A squad of militiamen stood guard at the house as Revere dismounted, spurs clanking. Here Clarke had written three thousand sermons in twenty years here he called up the stairs each morning to rouse his ten children-“Polly, Betsey, Lucy, Liddy, Patty, Sally, Thomas, Jonas, William, Peter, get up!” And here he had given sanctuary, in a bedroom to the left of the front door, to the renegades Hancock and Samuel Adams. Popular lore later credited him with a stirring battle cry-“The British are coming!”-but a witness quoted him as warning, more prosaically, “The regulars are coming out.” Now he carried the alarm to the Reverend Jonas Clarke’s parsonage, just up the road from Lexington Common. Veering north toward the Mystic River to avoid further trouble, Revere had alerted almost every farmstead and minute captain within shouting distance. “Two hours later, Revere trotted into Lexington, his mount thoroughly lathered after outgalloping a pair of Gage’s equestrian sentinels near Charlestown. The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn.

Our enemies are numerous and powerful, but we have many friends, determining to be free.… On you depend the fortunes of America.

Warren circled round to that very point: Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Wood later wrote, would prove their blessedness. This struggle, as the historian Gordon S. Sometimes political strife was also a moral contest between right and wrong, good and evil. They were godly, of course, placed here by the Almighty to do His will. They had not consented to being taxed, to being occupied, to seeing their councils dismissed and their port sealed like a graveyard crypt. Convinced that their elected assemblies were equal in stature and authority to Parliament, they believed that governance by consent was paramount. “Reasonably democratic, reasonably egalitarian, wary of privilege and outsiders, they were accustomed to tending their own affairs, choosing their own ministers, militia officers, and political leaders.

The british are coming rick atkinson