The opening incidents of the Revolution, to which these questions refer us, are a familiar chapter in its history. On the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, an expedition of British regulars, moving out from Boston, came upon a company of provincials hastily forming on Lexington Common, twelve miles distant. The attitude of these countrymen represented the last step to which they had been driven by the aggressive acts of the home Parliament. Up to this moment the controversy over colonial rights and privileges had been confined, from the days of the Stamp Act, to argument, protest, petition, and legislative proceedings; but these failing to convince or conciliate either party, it only remained for Great Britain to exercise her authority in the case with force.
The expedition in question had been organized for the purpose of seizing the military stores belonging to the Massachusetts Colony, then collected at Concord, and which the king's authorities regarded as too dangerous material to be in the hands of the people at that stage of the crisis. The provincials, on the other hand, watched them jealously. King and Parliament might question their rights, block up their port, ruin their trade, proscribe their leaders, and they could bear all without offering open resistance. But the attempt to deprive them of the means of self-defence at a time when the current of affairs clearly indicated that, sooner or later, they would be compelled to defend themselves, was an act to which they would not submit, as already they had shown on more than one occasion. To no other right did the colonist cling more tenaciously at this juncture than to his right to his powder. The men at Lexington, therefore, drew up on their village grounds, not defiantly, but in obedience to the most natural impulse. Their position was a logical one. To have remained quietly in their homes would have been a stultification of their whole record from the beginning of the troubles; stand they must, some time and somewhere. Under the circumstances, a collision between the king's troops and the provincials that morning was inevitable. The commander of the former, charged with orders to disperse all "rebels," made the sharp demand upon the Lexington company instantly to lay down their arms. A moment's confusion and delay—then scattering shots—then a full volley from the regulars—and ten men fell dead and wounded upon the green. Here was a shock, the ultimate consequences of which few of the participants in the scene could have forecast; but it was the alarm-gun of the Revolution.
Events followed rapidly. The march of the British to Concord, the destruction of the stores, the skirmish at the bridge, and, later in the day, the famous road-fight kept up by the farmers down to Charlestown, ending in the signal demoralization and defeat of the expedition, combined with the Lexington episode to make the 19th of April an historic date. The rapid spread of the news, the excitement in New England, the uprising of the militia and their hurried march to Boston to resist any further excursions of the regulars, were the immediate consequence of this collision.
Nor was the alarm confined to the Eastern colonies, then chiefly affected. A courier delivered the news in New York three days later, on Sunday noon, and the liberty party at once seized the public military stores, and prevented vessels loaded with supplies for the British in Boston from leaving port. Soon came fuller accounts of the expedition and its rout. Expresses carried them southward, and their course can be followed for nearly a thousand miles along the coast. On the 23d and 24th they passed through Connecticut, where at Wallingford the dispatches quaintly describe the turning out of the militiamen: "The country beyond here are all gone." They reached New York at two o'clock on the 25th, and Isaac Low countersigns. Relays taking them up in New Jersey, report at Princeton on the 26th, at "3.30 a.m." They are at Philadelphia at noon, and "forwarded at the same time." We find them at New Castle, Delaware, at nine in the evening; at Baltimore at ten on the following night; at Alexandria, Virginia, at sunset on the 29th; at Williamsburg, May 2d; and at Edenton, North Carolina, on the 4th, with directions to the next Committee of Safety: "Disperse the material passages [of the accounts] through all your parts." Down through the deep pine regions, stopping at Bath and Newbern, ride the horsemen, reaching Wilmington at 4 p.m. on the 8th. "Forward it by night and day," say the committee. At Brunswick at nine the indorsement is entered: "Pray don't neglect a moment in forwarding." At Georgetown, South Carolina, where the dispatches arrive at 6.30 p.m. on the 10th, the committee address a note to their Charleston brethren: "We send you by express a letter and newspapers with momentous intelligence this instant arrived." The news reaching Savannah, a party of citizens immediately took possession of the government powder.
The wave of excitement which follows the signal of a coming struggle was thus borne by its own force throughout the length of the colonies. And from the coast the intelligence spread inland as far as settlers had found their way. In distant Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, men heard it, and began to organize and drill. At Charlotte, North Carolina, they sounded the first note for independence. From many points brave and sympathetic words were sent to the people of Massachusetts Bay, and in all quarters people discussed the probable effect of the startling turn matters had taken in that colony. The likelihood of a general rupture with the mother country now came to be seriously entertained.
Meanwhile the situation to the eastward assumed more and more a military aspect. On the 10th of May occurred the surprise and capture, by Ethan Allen and his party, of the important post of Ticonderoga, where during the summer the provincials organized a force to march upon and, if possible, secure the Canadas. The Continental Congress at Philadelphia, after resolving that the issue had been forced upon them by Great Britain, voted to prepare for self-defence. They adopted the New England troops, gathered around Boston, as a Continental force, and appointed Washington to the chief command. Then on the 17th of June Bunker Hill was fought, that first regular action of the war, with its far-reaching moral effect; and following it came the siege of Boston, or the hemming in of the British by the Americans, until the former were finally compelled to evacuate the city.
It is here in these culminating events of the spring and summer of 1775 that we find the occasion for the preparations made by Great Britain for the campaign of 1776. Little appreciating the genius of the colonists, underrating their resources and capacity for resistance, mistaking also their motives, King George and his party imagined that on the first display of England's power all disturbance and attempts at rebellion across the sea would instantly cease. But the sudden transition from peace to war, and the complete mastery of the situation which the colonists appeared to hold, convinced the home government that "the American business" was no trifling trouble, to be readily settled by a few British regiments. As the season advanced, they began to realize the fact that General Gage, and then Howe succeeding him, with their force of ten thousand choice troops, were helplessly pent up in Boston; that Montreal and Quebec were threatened; that colonists in the undisturbed sections were arming; and that Congress was supplanting the authority of Parliament. A more rigorous treatment of the revolt had become necessary; and as the time had passed to effect any thing on a grand scale during the present year, measures were proposed to crush all opposition in the next campaign. Follow, briefly, the course of the British Government at this crisis.
Parliament convened on the 26th day of October. The king's speech, with which it opened, was necessarily devoted to the American question, and it declared his policy clearly and boldly. His rebellious subjects must be brought to terms. "They have raised troops," he said, "and are collecting a naval force; they have seized the public revenue, and assumed to themselves legislative, executive, and judicial powers, which they already exercise, in the most arbitrary manner, over the persons and properties of their fellow subjects: and although many of these unhappy people may still retain their loyalty, and may be too wise not to see the fatal consequence of this usurpation and wish to resist it, yet the torrent of violence has been strong enough to compel their acquiescence, till a sufficient force shall appear to support them. The authors and promoters of this desperate conspiracy have, in the conduct of it, derived great advantage from the difference of our intentions and theirs. They meant only to amuse by vague expressions of attachment to the parent state, and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me, whilst they were preparing for a general revolt. On our part, though it was declared in your last session that a rebellion existed within the province of the Massachusetts' Bay, yet even that province we wished rather to reclaim than to subdue.... The rebellious war now levied is become more general, and is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire. I need not dwell upon the fatal effects of the success of such a plan.... It is now become the part of wisdom, and (in its effects) of clemency, to put a speedy end to these disorders, by the most decisive exertions. For this purpose, I have increased my naval establishment, and greatly augmented my land forces, but in such a manner as may be the least burthensome to my kingdoms. I have also the satisfaction to inform you, that I have received the most friendly offers of foreign assistance, and if I shall make any treaties in consequence thereof, they shall be laid before you."
A stranger in Parliament, knowing nothing of the merits of the controversy, would have assumed from the tone of this speech that the home government had been grossly wronged by the American colonists, or at least a powerful faction among them, and that their suppression was a matter of national honor as well as necessity. But the speech was inexcusably unjust to the colonists. The charge of design and double-dealing could not be laid against them, for the ground of their grievances had been the same from the outset, and their conduct consistent with single motives; and if independence had been mentioned at all as yet, it was only as an ulterior resort, and not as an aim or ambition. The king and the Ministry, on the other hand, were wedded to strict notions of authority in the central government, and measured a citizen's fidelity by the readiness with which he submitted to its policy and legislation. Protests and discussion about "charters" and "liberties" were distasteful to them, and whoever disputed Parliament in any case was denounced as strong-headed and factious. The king's speech, therefore, was no more than what was expected from him. It reflected the sentiments of the ruling party.