e participants as a band of misguided
incendiaries. Subsequent reverence for the occasion, disproves any such
view. Judge Dawes, a prominent jurist of the time, as well as a
brilliant exponent of the people, alluding in 1775 to the event, said:

"The provocation of that night must be numbered among the
master-springs which gave the first motion to a vast machinery--a
noble and comprehensive system of national independence."

Ramsey's History of the American Revolution, says:

"The anniversary of the 5th of March was observed with great
solemnity; eloquent orators were successively employed to preserve
the remembrance of it fresh in the mind. On these occasions the
blessings of liberty, the horrors of slavery, and the danger of a
standing army, were presented to the public view. These annual
orations administered fuel to the fire of liberty and kept it
burning with an irresistible flame."

The 5th of March continued to be celebrated for the above reasons until
the anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence was
substituted in its place; and its orators were expected to honor the
feelings and principles of the former as having given birth to the
latter. On the 5th of March 1776, Washington repaired to the
intrenchments. "Remember" said he, "It is the 5th of March, and avenge
the death of your brethren."

In the introduction to a book entitled "The Colored Patriots of the
American Revolution" by William C. Nell, a Negro historian, Harriet
Beecher Stowe said in 1855:

"The colored race have been generally considered by their enemies,
and sometimes even by their friends, as deficient in energy and
courage. Their virtues have been supposed to be principally
negative ones." Speaking of the incidents in Mr. Nell's collection
she says: "They will redeem the character of the race from this
misconception and show how much injustice there may often be in a
generally accepted idea". Continuing, she says:

"In considering the services of the colored patriots of the
Revolution, we are to reflect upon them as far more magnanimous,
because rendered to a nation which did not acknowledge them as
citizens and equals, and in whose interests and prosperity they had
less at stake. It was not for their own land they fought, not even
for a land which had adopted them, but for a land which had
enslaved them,