By Princessa
Paul Revere (1735-1818):
Paul Revere was born on January 1, 1735 in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied at the North Grammar School in Boston. He served for a short time in the French and Indian War. After the war, he married Sarah Orne and entered his father's silversmith business.
Paul Revere soon became interested in the issue of American liberty. He received lots of attention from political cartoons he drew. Paul Revere was a member of the "Sons of Liberty." On December 16, 1773, he took part in the Boston Tea Party.
On April 18, 1775, Revere and William Dawes were sent to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock of British plans to march from Boston to seize patriot military stores at Concord. A signal was established to warn if the British were coming by land or by sea. From the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston, two lanterns would mean the British were coming by sea, and one would mean by land. One lantern was lit. The British were coming by land.
Revere left Boston around 10 PM. Along the road to Lexington, he warned residents that "The British are coming!". He arrived in Lexington around Midnight riding a borrowed horse. At 1 AM, Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott left for Concord. Revere was captured. Only Prescott got through to Concord.
Revere was released without his horse and returned to Lexington. At Lexington he joined Adam and Hancock and fled into safety in Burlington. Revere returned to rescue valuable papers in Hancock's trunk. When the British arrived on April 19, the minutemen were waiting for them. In 1778 and 1779, Revere commanded a garrison at Castle Williams in Boston Harbor. Revere left the service in disrepute.
During and after the war, Revere continured his silversmith trade in Boston. He died on May 10, 1818.
George Washington And The Continental Army:
After an overland journey from Philadelphia, that partook of the nature of an ovation, Washington arrived in Cambridge two weeks after the Bunker Hill battle, mid the next day, beneath the shade of a great elm tree that still stands as a living monument of that heroic age, he formally assumed command of the Continental army.
The new commander was warmly welcomed by the army. The local officers yielded gracefully to his superior authority. Some of them were men destined to achieve abiding fame in the coming war. By far the ablest man among them was Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. As a farmer boy, and later a blacksmith, he had lacked the means of a classical education, but being fond of books, he acquired much knowledge by private study. He read law, general literature, and especially military tactics. He was a born soldier, and before he knew that he was to spend a portion of his life in the field he was thoroughly familiar with the theory of warfare. He was in most of the battles of the war, and was implicitly trusted by Washington, to whom he was scarcely inferior in generalship. Greene was a man of rare sweetness of character and purity of morals. In the later years of the war he became the savior of the Southern states; and after peace had come to the newborn republic, he left his native state to spend the evening of his days among the people of Georgia, who, in grateful remembrance of his services, had presented him with a fine plantation.
From the hills of New Hampshire had come two men, opposite in characteristics, both of whom have left a permanent name in the annals of their country -- John Sullivan, who represented wealth, refinement, and culture, and John Stark, who had shown his mettle at Bunker Hill, and whose dashing vigor, undaunted courage, and almost fierce patriotism mark him as one of the most heroic figures of the war. Here also was Henry Knox, a Boston bookseller, a corpulent man with a winning smile and a jolly laugh, who soon won his way into Washington's heart, and who many years later became a member of his first Cabinet.
But the most picturesque figure of all was Daniel Morgan, the leader of the Virginia sharpshooters. Morgan was a giant in size, genial and affable, but fierce and recklessly daring in battle. In youth he had received five hundred lashes for insulting a British officer, but his spirit was unsubdued. He had escaped a murderous band of Indians on horseback after a musket ball had passed through his neck. He now joined the army of Washington and did valiant service for liberty throughout the war. These and many other Sons of Liberty now made the acquaintance of the commander in chief on the Cambridge Common.
Sir William Howe had succeeded Gage as commander of the British army, and his brother, Lord Richard Howe, was made admiral of the fleet. The contempt that Gage had felt for the Americans had worked to their benefit at Lexington and Bunker Hill. Howe seemed now to entertain the opposite opinion of his enemy; he remained inactive during the summer and autumn, and this again proved a great advantage to the Americans, for Washington needed the time to drill and reorganize his army and to secure an adequate supply of ammunition. The new-made soldiers soon grew tired of warfare, and as their terms of enlistment expired they departed for their homes by hundreds. Reënlistments were slow, and it was with great difficulty that Washington kept an army about him. He practically disbanded one army and another -- all within musket shot of the British regiments.
Within this period a remarkable expedition to Canada had been undertaken by General Richard Montgomery. From Ticonderoga Montgomery pressed northward in September with two thousand men, and two months later he had possession of Montreal. The expedition promised succes. To join this army in Canada Washington had dispatched eleven hundred men under Benedict Arnold, who, after a march of incredible hardships through the Maine wilderness, reached the valley of the St Lawrence in November. Arnold, whose name in our history was to become famous, then infamous, was a man of military skill and intrepid courage. With Arnold on this perilous journey was another whose name, like his, was yet to be honored, then dishonored, by his countrymen. The fragments of the two armies met in the valley of the great Canadian river, and together they made a desperate and fruitless assault on Quebec,1 on the last day of the year 1775. Montgomery was shot dead, and Arnold was wounded; Ethan Allen had been taken prisoner and sent in irons to England; hundreds of the brave Americans perished through cold and hunger and the ravages of smallpox; and, on the whole, the expedition ended the following spring in disastrous failure.
Washington was severely criticised for his long delay before Boston; but he was wiser than his critics. He spent every day in perfecting his army and preparing to strike a blow. By the 1st of March, 1776, a great many of the cannon captured at Ticonderoga the year before had been drawn on sledges all those hundreds of miles to the Continental army at Cambridge. The commander now determined to wait no longer. He sent two thousand men on the night of the 4th of March to fortify the peninsula south of Boston, known as Dorchester Heights, which commanded the city and harbor even better than did Bunker Hill. During the night the Americans kept up an unceasing cannonade from Roxbury and other points for the purpose of drowning the sound of the pick and the hammer, the noise of the moving wagons, and of the dragging of siege guns; and Howe, all unwittingly, aided him in the good work by replying with his cannon.
At the dawn of day the British general opened his eyes in astonishment upon the work that had been wrought in the night on the heights of Dorchester. What could be done? Washington could now destroy every ship in the harbor with shells. Howe determined to storm the works; but his men remembered Bunker Hill, and the memory left them spiritless. Yet something had to he done, and Howe in desperation set apart three thousand men under Lord Percy to undertake the perilous business; but a terrific storm swept over the harbor and delayed the project until the morrow. Then it was too late: for the American works had been made so strong that only suicidal folly would attempt their reduction by storm. There was but one thing left for the English to do -- to abandon Boston and the Boston harbor; and ere the end of the month General Howe, with all the British ships, bearing eight thousand soldiers and nearly two thousand American loyalists, launched out upon the deep and sailed away to Halifax. Thus the old Bay colony, the home of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, the scene of the opening acts of the Revolution, after six years of incessant annoyance,2 was set free from the enemy; and never again, from that day to the present, has a foreign army trod the soil of Massachusetts.3
This was Washington's first stroke in the war, and it was one of his most brilliant. With little loss he had cleared New England of the enemy, and had sent a thrill of joy over the whole country. In their haste the British left behind more than two hundred cannon and great quantities of muskets and ammunition, all of which became the property of Washington's army. Furthermore, the news of Howe's departure did not reach England for several weeks, and meantime vessels were being sent to Boston to supply the wants of the army -- and so they did, but not of the British army. They sailed innocently into the harbor, and were captured, and their contents went to increase the stores of the Continental army.
Thomas Jefferson And The Declaration Of Independence:
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is at once the nation's most cherished symbol of liberty and Jefferson's most enduring monument. Here, in exalted and unforgetable phrases, Jefferson expressed the convictions in the minds and hearts of the American people. The politicsl philosophy of the Declaration was not new; its ideals of individual liberty had already been expressed by John Locke and the Contintinental philosophers. What Jefferson did was to summarize this philosophy in "self-evedient truths" and set forth a list of grievances against the King in order to justify before the world the breaking of ties between the colonies and the mother country. Here is a transcription of the complete text of the Declaration.
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IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
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What Should We Expect From A President?:
We should expect a leader that cares about our country, knows best for our people, is nice, (mabye even a little funny), who cares about the people's health and responsible.
