bigail Adams,[88] "cannot produce a blacker page. Satan, when
driven from the regions of bliss, exhibited not more malice. Surely the
father of lies is superseded." The provincial congress prepared a
counter proclamation, which similarly offered amnesty to all on the
other side, "excepting only ... Thomas Gage, Samuel Graves, those
counsellors who were appointed by Mandamus and have not signified their
resignation, Jonathan Sewall, Charles Paxton, Benjamin Hallowell,[89]
and all the natives of America who went out with the British troops on
the 19th of April." We get from this an interesting glimpse of those who
most excited American resentment, but the proclamation was never issued.
More exciting events occurred to prevent it.

Gage was planning to make himself secure in Boston. Even he could not
fail to see that the heights of Charlestown and of Dorchester threatened
his army. Now that his three major-generals had come, and that his
reinforcements were arriving (the troop-ships, said Lieutenant Barker,
were "continually dropping in"), he felt strong enough to take and hold
the dangerous posts. His plan was first to seize Dorchester Heights, and
for the action was set a date--the night of the eighteenth of June. But
Gage's counsel was never well kept. While Burgoyne complained that the
British "are ignorant not only of what passes in Congress, but want
spies for the hill half a mile off," the Americans were in no such
embarrassment. They had spies at every corner, and--we may
suppose--listeners at many a door. Gage had already arrested men
supposed to have been signalling from steeples. We do not know how the
news got through on this occasion; at any rate the Americans were
informed as early as the 13th.[90]

The chiefs of the provincial army felt that they were called upon to
act. In the seven weeks of the siege they had to some degree tested the
mettle of their men, and now believed they could be depended on to keep
together against an attack. The troops had, on one occasion, made an
expedition to Charlestown, which lay practically deserted on its
peninsula, as if conscious of the fate which was to overtake it. On the
13th of May, Putnam, to give his men confidence, marched his command,
some twenty-two hundred men, into the town, over Bunker and Breed's
Hills, where some of them were soon to lay down their lives, along the
water-front close by the British shipping, and out of the town once
more. "It was," wrote Lieu