some of the best men of the country sent from the colonies. One of these
was George Washington, who had lived on his farm at Mount Vernon since
the end of the French War.

Congress sent a letter to the king, asking him to give the people of
this country the same rights that the people of England had. There was
no harm in this, I am sure, but it made the king more obstinate still. I
have said he was not a wise man. Most people say he was a very foolish
one, or he would have known that the people of the colonies would fight
for their rights if they could not get them in peace.

All around Boston the farmers and villagers began to collect guns and
powder and to drill men into soldiers. These were called "minute men,"
which meant that they would be ready to fight at a minute's notice, if
they were asked to. When people begin to get ready in this way, war is
usually not far off.

One night at Boston a man named Paul Revere stood watching a distant
steeple till he saw a light suddenly flash out through the darkness.
Then he leaped on his horse and rode at full speed away. That light was
a signal telling him that British soldiers were on the march to Concord
twenty miles away, to destroy some powder and guns which had been
gathered there for the use of these "minute men."

Away rode Revere through the night, rousing up the people and shouting
to them that the British soldiers were coming. He was far ahead of the
soldiers, so that when they reached the village of Lexington, ten miles
from Boston, the people were wide awake, and a party of minute men was
drawn up on the village green. The soldiers were ordered to fire on
these men, and some of them fell dead. Those were the first shots in a
great war. It was the 19th of April, 1775.

The British marched on to Concord, but the farmers had carried away most
of the stores and buried them in the woods. Then the red-coats started
back, and a terrible march they had of it. For all along the road were
farmers with guns in their hands, firing on the troops from behind trees
and stone walls. Some of the soldiers got back to Boston, but many of
them lay dead in the road. The poor fellows killed at Lexington were
terribly avenged.

Far and wide spread the news, and on all sides the farmers left their
plows and took down their rifles, and thousands of them set out along
the roads to Boston. Soon there were twenty thousand armed men around
the town, and the British were shut up like r