ead, and was laid, pale and cold, in his wife's bed,
only three hours after he had left her with a solemn benediction
of farewell. Did not this woman also suffer? She was left a widow
in the very flower of her youth, and for seventy years she
faithfully mourned his taking off! Nor were these the only ones;
for every man who fell that day, some woman's heart was wrung.
There were others who endured actual physical hardship and
suffering. Hannah Adams lay in bed with an infant only a week old
when the British reached her house in their disorderly retreat
to Boston; they forced her to leave her sick room and to crawl
into an adjoining corn shed, while they burned her house to ashes
in her sight. Three companies of British troops went to the house
of Major Barrett and demanded food. Mrs. Barrett served them as
well as she was able, and when she was offered compensation,
refused it, saying gently, "We are commanded if our enemy hunger
to feed him." So, in toil or suffering or anguish the women
endured their share of the sorrows of that day. Do they not
deserve a share of its glories also? The battles of Lexington and
Concord form an era in our country's history. When, driven to
desperation by a long course of oppression, the people first
resolved to revolt against the mother country. Discontent,
resentment and indignation had grown stronger month by month
among the hardy settlers of the land, until they culminated in
the most splendid act of audacity that the world has ever seen. A
few colonies, scattered at long intervals along the Atlantic
seaboard, dared to defy the proudest nation in Europe, and a few
rustics, undisciplined, and almost unarmed, actually ventured to
encounter in battle that army which had boasted its conquests
over the flower of European chivalry. What unheard of oppressions
drove these people to the mad attempt? What unheard of atrocities
had the rulers of these people practiced, what unjust
confiscations of property, what cruel imprisonments and wicked
murders? None of all these; the people of this land were not
starving or dying under the iron heel of an Alva or a
Robespierre, but their civil liberties had been denied, their
political freedom refused, and rather than endure the loss of
these precious things, they were willing