At last Eng-land made a law called the "Stamp Act," which put so high a tax on goods that folks here would not pay it; tea was one of the things on which this tax was put; and when Eng-land sent o-ver three ships full of tea to Bos-ton, our men would not let it be ta-ken from the ships, but broke the great chests and threw all the tea in the wa-ter. This act is known as the "Bos-ton Tea Par-ty"; and now the first signs of war were seen; a fierce fight took place at Lex-ing-ton, one Sun-day morn-ing, be-tween the Brit-ish and A-mer-i-can troops; and now, all o-ver the land, went up the cry, "To arms! To arms!"
This is how the great War of In-de-pend-ence be-gan; and you know the name of the man who was at once put at the head of the A-mer-i-can ar-my—George Wash-ing-ton, of course! Now he is not an Eng-lish-man fight-ing for his king, but an A-mer-i-can fight-ing to free his own land. A long, hard fight it was, too, but not once did Wash-ing-ton or his brave men lose heart. He drove the Brit-ish out of Bos-ton, and then, for fear they would go to New York, he sent men there; but the Brit-ish ships went to Can-a-da in-stead, and made that land theirs.
It was just at this time that Rich-ard Hen-ry Lee, the boy-friend of Wash-ing-ton, made a move in Con-gress that our land should say to the whole world that it would be free from Brit-ish rule; and so the Dec-lar-a-tion of In-de-pend-ence was drawn up and sent out to the world on July 4, 1776.
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL BURGOYNE.
From an English print, 1733.
War now be-gan in dead-ly earn-est; and, at the great bat-tle of Long Isl-and, our men met with great loss of life, and had to flee from the foe. Soon af-ter this bad news the Brit-ish took Phil-a-del-phi-a, and now Wash-ing-ton was sad at heart; on Christ-mas day of 1776, though, our troops won in the great fight that took place at Tren-ton, and there was joy in the whole land; good news came with the New Year, too, for Wash-ing-ton won ma-ny fights; and at last, in Oc-to-ber, 1777, the Brit-ish troops in charge of Gen-er-al Bur-goyne gave up their arms to Gen-er-al Gates. That win-ter of 1777 was a bad one for Wash-ing-ton and his men; at no time in the war did they suf-fer so much; the time was spent at Val-ley Forge, and the men lived in log huts which they had first built, in long straight lines, like cit-y streets; twelve men lived in each hut, and there was a fire-place at the back, but no fire could keep out the aw-ful cold, and no hut was snug e-nough to keep out the snow that fell in great drifts a-round this lit-tle town of log huts. To make things worse there was lit-tle food to be had; the men had on-ly poor, thin clothes, and their bare feet oft-en left marks of blood on the white snow. But the men did not lose hope, and kept their faith through all the long months in their great lead-er, whose lot was quite as hard as theirs was; the farm-house in which he had a room still stands, and it is hard to be-lieve, as you look at this old house on the banks of the Del-a-ware Riv-er, that once the big or-chard back of it and
all the pret-ty fields were filled with poor little wood-en huts in which, for the sake of free-dom, lived and suf-fered thou-sands of brave men.
In the spring things were bet-ter, for France joined A-mer-i-ca in her fight for free-dom, and three years from this time the Brit-ish were beaten at York-town and A-mer-i-ca was free. One of the great French-men, who gave us much help, and was a firm friend of Wash-ing-ton's, was the Mar-quis de La-fay-ette.
