Valleydale High School - Conquest Yearbook (Charlotte, NC)

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distress. Each unit of men had a few who were subject to instant call. They were designated Minutemen, The Committee set about pro- curing arms and provisions for up to l5,000 militiamen, choosing Concord as a suitable depot because of its distance from the British troops in Boston. The spring of 1775 brought British retaliation with new acts forbidding the colonies to trade :E anywhere except with England or the British West Indies. New England fishing boats were I l forbidden to fish the North Atlantic waters. Xi' General Gage now faced the difficult task of Y enforcing these new acts of Parliament while K Im at the same time trying to pacify the Massachu- X setts colony e an obviously impossible task. The t X concern of the Committee of Safety was soon E -of f ff? - l L WV , V :sax f Al X 39 all :Q I X i, ill' rf! 'QT57 i ' 1 T .. -e . ,uf 7 X K 'ii ggi?-:'6ixml' E f :E-il' f f ,W ,ff , if ff . e if M 'ii 01:02 Eau Sl I 1 'li' ll -1511.315 f ' -L-x7 - :.:I:? '+ J and the pursuit of Happiness - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted

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cedures and voting rights. Patrick Henry jumped to his feet, saying, Let free men be represented by numbers alone . . . there are no distinctions HERE . . . I am not a Virginian, I am an Ameri- can. The Congress put forth a set of resolutions similar to Massachusetts' Suffolk Resolves, stating colonial rights to life, liberty and property, the rights to free assembly and exclusive power to determine taxation and internal policy. Thirteen acts of Parliament were declared illegal. Eco- nomic boycotts were to be brought against England, until such time of their repeal. All future imports from England were to cease! During the winter months of 1774, tension ran high in Boston. More and more of King Georgels troops arrived. As cold weather also arrived, it became impractical for the troops to quarter on the Commons. General Thomas Gage,the British Commander, tried ' to hire labor to build huts, but to no avail. Unemployment was high, the British wages good but few Bostonians responded with any spirit of cooperativeness. Keeping up the troops' morale was difficult. so marches were made across the bay to the interior. On one such march, American arms and powder were confiscated by the British at Cambridge and Charlestowng the reaction to these forays was the organization of the Com- mittee ofSafety. . John Hancock, a wealthy merchant and shipper, was selected to head the group. The Committee was given the power to call out the militia - of the entire colony if necessary f at any sign of at they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are

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Perhaps I do not go too far when I say that next to the introduction of Christianity among mankind, the American Revolution may prove the most important step in the progressive course of Human improvement. Richard Price 1770 aroused by the large troop movements being made outside Boston, and arrangements were made with patriots to warn the Committee if at any time more than 500 British troops left the city's garrison. On the night of April l8, l775, Paul Revere. was awakened and warned of British activities. While being rowed across Charles Harbor, Revere looked for and found his signal A two lanterns in the spire of Old North Church, the sign that the British were moving in force, by water. Revere's main objective was to warn John Hancock and Sam Adams, who were staying in the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington. After doing so he joined William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, soon they were ambushed by a British patrol and Revere was captured. He was later released without his horse. By that time, how- ever, others had warned every Middlesex village and farm. General Gage's men were not in the best of moods: being aroused soon after going to bed, rowing across the Charles river, disembarking into knee deep water and standing for two hours in the cold night before marching off to Lex- ington-Concord had made them anxious, to say g Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed That whenever any