er and person when he said:

"'I will raise one thousand men toward the relief of Boston and subsist
them at my own expense.'

"That was all he said and it was the most eloquent speech made in the
convention. It won the hearts of the New Englanders. Thereafter, he
was the central figure in that Congress of trusted men. It is also
evident that he will be the central figure on this side of the ocean
when the storm breaks. Next day, he announced that he was, as yet,
opposed to any definite move toward independence. So the delegates
contented themselves with a declaration of rights opposing importations
and especially slaves."

When the Congress adjourned October twenty-sixth to meet again on the
tenth of May, there was little hope of peace among those who had had a
part in its proceedings.

Jack, who knew the conditions in England, knew also that war would come
soon, and freely expressed his views.

2

Letters had come from Margaret giving him the welcome news that Lionel
Clarke had recovered and announcing that her own little revolution had
achieved success. She and her father would be taking ship for Boston
in December. Jack had urged that she try to induce him to start at
once, fearing that December would be too late, and so it fell out.
When the news of the Congress reached London, the King made new plans.
He began to prepare for war. Sir Benjamin Hare, who was to be the
first deputy of General Gage, was assigned to a brigade and immediately
put his regiments in training for service overseas. He had spent six
months in America and was supposed, in England, to have learned the art
of bush fighting. Such was the easy optimism of the cheerful young
Minister of War, and his confreres, in the House of Lords. After the
arrival of the _King William_ at Gravesend on the eighth of December,
no English women went down to the sea in ships for a long time.
Thereafter the water roads were thought to be only for fighting men.
Jack's hope was that armed resistance would convince the British of
their folly.

"A change of front in the Parliament would quickly end the war," he was
wont to say. Not that he quite believed it. But young men in love are
apt to say things which they do not quite believe. In February, 1775,
he gave up his work on _The Gazette_ to aid in the problem of defense.
Solomon, then in Albany, had written that he was going the twentieth of
that month on a mission to the Six Nations of The Lo