“But why do I seek to kindle a fire in ice? Why seek to arouse the vengeance of those who care for no miseries but their own, and are enamoured of their fetters? I, indeed, can lose no more. Misfortune hath emptied her quiver,—she hath no other shaft for this bleeding breast; but flatter not yourselves that the lust of Appius Claudius has expired with the defeat of his purpose.
“Your homes, likewise, invite the destroyer; into your fold the grim wolf will leap; among the lambs of your flock will he revel, his jaws dripping blood. For you, also, the bow is bent; the arrow drawn to the head; and the string impatient of its charge. By all that I have lost, and that you imperil by delay, avenge this accursed wrong!
“If you have arms, use them; liberties, vindicate them; patriotism, save the tottering State; natural affection, protect the domestic hearth; piety, appease the wrath of the gods by avenging the blood that cries to heaven. To arms! To arms! or your swords will leap from their scabbards, the trumpets sound the onset, and the standards of themselves advance to rebuke your delay!”
GENERAL GAGE AND THE BOSTON BOYS
The year seventeen hundred and seventy-five dawned gloomily upon the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay. Portentous clouds darkened the political horizon, while clear-sighted and forecasting men prepared themselves for a struggle they saw to be inevitable. The attempt to crush by force of arms the spirit of liberty in the colonies had already commenced. A hostile fleet, with guns double-shotted and trained upon the town, lay at anchor in Boston Harbor. The town was under martial law, the hills bristled with cannon, sentinels challenged the citizen going to his daily vocations, and the common was a camp.
On the wharves of this busy emporium of colonial trade that had been wont to send its thousand vessels each year to foreign and domestic ports, the sailor’s song was hushed, warehouses were closed, and no canvas fluttered to the breeze. But few shops, and those only which dealt in the necessaries of life, were opened, and the hammer of the artisan lay rusting on the anvil. In many streets the snow lying white and undisturbed before the doors of hospitable dwellings evinced that their occupants had fled from a tyranny they were unable to resist. Beneath this grinding oppression, so intolerable to the spirit of a free people, no weak complaints were uttered nor sounds of riot heard. The citizen pursuing his business brushed the sentinel with a calm brow and sealed lips, and the children went to and fro to their schools and plays.
When soldiers barracked and horses were stabled in their churches, when bayonets gleamed in their halls of legislation, they lifted up the voice to God in other places and the town meeting was held as heretofore. For the first time in the history of peoples, the flocks sported in the pasture or slept in the fold unconscious of the butcher’s knife; the inhabitants of Massachusetts had resolved to eat no mutton, that their resources might be increased. On the roofs of sheds and porticoes wool and flax were bleaching; from hundreds of dwellings were heard the hum of the wheel and the stroke of the loom, where the mothers of heroes were preparing their children for the forum or the field. Balls were run and cartridges made by the hands of women and children at the kitchen fire, and, deftly concealed in loads of offal, passed unchallenged the sentries to hiding-places in the neighboring towns. Men who pursued their usual labors during the day met at midnight in garrets and cellars, and after swearing upon the Scriptures to keep secret the purpose of the meeting, consulted and prayed together, enduring meanwhile as best they might the insults of the soldiery.