PART II

“LET IT BEGIN HERE”

April 1775

The violences committed by those who have taken up arms in Massachusetts Bay, have appeared to me as the acts of a rude Rabble without plan, without concert, & without conduct, and therefore I think that a smaller Force now, if put to the Test, would be able to encounter them with greater probability of Success.

—Lord Dartmouth to General Thomas Gage,
received around April 16, 1775