ington episode to make the 19th of
April an historic date. The rapid spread of the news, the excitement
in New England, the uprising of the militia and their hurried march to
Boston to resist any further excursions of the regulars, were the
immediate consequence of this collision.

Nor was the alarm confined to the Eastern colonies, then chiefly
affected. A courier delivered the news in New York three days later,
on Sunday noon, and the liberty party at once seized the public
military stores, and prevented vessels loaded with supplies for the
British in Boston from leaving port. Soon came fuller accounts of the
expedition and its rout. Expresses carried them southward, and their
course can be followed for nearly a thousand miles along the coast. On
the 23d and 24th they passed through Connecticut, where at Wallingford
the dispatches quaintly describe the turning out of the militiamen:
"The country beyond here are all gone." They reached New York at two
o'clock on the 25th, and Isaac Low countersigns. Relays taking them up
in New Jersey, report at Princeton on the 26th, at "3.30 A.M." They
are at Philadelphia at noon, and "forwarded at the same time." We
find them at New Castle, Delaware, at nine in the evening; at
Baltimore at ten on the following night; at Alexandria, Virginia, at
sunset on the 29th; at Williamsburg, May 2d; and at Edenton, North
Carolina, on the 4th, with directions to the next Committee of Safety:
"Disperse the material passages [of the accounts] through all your
parts." Down through the deep pine regions, stopping at Bath and
Newbern, ride the horsemen, reaching Wilmington at 4 P.M. on the 8th.
"Forward it by night and day," say the committee. At Brunswick at nine
the indorsement is entered: "Pray don't neglect a moment in
forwarding." At Georgetown, South Carolina, where the dispatches
arrive at 6.30 P.M. on the 10th, the committee address a note to their
Charleston brethren: "We send you by express a letter and newspapers
with momentous intelligence this instant arrived." The news reaching
Savannah, a party of citizens immediately took possession of the
government powder.

The wave of excitement which follows the signal of a coming struggle
was thus borne by its own force throughout the length of the colonies.
And from the coast the intelligence spread inland as far as settlers
had found their way. In distant Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, men
heard it, and began to organize and drill. At Ch