ment of the
nation." Yet all this was beside the main point, which was that the
action of Congress, whether expedient or not, was illegal. It was
illegal because it authorized the committees to enforce the Association
upon all alike, upon those who never agreed to observe it as well as
upon those who did; and these committees, as everyone knew, were so
enforcing it and were "imposing penalties upon those who have presumed
to violate it." The Congress talked loudly of the tyranny of the British
Government. Tyranny! Good Heavens! Was any tyranny worse than that of
self-constituted committees which, in the name of liberty, were daily
conducting the most hateful inquisition into the private affairs of free
British subjects? "Will you choose such committees? Will you submit
to them should they be chosen by the weak, foolish, turbulent part of
the... people? I will not. No. If I must be enslaved, let it be by a KING
at least, and not by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen."

The Massachusetts men were meanwhile showing no disposition to submit
to the King. In that colony a Provincial Congress, organized at Salem
in October, 1774, and afterwards removed to Cambridge, had assumed
all powers of government in spite of General Gage and contrary to the
provisions of the act by which Parliament had presumed to remodel the
Massachusetts charter. Outside of Boston at least, the allegiance of the
people was freely given to this extra-legal government; and under its
direction the towns began to prepare for defense by organizing the
militia and procuring and storing arms and ammunition.

To destroy such stores of ammunition seemed to General Gage quite the
most obvious of his duties; and Colonel Smith was accordingly ordered to
proceed to the little village of Concord, some eighteen miles northwest
of Boston, and destroy the magazines which were known to be collected
there. The night of the 18th of April was the time fixed for this
expedition; and in the evening of that day patriots in Boston noted
with alarm that bodies of troops were moving towards the waterside. Dr.
Joseph Warren, knowing or easily guessing the destination of the troops,
at once despatched William Dawes, and later in the evening Paul Revere
also, to Lexington and Concord to spread the alarm. As the little army
of Colonel Smith--a thousand men, more or less--left Boston and marched
up into the country, church bells and the booming of cannon announced
their comin