It was Wednesday afternoon and half-holiday. General Gage, commander of troops that held watch and ward over the rebels in Massachusetts Bay and the town of Boston in particular, was sitting in his quarters at the Province House. The general’s brow was clouded and he was evidently a prey to uneasy thoughts; the intelligent perversity of his opponents both perplexed and alarmed him. He liked not the unwonted calm, the utter absence of bluster and bravado, for he knew too well the temper of the people with whom he had to deal to mistake silence for submission. He had fought with Washington at Duquesne, aided to bear the dying Braddock from the field, and feared that the rifles that then saved the British army from utter destruction were only biding their time, and the drums that beat at Louisburg might at any moment wake the slumbering fires and the mine explode beneath his feet.
While thus uneasily balancing probabilities, his servant announced that some boys requested an interview. The general, who was exceedingly fond of children, ordered them to be admitted.
“Well, boys,” he inquired, “what is your business with me?”
“We have come, sir,” said the tallest boy, “to demand satisfaction.”
“What, have your fathers been teaching you rebellion and sent you to show it here?”
“No, sir, nobody sent us and nobody told us to come, but we’ve come of our own accord for our rights. The common belongs to the people of Boston and their children. We are town born, all of us, and so are the boys whom we represent, therefore we have a right to play on the common. We have asked many old people, and they tell us that boys always have had this right, that they played there and their fathers before them. We have never made faces at your soldiers, called them lobsters, thrown snowballs at them, or insulted them in any manner, but while we were minding our business, skating and building snow hills, just as we have always done every winter before even they were here, they came and trampled down our sliding hills, and broke the ice on our skating ground with the breech of their musket. We complained; they called us young rebels and told us to help ourselves if we could. We then went to the captain, and he laughed at us. We have come, sir, for our rights. We want only the rights which the law gives us and boys have always had. Yesterday your soldiers destroyed our works for the third time, and we won’t endure this oppression any longer. Your soldiers may shoot us if they wish, but if you will not give us satisfaction, we will get together all the boys and defend our works while there is a snowball, a stone, or a boy left in the town of Boston; for if we can’t play on our own common and skate on our own pond, what can we do?”
The general could not but admire the resolution of the boys and assured them that henceforth their rights should be respected.