THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
- Referat Limba Engleza -
Student
Radulescu Octavian
an II
Facultatea de Litere si Istorie
Sectia Istorie - Muzeologie
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
The events of 1773 and 1774 had culminated in a revolutionary crisis. And the events of 1775 were to determine weather the differences between England and the colonies would be compromised or fought out on the battlefield. In 1774, the colonists gave an ominous hint that it might be too late for compromise when they organized extra-legal provincial congresses to act as state governments. In fact most of the delegates to the First Continental Congress had been appointed by these governments.
In April 1775 General Gage received orders to arrest some of the leaders of the Massachusetts patriots. Gage decided to go beyond these orders and to seize the military stores his spies had informed him were being assembled in the village of Concord. He neither caught the rebel leaders, nor completely destroyed the military supplies. A troop of 700 British regulars did reach Concord on April 19, 1775 after scattering some slight resistance at Lexington. And they managed to destroy some of the riffles and ammunition that the colonists had been unable to hide. Then, as the British turned back to Boston, they were set upon by angry Minute Men who peppered them from behind fences and trees. After the raid, the British counted 273 dead, wounded, and missing; the Americans had lost 93. Far more important than the skirmish itself were the propaganda possibilities it dropped into the patriots’ hands. They concocted chilling reports of British atrocities and rapine, and convinced many of the colonists that Britain was thirsting for American blood.
On May 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. By June, 65 delegates had arrived, representing all 13 colonies. None of them could have imagined that they were to continue in session with only brief recesses for the next 14 years. They we
