ruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical
war." No American writer ever employed to describe it a combination of
adjectives so vigorous as those brought together by the elder Pitt,
afterwards Lord Chatham. The rights for which Americans fought seemed to
him to be the common rights of Englishmen, and many Englishmen thought
the same.

On the other hand, we are now able to do justice to those American
Loyalists who honestly believed that the attempt at independence was a
mad one, and who sacrificed all they had rather than rebel against their
King. Massachusettensis, the well-known Tory pamphleteer, wrote that the
annals of the world had not been deformed with a single instance of so
unnatural, so causeless, so wanton, so wicked a rebellion.

These strong epithets used on both sides show how strangely opinions
were divided as to the rebellion and its causes. Some of the first
statesmen of England defended the colonists, and some of the best known
men in the colonies defended England.

The City of Boston at this time had a population of about seventeen
thousand, as compared with some half a million to-day. In its garrison
there were three thousand British troops, and the laws of Parliament
were enforced rigidly. The city suffered temporary commercial death in
consequence, and there were the most vigorous efforts made to prevent an
open outbreak of hostilities. In January, 1775, a conflict was barely
averted at Marshfield, and in the following month the situation was so
strained at Salem that nothing but great forbearance and presence of
mind on the part of the colonists prevented bloodshed. The Boston
massacre of less than five years before was still uppermost in men's
thoughts, and it was determined that the responsibility of the first
shot in the war, if war there must be, should rest with the Royal
troops.

Accordingly, the colonists accepted insult and abuse until they were
suspected by the British troops of cowardice. One officer wrote home
telling his friends that there was no danger of war, because the
colonists were bullies, but not fighters, adding that any two regiments
ought to be decimated which could not beat the entire force arrayed
against them. But the conflict could not be long delayed. It was on
April 18th, 1775, that Paul Revere rode his famous ride. He had seen the
two lights in a church steeple in Boston, which had been agreed upon as
a signal that the British troops were about to seize the supplies