ncil.

Though the Governor averred that his object, in his verbal
communication, was to give a chance for an interposition of such sound
advice, yet to Lord Hillsborough he actually represented the call
and the movement of these men as proofs that the long-contemplated
insurrection was now at hand. He informed the Secretary, that on the
next evening (Friday) there was a large private meeting, where "it was
the general opinion that they should raise the country and oppose the
troops"; and that on the succeeding evening (Saturday) there was a very
small private meeting at the house of one of the chiefs, where it was
resolved "to surprise and take the Castle the Monday night following."
The Governor evidently had misgivings about its being the fact that such
an object was planned. "I don't," he said, "relate these as facts,
but only as reported and believed." I have found no account of the
Friday-evening meeting, which undoubtedly was a meeting of one of the
political clubs of the time; but on Saturday evening James Otis and
Samuel Adams met at Warren's residence in Hanover Street (on the site
of the American House) for conference as to Monday's meeting,--for
instance, to draw up the resolves and decide upon the action that might
be expedient: whatever may have been the warmth of expression of popular
leaders, or the wishes of extremists among the people, the whole object
of this conference was to concentrate and use only the moral force of
public opinion; and there is not a trace of a design of insurrection in
all the known private correspondence of these patriots.

However, the belief in insurrection, at this time, appears to have been
as strongly rooted in the minds of prominent Loyalists as it was in the
mind of the again perturbed Governor. Signs of what is thought to be
near at hand are apt to be seen or fancied; and it was so in this case.
Somebody had put a turpentine barrel in the skillet that hung at the top
of the beacon-pole on Beacon Hill. Now it had been designed, for a
long time, by such a mode of bonfire, to alarm the country, in case of
invasion. This fact was put with another fact, namely, that the beacon
had been newly repaired; and from the two facts was drawn the startling
inference, that matters were ready for a rising in the town, and for
giving the concerted signal to summon in the country to aid this
rising,--and this, too, when the Governor had not a sergeant's guard
of real soldiers nearer than