arlotte, 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 eff