own aid-de-camp in carrying orders both to the front and rear. As he had no specific command, though most of the troops recognized his authority, he was occupied, during the intervals between the assaults, in urging the reinforcements forward, and providing for all the exigencies of the occasion; in short, he was the only officer during the latter part of the day who appears to have concerned himself with any other duty than that of repelling the enemy at the lines. In this, as in every other respect, he showed himself not only a brave, but a provident and skilful commander, and to the arrangements made by him out of the redoubt may fairly be attributed in part the length and obstinacy of the resistance offered by the Americans.

Mr. Frothingham's account of the battle of Lexington, and of the other incidents of the siege of Boston, is as minute and as carefully compiled as his narrative of the memorable conflict at Charlestown. Many new authorities, hitherto unpublished, are cited, and the very circumstantial history that is digested from these and other sources of information not only brings out in strong relief the leading events of the war, but shows the spirit in which it was waged, the feelings of the people, and the peculiar nature of the contest. As the American Revolution was the first great struggle in modern times for the combined objects of popular government and national independence, so it was broadly distinguished by many peculiar features from all those which came after it, and which were in some sense consequences of it, or imitations of it, upon the continent of Europe. It was a very different thing from the French Revolution, to which it gave the initial impulse, and from all the subsequent contests for popular rights which were created by the spirit of propagandism that animated the French republicans. A knowledge of the differences here alluded to is necessary for a true comprehension of the nature of our existing institutions, and for a proper measure of the sympathy which we ought to feel with those who have been, or are, engaged in contests that have been too rashly assumed to be perfectly analogous to our own national struggle for independence. This knowledge can be obtained only from careful study of the details, the minute incidents, of the earlier part of the American movement; the earlier part, we say, because the spirit and motives of the people are

then most apparent, when their efforts were spontaneous and made without concert, before the rebellion was systematized by the Declaration of Independence, by the acknowledgment of the authority of Congress, and by the organization of a regular army. Here in New England, before Washington assumed the command of the army, and more than a year before the Colonies formally declared their independence, those incidents occurred which determined the nature of the contest, and manifested the intentions of those who were engaged in it. Before the 4th of July, 1776, the movement was a wholly popular and spontaneous one, an acknowledged rebellion against an illegitimate and unjustifiable assumption of authority by the British parliament. On that day, the contest was in fact decided, and the independence of America established; the long struggle which followed was an ordinary war waged between two governments, the one fighting for the recovery of the dominion it had lost, the other for the preservation of the liberty it had gained.

We are grateful, then, to Mr. Frothingham for giving us this very minute and carefully elaborated history of a portion of the contest which has an interest and a unity of its own. Circumstantial as his narrative is, it is no more so than is needed by the careful student who wishes to have a full conception of the nature and causes of the insurrection, of the circumstances under which the people acted, and of the immediate objects that they had in view. He needs it, as we have said, before he can compare the American revolution with the revolutions that have subsequently occurred in Europe, and gain a clear idea of the differences between them. He needs it before he can have a due sense of the gratitude which he owes to the men of that period for the services which they rendered to their posterity and to the world.

Among other peculiarities of the early part of the contest, we are struck particularly by the hearty and spontaneous cooperation of the inhabitants of the larger and smaller towns throughout New England. The movement did not begin in a conspiracy first organized in the metropolis, and gradually diffused, by the action of a secret society, throughout the land. In fact, there was no secrecy, no conspiracy, in the case. The opposition to the offensive acts of parliament was

open and avowed from the first; it was manifested with as much spirit in little villages,-in such places as Hingham, Lincoln, Bedford, Sudbury, and Danvers, -as in Boston. The common people, the farmers and mechanics of these little communities, acted in concert with the only authorities to whose immediate action they were accustomed, with their own selectmen. They held town-meetings, public assemblies, in which they concerted measures of defence, and passed resolutions declaratory of their opinions and their rights, and expressing sympathy with the people of Boston. They organized themselves into companies of minute-men, instructed each other in military discipline, provided ammunition and stores, and then waited patiently, with arms in their hands, for the first act of aggression on the part of the British. From the commencement of the difficulties, their attitude was strictly a defensive one; they waited till the first blow should be struck by their opponents. They were not entirely unanimous ; in nearly all the towns, there were individuals who were known to favor the cause of the crown. But these persons were watched with great vigilance, and whenever their movements became suspicious, they were seized and placed in custody. On the whole, the people showed great forbearance towards them, and never manifested any thing like a vindictive or bloodthirsty spirit. The war was not waged with the stiletto or the pistol; there were some popular outbreaks, but the mob did not seize obnoxious persons, and hang them up to a lamp-post, or to the next tree, and then make targets of their bodies. In a few instances, the houses of known Tories were roughly visited, and their furniture was injured or destroyed; but the greatest violence ever done to their persons was to tar and feather them. And even these outrages were discountenanced or sharply reproved by the most influential patriots. There was great unanimity among the Whigs, both as to the objects in view, and as to the means or course of conduct by which these objects were to be attained. The inhabitants of the different towns acted with but little formal concert, and still they acted together. The machinery of popular agitation on a great scale had not then been invented; the people consequently manifested but little enthusiasm, but they adhered to their purpose with a cool and dogged determination and an unflinching fortitude, which bore them triumph

antly through the long struggle. It is comparatively easy to show courage on the field in maintenance of one's rights; many do that from sheer stupidity, because they have not imagination or sense enough to form a full conception of the danger, or because they are afraid to run away. But to persist in the endeavor through long and wearisome years, to stand one's ground manfully against privations, hardships, discouragements, and defeats, this it is which "tries men's souls"; and this was the quality of the early American patriots to an extent which can hardly be paralleled in the history of other nations.

The feeling which sustained these men in their work was not the sympathetic and short-lived excitement that often pervades a vast multitude, every individual in which acts and is acted upon at the same instant, in turn originating, receiving, and transmitting the electric influence, till all are swayed to and fro in one body, like the ocean rocked by the winds. This is the characteristic action of the populace of a great metropolis; and New England then had no metropolis which was worthy of the name. Though Boston had the same relative importance then as now among its sister towns, it was absolutely little more than a village, a place of some sixteen or seventeen thousand inhabitants; and during most of the period of which we now speak, Boston was actually hors de combat, being held in a state of siege, though garrisoned by a powerful British army, and watched by a considerable British fleet. The operation of the Port Bill was a severe blow to the prosperity of the town, which had depended almost entirely on its shipping; all commerce, except a little retail traffic, ceased, and many of the laboring class were thrown out of employment. For their relief large contributions were made in the country by what we now call the agricultural interest, who felt as much sympathy for the suffering mechanics and sailors as if they had been engaged in the same occupations with themselves. There was no jealousy among the different classes of the population; the whole community was a small one, and an injury done to a part affected the security, if not the immediate well-being, of the whole. Because town and country acted heartily together, neither absolutely taking the lead, neither being wholly dependent on the other, the occupation of Boston by

the British was no greater detriment to the patriot cause, than if the troops had been stationed anywhere else in the colony. The object was to get rid of them altogether; and in their measures for obtaining this end, the people were as careful to keep law and justice on their side, as to provide for defence against unprovoked aggression. The troops landed in Boston in June, 1774, when the Port Bill went into operation, and the battle of Lexington was not fought till the next April. During the intervening months, the attitude of the whole people was calm and watchful; they did not collect together in large bodies, they made no menacing demonstrations, but waited patiently till their opponents should commit the first overt act of hostility.

It was the firing of the king's troops on Lexington common which rang the alarm-bell of the Revolution, and the hitherto seemingly quiescent colony burst at once into a flame. This event took place at four o'clock in the morning; and before noon, the hills and roads were alive with minute-men, hurrying from all quarters to the scene of conflict. Each company, as it arrived, without waiting for orders, or stopping to concert action with those already on the field, took the best position it could find for annoying the enemy, and opened its fire. The woods and stone walls on either side of the road were lined with sharp-shooters, who availed themselves of every advantage of the ground as skilfully as if they had been under the direction of an able general. Never was efficient and harmonious cooperation of so large a body obtained with so little concert or unity of command. General Heath, indeed, had been empowered to take the direction whenever the minutemen should be called together in large numbers; but he did not arrive on the ground till the afternoon, and when there, he found the men so actively engaged in their several positions, while fresh companies were constantly coming up, and the exigencies of the case were changing every few minutes, as the British continued their retreat, that it was neither desirable nor possible to give general orders with effect. He was wise enough not to interfere, and the affair continued as it had begun, each company, in truth, finding its own station and fighting on its own hook. The action ended only when the harassed king's troops reached Charlestown, where they found safety under the guns of their shipping.