around them.

1805. The sound of bullets hitting soldiers,

1806. this deep thud, as if you're beating a rug...

1807. screams of men who've been wounded

1808. in the British column.

1809. And it's beginning to look as though

1810. the column could be destroyed.

1811. The British were in complete disarray

1812. as they staggered into Lexington.

1813. But now filling the road ahead of them

1814. were more than 1,000 much-needed reinforcements.

1815. Two British cannon swept the Lexington Green,

1816. and one ball smashed through the wall of the meetinghouse.

1817. Several houses were set on fire,

1818. but the redcoats were still outnumbered

1819. and under relentless attack.

1820. They resumed their retreat to Boston.

1821. We retired for 15 miles

1822. under an incessant fire,

1823. which like a moving circle surrounded us

1824. and followed us wherever we went.

1825. It was impossible not to lose a good many men.

1826. General Hugh Percy.

1827. The retreat from Concord

1828. was a truly horrifying event for many British soldiers.

1829. It would have been a fairly traumatic experience,

1830. to put it mildly, to be shot at from all sides

1831. by people you didn't believe were going to shoot at you.

1832. In the village of Monatomy,

1833. the fighting was house-to-house.

1834. A militiaman named Amos Farnsworth

1835. remembered entering a home to find a pool of blood

1836. that half-covered his shoes.

1837. The bloody field at Monatomy

1838. was strewed with mangled bodies.

1839. We met one affectionate father with a cart,

1840. looking for his murderd son,

1841. and picking up his neighbors who had fallen in battle.

1842. Hannah Winthrop.

1843. In Boston, crowds watched

1844. as the redcoats straggled back.

1845. The British had suffered 273 casualties, including 73 dead.

1846. 95 Americans had been hit over the course of the day,

1847. 49 of them fatally.

1848. Family members moved along the road looking for missing sons

1849. and brothers and fathers.

1850. In Acton that evening, Hannah Davis and her 4 children

1851. looked on as men of her husband Isaac's militia company

1852. carried his corpse through her door.

1853. He was placed in my bedroom

1854. till the funeral.

1855. The bodies of Abner Hosmer, one of the company,

1856. and of James Hayward, who was killed in Lexington

1857. in the afternoon, were brought by their friends to the house,

1858. where the funeral of the three was attended together.

1859. As April 19th drew to a close, some 14,000 armed men

1860. from 58 Massachusetts towns and villages

1861. were converging on Boston.

1862. And as the news of the bloodshed spread,

1863. they would soon be joined by more men

1864. from Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut,

1865. until a 10-mile semicircle of hundreds of campfires

1866. stretched from Roxbury to Chelsea, cutting off Boston.

1867. General Gage ordered his men to dig in and prepare for a siege.

1868. The British are pretty secure in Boston

1869. because they have enough firepower,

1870. they have enough manpower to prevent the Americans

1871. from pushing them out of Boston.

1872. And they have the Royal Navy.

1873. But they are, essentially, surrounded.

1874. It's not a true siege because they've got passage

1875. in and out of Boston Harbor.

1876. They can bring in supplies.

1877. They can bring in reinforcements, as need be.

1878. But they can't get outside of Boston proper.

1879. So, the British Empire, in New England,

1880. at this point, consists of about 1 square mile

1881. of Boston itself.

1882. When I reflect and consider

1883. that the fight was between those whose parents

1884. but a few generations ago were brothers,

1885. I shudder at the thought.

1886. And there's no knowing where our calamities will end.

1887. John Andrews.

1888. War never follows the script

1889. that you have written for it when you set out to make war.

1890. The British objective is, first and foremost,

1891. to suppress the rebellion.

1892. It's to teach the rascals a lesson.

1893. It's to force them to acknowledge

1894. the primacy of Parliament and the authority of the King.

1895. And so, now the decision has been made

1896. that we will use force.

1897. And there's a presumption that it won't take much...

1898. but it's gonna go on for 8 years—

1899. 8 years, blood, treasure, catastrophe, really,

1900. for the British Empire.

1901. So, uh, those initial shots on Lexington Green,

1902. on the morning of April 19, 1775,

1903. are going to have profound repercussions.

1904. The whole country was in a commotion,

1905. and nothing was talked of but war, liberty, or death.

1906. John Greenwood was 14 that April.

1907. His father had sent him away

1908. 2 years earlier to Falmouth— now Portland—Maine

1909. to learn cabinet-making as an apprentice to an uncle.

1910. But when news of Lexington and Concord reached him,

1911. he asked to be allowed to return to Boston

1912. to make sure his parents and siblings were safe.

1913. He was worried that they "would all be killed by the British."

1914. It would take him 41/2 days to walk the 100 miles to Boston.

1915. As I stopped at the taverns,

1916. out came my fife,

1917. and I played them a tune or two.

1918. They used to ask me where I came from

1919. and where I was a-going to.

1920. I told them I was a-going to fight for my country.

1921. They were astonished such a little boy and alone

1922. should have such courage.

1923. When John reached Charles Town,

1924. he hoped to take a ferry to Boston,

1925. but a sentry stopped him.

1926. No one was allowed into the besieged city.

1927. It's terrifying to be a civilian in Boston,

1928. regardless of your political affiliation.

1929. Especially women and children are just looking

1930. for any way out.

1931. Something like 12,000 people of a town of about 16,000

1932. manage to leave.

1933. Unable to find his parents among the refugees,

1934. Greenwood was invited by 2 young militiamen

1935. to share their quarters in Cambridge—the empty,

1936. looted home of a Loyalist clergyman

1937. who'd fled to the British.

1938. His friends urged him to enlist in their company as a fifer,

1939. and he agreed.

1940. They told me it was only

1941. for eight months,

1942. and that I would have eight dollars a month,

1943. and that they would quick drive the British from Boston,

1944. and then I could have an opportunity

1945. of seeing my parents.

1946. Britain has found means

1947. to unite us.

1948. General Gage drew the sword; and a war is commenced,

1949. which the youngest of us may not see the end of.

1950. Benjamin Franklin returned home from London

1951. in time to attend the Second Continental Congress

1952. that began meeting at the Pennsylvania State House

1953. in Philadelphia just 3 weeks after Lexington and Concord.

1954. Delegates from all 13 colonies now attended,

1955. but they remained split between those still hoping

1956. for reconciliation and those, like John Adams,

1957. convinced a revolution was now inevitable.

1958. The cancer is too deeply rooted,

1959. and too far spread to be cured by anything

1960. short of cutting it out entire.

1961. From Boston, British General Hugh Percy

1962. sent a warning to his superiors in London.

1963. Whoever looks upon the Americans

1964. as an irregular mob will find himself much mistaken.

1965. They have men amongst them who know

1966. very well what they are about.

1967. You may depend upon it,

1968. that as the rebels have now had time to prepare,

1969. they are determined to go through with it.

1970. What a scene has opened upon us.

1971. If we look back, we are amazed at what is past.

1972. If we look forward, we must shudder at the view.

1973. Our only comfort lies in the justice of our cause.

1974. All our worldly comforts are now at stake—

1975. our nearest and dearest connections

1976. are hazarding their lives and properties.

1977. God give them wisdom and integrity sufficient

1978. to the great cause in which they are engaged.

1979. Abigail Adams.